Argentina announces ban on gender transitions for minors

Argentina's presidential office has said that President Javier Milei had decided to ban gender change treatments and surgeries for minors, as well as impose limits on transgender women being housed inside women's prisons.

According to his office, Milei will decree that prisoners be housed according to their gender registered at the time of committing the crime.

Regardless of this, it said, no transgender woman will be housed in a women's prison if convicted of sexual crimes, human trafficking or violent crimes against women.

The office did not give details on how many transgender woman were in women's prisons or convicted of such crimes.

The announcement came shortly after a US judge blocked an executive order that President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office that would move the 16 transgender women housed in women's prisons to men's institutions, and end their gender-affirming care.

Milei's office added that the government would modify a 2012 law allowing people to change their gender identity, including banning hormone treatment and surgery for children.

"Gender ideology taken to extremes and applied to children by force or psychological coercion constitutes child abuse," the office said in a statement.

The announcement comes days after protests in Argentina after Milei made a speech in Davos, Switzerland, in which he questioned "feminism, diversity, inclusion, abortion, environmentalism and gender ideology", calling progressive policies a "cancer that must be extirpated."