Before the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Argentina, several regions enacted civil unions starting with Buenos Aires City in 2002.

Since 1953, various provinces have passed discriminatory laws targeting LGBTIQ+ people and their expressions, starting with Catamarca. Laws would begin to be repealed in the 1990s and continued into the 21st century with Formosa being the last province to repeal such laws in 2012.

During the military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, LGBTIQ+ people faced extreme persecution with the junta harassing people for their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Since 1932, persecution of LGBTIQ+ people started to become state policy as police edicts were issued that imprisoned homosexuals if they were travelling with a minor. This was often justified not as a persecution of homosexuality but as "protecting" minors across the country. This would further strengthen in the 1940s under Juan Peron into even more widespread discrimination by the government.

Since 1953, differing province laws on criminalising expression of homosexual and transgender people would come into effect.

Before 2012, trans people were required to undergo surgery to achieve legal gender recognition in Argentina. However, it wasn't until 1997 when the federal government provided legal recognition to a trans woman after previous requests for recognition were rejected by courts.

Decree 62/2025 signed by President Javier Milei, in force since February 7, 2025, replaced article 11 of Law No. 26,743 on Gender Identity, with the following:

ARTICLE 11.- Right to free personal development. All persons over EIGHTEEN (18) years of age may, in accordance with article 1 of this law and in order to guarantee the enjoyment of their comprehensive health, access total and partial surgical interventions and/or comprehensive hormonal treatments to adapt their body, including their genitalia, to their self-perceived gender identity, without the need to request judicial or administrative authorization.

To access comprehensive hormonal treatments, it will not be necessary to prove the will in the surgical intervention of total or partial genital reassignment. In both cases, only the informed consent of the person will be required.

The public health system's effectors, whether state, private or part of the social security subsystem, must permanently guarantee the rights recognized by this law.

All health benefits contemplated in this article are included in the Mandatory Medical Plan, or the one that replaces it, as regulated by the implementing authority.

Persons under EIGHTEEN (18) years of age will not be able to access the interventions and treatments referred to in this article.

With the gender identity law passed in 2012, Argentina established access to gender affirming care as a right of transgender people.

In 2007 a judge ruled that minors could consent to GAC but the scope and availability of the process was unclear.

Medical transition is not possible as sterilisation was banned until 2006 under Article 19 of Law No. 17,132 in 1967 which explicitly prohibits medical professionals to not carry out surgical interventions that modify the sex of the patient.

Following a military reform law by the Argentine parliament, LGB people can serve, but transgenders are not included.

Federal regulations ban MSMs from donating blood, but it has been legal in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires since July 2013.
A bill that would strike down the federal ban in other regions was passed by the lower house of Congress, but it was never considered by the Senate.