The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare has changed their mind - they will not be approving gender corrective surgery for children below the age of 18.
www.svt.se/nyheter/granskning/ug/socialstyrelsen-andrar-sig-ej-lampligt-med-konskorrigerande-kirurgi-innan-18
In 2018, the government proposed a new law that would allow sex-corrective genital surgery from the age of 15, without the custodian's permission. The bill was heavily criticized by the law council, but the National Board of Health endorsed the proposal.
The authority even wanted to go further than the government - the bill stated that a prerequisite for surgery was that the person must be assumed to live in the same gender identity in the future. But the National Board of Health considered that surgery should not be "linked to whether the gender identity can be assumed to be the same over time".
An investigative TV program looked into how this decision had been reached and showed that "factual" information that politicians and the health authority had based proposal on was false. After the programme went out and other media shone light onto the flawed decision making process, the Government commissioned the National Board of Health and Welfare to analyse and assess whether the proposed age limit of 15 years is appropriate.
When the report is now presented, the National Board of Health and Welfare makes a complete reversal. They no longer think that the age limit should be lowered.
- I don't really think it matters what we have said before. We have not felt bound by it, but have investigated this question from the beginning and looked at the information we have now, says Thomas Lindén.
This is good news for the children of Sweden. Of course it would be better if irrevocable surgery was delayed until after the brain has finished maturing around the age of 25, but as a first step it inspires hope that bad decisions can be reversed when they are shown to have been based on misrepresentation of the facts.