As Spain advances trans rights, Sweden backtracks on gender-affirming treatments for teens

While Spain pushes ahead with laws making it easier for teenagers to change gender, other European countries that previously championed transgender rights are quietly backtracking.

The U-turns come amid a sharp rise in people reporting gender dysphoria - where people feel that the gender assigned to them at birth is not the one they identify with.

Sweden, known as a pioneer in LGBTQ rights, started restricting gender-affirming hormone therapy for minors - allowing it only in very rare cases - a year ago.

In December last year, it also limited mastectomies for teenage girls wanting to transition to a research setting, citing the need for "caution".

Back in 2015, the Swedish health authority had stated that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones were “safe”. These treatments are designed to help people with gender dysphoria transition from their biological sex to the gender they personally identify with.

Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare explains that the reason behind the rollback is that little is known about the effects of these treatments over the long term and "the risks outweigh the benefits currently".

However, experts say those treatments were designed for exceptional cases in the first place.

"We had a protocol in place which was designed for very rare and extreme cases and suddenly the demand exploded so we continued to use that protocol,” said Mikael Landen, a psychiatrist specialising in gender dysphoria who contributed to the scientific study on which Sweden’s health authority based its decision.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have done that. But I wouldn’t be the one criticising the clinicians for doing that because it was difficult, they wanted to help these patients," he told AFP.

Sweden, like many other western