Forced Sterilisation of Trans People - Personal Stories

In 1972, Sweden introduced a law that made it possible to change a person’s legal gender. Legal gender is the gender marker that is recorded in the population register, passports, and also reflected in Swedish social security numbers. Many trans people want to change their legal gender so that it more accurately reflects their gender identity and how they live. In order to change legal gender, individuals were required to be sterilised and were not allowed to save any sperm or eggs. Apart from this, there were no other mandatory surgeries required for legal gender change. The purpose was to prevent the person’s ability to procreate if they wanted to change their legal gender and social security number.