NICOLA Sturgeon has said she will “never apologise for trying to spread equality” as the Scottish Parliament prepares for a final vote on the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill on Thursday.
At First Minister’s Questions, Sturgeon faced questions from Tory leader Douglas Ross on why she did not support an amendment from her own MSP Michelle Thomson that would have stopped those awaiting trial for a sexual offence from changing gender.
The amendment failed to pass by one vote, with Ross accusing the First Minister directly of failing to stop a man standing trial for rape from being able to claim they’re a woman and force a victim to call them she.
It was one of more than 150 amendments heard in the chamber over the last two days as Tory MSPs were accused of filibustering in a bid to stop the bill from progressing.
However, a similar amendment from Gillian Martin did pass. Rather than applying an outright ban blocking anyone convicted of a sexual offence from changing their gender, Martin’s amendment means authorities will be able to assess risk and block Gender Recognition Ceritficate (GRC) applications on a case-by-case basis.
Sturgeon vowed to stand by her decisions and insisted nothing in the bill would create any more threat to women’s safety than that which exists already.
And she insisted she would never say sorry for trying to make the lives of trans people better and remove daily trauma they face.
Sturgeon said: “I stand by the decisions I take and I will be accountable and I will set out the reasons for my decisions.
“Removing the need for medical diagnosis for a trans person who wants to legally change their gender is one of the purposes of this legislation because that is one of the most traumatic and dehumanising parts of the current system.
“As a woman, I know what it’s like to live with the fear at times of potential violence from men.
"I’m a feminist and I will do everything that I can to protect women’s rights for as long as live, but I also think it’s an important part of my responsibility to make life a little bit easier for stigmatised minorities in our country, to make their lives a bit better and remove some of the trauma they live with on a day-to-day basis and I think it is important to do that for the tiny minority of trans people in our society and I will never apologise for trying to spread equality, not reduce it, in our country.”
The bill, which is set to pass on Thursday afternoon, will make it easier for trans people to apply for a GRC.
If it gets the green light, an applicant for a GRC will now need to have lived in their acquired gender for just three months - or six months if they are aged 16 or 17 - rather than two years.
There will also be a three-month "reflection period" during which they can change their minds.
The new rules will also lower the minimum age people can apply to change gender from 18 to 16 and the requirement for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria will be removed.
The bill has been subject to a marathon debate in Edinburgh with MSPs kept in the chamber until well into the early hours on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Many MSPs - including SNP rebel Ash Regan - spoke out against the bill for fear it would pose a threat to women's rights.
On that matter, Sturgeon said in the chamber on Thursday: "Where amendments were rejected over the course of the last two days it was because a majority of this parliament decided that for various reasons those amendments were not appropriate.
"Over the course of the last two days, we have heard set out in this chamber many of the different ways in which predatory men can abuse women.
"My argument is not that these are not very real ways in which men abuse women but that none of these ways are created by this bill.
"A man who wants to abuse a woman, even a man who wants to masquerade as a woman, does not need a GRC to do that.
"What we must focus on are the men who abuse women, the predatory and abusive men who do that and this government always will in a range of different ways.
"Where amendments were rejected it was often the case that that was because there were alternative amendments that were passed to strengthen safeguards in this bill, but amendments that were compliant in the view of the government with ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights] and competence issues in a way that some of those rejected were not."
