Boy, Girl, Other: Intersex Advocates Call for Surgery Ban

[xchrom]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/intersex-activists-call-for-ban-on-surgical-operations-on-children-a-931213.html



Expectant parents look forward to that moment when they sit in the doctor's office and look at the ultrasound picture. Will it be a boy or a girl? And yet sometimes the answer is not immediately clear, even after the child is born.

Approximately one out of every 4,500 babies is born intersex, with genital anomalies. The external sex organs may not correspond with the internal sex organs, or with the child's chromosomal sex. A baby with the male Y chromosome may appear as a girl, or a baby with two X chromosomes may appear as a boy. Combinations of testicles and ovaries, or a clitoris and penis are possible.

On Nov. 1, Germany began offering parents the option of declining to choose a gender for their child on birth certificates, allowing intersex babies to grow up and decide for themselves what their gender is.

Lucie Veith, chair of the German Association of Intersex People, calls the change "a step in the right direction." She says she fears the law may have downsides, like if children are "forced out of the closet" in schools and left vulnerable to discrimination. Her organization is also calling for the German government to take the reform even further. They want to ban doctors and parents from surgically assigning children their sex at birth. Veith says such operations are mostly medically unnecessary.

[Trillo]

1. What happens if the children, as they grow up, decide they are "intersex"

and do not need reassignment to "male" or "female", but are simply okay with what nature gave them?

[xchrom]

2. i think that's going to be an option.

i also think we've reached for a surgical fix too quickly.

[NYC_SKP]

3. That seems to me to be the way it should be. (nt)

[Zorra]

4. Recommend! nt