New Zealand passed a long-awaited law last week easing the process of correcting the gender marker listed on a trans person’s birth certificate.
The Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Act 2017 passed unanimously in the New Zealand Parliament on Dec. 9. The bill allows trans people to amend their birth certificates without showing proof of gender-affirming surgery or applying through the Family Court system. The latter—an often expensive, burdensome process—required that petitioners potentially reveal private information about their medical histories to a judge, according to the New Zealand Herald.
Internal Affairs Minister Jan Tinetti said the legislation reflected a “more accessible and inclusive process” for birth certificate corrections.
“Today is a proud day in Aotearoa’s history,” she said in comments reported by U.K. news outlet The Guardian. “Parliament has voted in favour of inclusivity and against discrimination. This law change will make a real difference for transgender, non-binary, takatāpui and intersex New Zealanders.” (Takatāpui is a Maori term analogous to LGBTQ2S+.)
Tinetti noted, however, that the bill’s passage had been a “tough journey” for LGBTQ2S+ New Zealanders following strong opposition from anti-trans groups. During a heated public hearing on the legislation in September, Beth Johnson, a representative of Speak Up For Women, accused those who supported the effort of wanting to allow “people with a penis… to undress in front of young girls.”
Speak Up For Women, which has denied assertions that it’s transphobic, took out billboard and newspaper advertisements lambasting the bill. A widely criticized ad in the Otago Daily Times quoted the definition of a woman as an “adult human female” in a pointed jab at trans communities.
“Say ‘no’ to self-identification,” the message concluded.
Despite the backlash, the bill enjoyed broad support across political parties in New Zealand, even among conservatives. All members of the House, the sole chamber in Parliament, voted in favour of the legislation, with no abstentions. Many lawmakers were tearful as the votes were counted.
“This bill recognizes that those who need to amend their birth certificate can do so, that the courts do not have the right to make that choice for them, that parents do not have that right, that cisgender people who don’t even know them or care about them do not have that right,” said Green Party lawmaker Elizabeth Kerekere, a queer woman of Māori descent, in comments reported by the Herald.
“As a takatāpui, cis-lesbian fem ally to our takatāpui, trans and intersex non-binary whānau [family],” she added, “I am very proud to commend this bill to the House.”
The law will take effect in 180 days. Its enactment will make New Zealand one of more than a dozen countries, including Denmark and Spain, to abandon the surgical requirement for gender marker corrections, according to The Guardian.
While the reforms are the most recent step forward for New Zealand after the country ushered in the world’s queerest parliament last year, some changes were left on the table. The bill does not ease the birth certificate correction process for refugees, asylum seekers and other residents born abroad, but those questions are expected to be resolved in the coming years.
An estimated 83 percent of trans New Zealanders do not have a corrected birth certificate, according to a 2018 survey by the advocacy group Counting Ourselves.
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