California became the first state in the US to condemn unnecessary surgery on intersex children.
Big win for the #intersex community: The Assembly overwhelmingly passed my resolution (#SCR110) to encourage physicians to refrain from performing medically unnecessary genital surgery on intersex babies & allow people to decide for themselves whether to have genital surgery.
— Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) August 23, 2018
Intersex people often have ambiguous genitalia that doesn’t fall under cisgender male and female categories. They can have a larger than the normal clitoris, lacking a vaginal opening or a scrotum is divided, reported the Huffington Post.
Since the 1950s, parents of intersex children were given the choice to “correct” the child’s genitals at birth or soon after. Intersex advocates feel that the children were too young to give consent to such an invasive surgery.
Introduced by state Sen. Scott Wiener and co-sponsored by social justice organizations interACT and Equality California, the resolution by California legislature defines intersex people as “individuals born with variations in their physical sex characteristics” and who “may present with differences in genital anatomy, internal reproductive structures, chromosomes, or hormonal variations.”
“These surgeries are often performed before a child can even speak or stand, meaning the intersex individual is excluded from the decision whether to undergo these irreversible procedures,” the resolution states.
It further acknowledges that such surgeries cause “severe psychological and physiological harm.”
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