by Rex Wockner
International News
Lithuania must implement a process for allowing and funding sex-change operations or pay 40,000 euros ($63,600) to transsexuals who seek the surgery so they can go to another country to get it, the European Court of Human Rights said April 9.
The determination came in the case of "Mr. L." from the city of Klaipeda. The 29-year-old was prescribed hormone therapy in 1998 but denied further therapy in 1999 because it was not clear she would have access to a sex-change operation. She continued the therapy on her own and, in 2000, had her breasts removed.
Then, in 2003, a law granted transsexuals the right to gender-reassignment surgery when medically possible, but additional measures that were needed to implement the law were never adopted, and medical facilities to carry out a full female-to-male sex-change operation apparently do not exist in Lithuania.
"It took a few years of efforts for the ECHR to protect her right to change sex, as stipulated in the Civil Code," Mr. L.'s lawyer, Henrikas Mickevicius of Lithuania's Human Rights Monitoring Institute, told the Baltic Times. "The irresponsible conduct of politicians has already cost a lot and may still have a higher price to Lithuanian taxpayers."
