Intersex Kids Need US Pediatricians’ Support

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“As pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists, we care about the health and dignity of all children,” the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) wrote in response to a report on intersex youth that Human Rights Watch launched in July.

This weekend, as the AAP, an organization of 66,000 pediatricians across the United States, convenes in Chicago for their annual gathering, we urge members to stand by this commitment and discuss establishing clear AAP guidelines to protect intersex kids across the country.

Intersex people – whose chromosomes, gonads, and sex organs don’t match up with what is generally considered typically “female” or “male” – make up nearly two percent of the human population.

One of the reasons we hear so little about intersex people is that doctors often perform surgery on them when they are still infants to make their bodies appear more unambiguously “female” or “male.” Some physicians argue that the irreversible interventions make it easier for kids to grow up “normal” or avoid bullying or harassment. But the results are often catastrophic, and the supposed benefits largely unproven. It is rare that urgent health considerations require immediate, irreversible intervention.

One of the many risks of doctors operating on children’s gonads, internal sex organs, and genitals when they are too young to participate in the decision is that a sex is assigned that does not match the individual’s lived gender identity as it develops. Other risks include incontinence, sterilization, loss of sexual sensation, scarring, and psychological trauma.

In our report, we recommended the AAP develop a policy on medically unnecessary and non-consensual surgeries on intersex children that is consistent with APP standards on Assent, Informed Permission and Consent, and on female genital mutilation.

Chicago’s LGBT center, the Center on Halsted, has welcomed the AAP to the city and encouraged them to endorse a moratorium on medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex kids. Human Rights Watch and interACT are joined by United Nations experts, the World Health Organization, Amnesty International, every major LGBT legal organization in the US, three former US surgeons general, and intersex-led organizations around the world in calling for an end to medically unnecessary non-consensual surgeries on intersex kids. The American Medical Association Board of Trustees this year recommended respect for intersex children’s rights to autonomy and informed consent.

It’s time for the AAP to do the same.