Hungary outlaws changing birth gender on documents
Hungary's parliament has approved a law that bans transsexuals from changing the gender they were assigned at birth on official documents.
Regulations, proposed by the governing right-wing Fidesz party, passed by 133 votes to 57.
Rights groups fear it'll worsen discrimination against LGBTQ citizens; an opposition MP said it had been "evil".
However the government, led by PM Victor Orban, says it will end legal uncertainty.
The administration insists you won't prevent anyone expressing their identity.
The decision "to register children's biological sex in their birth certificates will not affect men's and women's to freely experience and exercise their identities because they wish," the government's communications office said.
Regulations is part of a wide-ranging package of legislation, presented by Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen.
A backlog of applications heading back 3 years will now be rejected.
Trans persons and human rights groups say it is the latest blow in a war declared by the conservative-nationalist government against anyone who does not fit into their definition of a family, reports the BBC's Nick Thorpe in Budapest.
Tina Korlos Orban, vice president of advocacy group Transvanilla Transgender Association, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation: "We have no words to describe what we feel.
"Individuals who haven't had suicidal thoughts for many years now are experiencing them. Folks are in panic, persons want to escape from Hungary to someplace else where they can obtain gender recognised."
Trans persons fear that discrimination and worse will occur if they have to present official documents.
The legislation now goes to President Janos Ader, also an associate of Fidesz, to be signed into law. Rights activists say they'll make an effort to persuade him not to.
Most EU countries allow official documents to be changed to complement gender identity, according to campaign group Transgender Europe.
