Parents sue doctors for Deciding Their Kid is a Girl

[WOT?*]

www.msn.com/en-us/health/pregnancyparenting/parents-sue-doctors-for-deciding-their-kid-is-a-girl/ar-BBlIUDA

In a first of its kind lawsuit, Greenville, S.C., residents Pam and Mark Crawford are suing the doctors who gave their adopted son sex assignment surgery while in foster care. MC, who had been deemed a female by doctors, had surgery at 16 months to “correct” his status as intersex (having both male and female genitalia), but is struggling with this assigned identity now at 10 years old. His parents are grieving that such a decision was made for him before he was able to make it himself.

“We just hate that there were choices made that could have a significant impact on his being able to be a man,” Pam Crawford tells Newser. “We just don’t want people to have to go through what he’s going to face.”

BuzzFeed reports that after seeing the adorable photo of MC on an adoption website, the Crawfords knew they wanted to adopt him. Understanding the site featured many children with health problems, they decided to contact the South Carolina Department of Social Services to find out what was the matter with MC, who seemed in perfect health. It was then that they were alerted to the fact that he was born intersex; the agency detailed that MC was born with both a penis and vaginal opening, along with an undescended testicle on the left side of his body, and both ovarian and testicular tissue on the right side. Doctors reported MC’s hormone levels were consistent with a male baby at his age.

Pam Crawford’s first thought was that she hoped MC had not undergone a surgery, but much to their dismay, they found he had, being officially assigned the gender of female. Now, reaching closer to the formidable teenage years, MC identifies as male, and the Crawfords are calling his surgery a form of genital mutilation.

“…It’s become more and more difficult just as his identity has become more and more male,” they say in the video. “The idea that mutilation was done to him has become more and more real. There was no medical reason that this decision had to be made at that time.”

Officially, the Crawfords are alleging that the doctors involved in MC’s surgery violated his constitutional rights by having “surgically removed his phallus while he was in foster care, potentially sterilizing him and greatly reducing, if not eliminating, his sexual function,” said the Southern Poverty Law Center.

According to the Intersex Society of North America, being born with both genitalia is not as rare as we believe; as many as one in 2,000 babies are believed to be born intersex. And now, people are speaking out more openly about the effects of reassignment surgery before a child is able to make their own choice about their identity. Law Street confirms the Crawfords’ beliefs, saying what happened to MC, and many others like him constitutes genital mutilation. Since the 50s, they say, children born intersex were given a gender assignment, as doctors claimed that choosing for the child would allow them to have a certain quality of life they would not have if they remained intersex. For instance, if doctors find that the male phallus is unlikely to “perform” sufficiently in future sexual matters, they will likely make the patient fully female.

But it is precisely this preoccupation on the genitalia’s ability to perform, over the child’s health and wellbeing that many claim is the root of the problem. Whether or not the patient will be able to engage in heterosexual sex, and have “normative” genital appearance is debated as a primary concern for physicians. Meanwhile, some studies are finding that former intersex children become dissatisfied with this decision later in life, and angered by their lack of autonomy in their own identity.

In a 2006 report made to The New York Times, Larry Baskin, chief of pediatric urology at the University of California said that doing nothing for the child, on the other hand, may still be too risky. “There haven’t been any studies that would support doing nothing,” he said. “That would be an experiment: Don’t do anything and see what happens when the kid’s a teenager. That could be good, and that could be also worse than trying some intervention.”

As for MC, his case is slated to be carried out in November, but has left many talking about this formerly unfamiliar issue.

 

[karinothing]

I would sue too. I thought the current standard of care for this was to wait till the child could decide for themselves.

[LoveTrains]

Aug 14, 2015 10:13:07 GMT -5 karinothing said:

I would sue too. I thought the current standard of care for this was to wait till the child could decide for themselves.

Was that the standard ten years ago? The kid is 10 and had the surgery at one year old. 

[karinothing]

Aug 14, 2015 10:15:02 GMT -5 LoveTrains said:

Aug 14, 2015 10:13:07 GMT -5 karinothing said:

I would sue too. I thought the current standard of care for this was to wait till the child could decide for themselves.

Was that the standard ten years ago? The kid is 10 and had the surgery at one year old. 

I learned about it in college in my human sexuality class in 2003 or so? So I think so. But I guess that doesn't mean every hospital followed that. I think most intersection babies were originally made into girls because the surgery is/was easier

[LoveTrains]

Aug 14, 2015 10:17:58 GMT -5 karinothing said:

Aug 14, 2015 10:15:02 GMT -5 LoveTrains said:

Was that the standard ten years ago? The kid is 10 and had the surgery at one year old. 

I learned about it in college in my human sexuality class in 2003 or so? So I think so. But I guess that doesn't mean every hospital followed that. I think most intersection babies were originally made into girls because the surgery is/was easier

 I only ask because it seems to me that there is a lot more knowledge and discussion in the public sphere about intersex and gender identify now than there was ten years ago. I don't know the answer. 

[2curlydogs]

When I read the title I thought this was going to be about fucking hipsters railing about putting a gender on a birth certificate or something.


If there was no medical reason for the surgery, I'd probably sue too.

[AJL]

We need to stop "correcting" intersex children. There is nothing to correct until that child feels there is something to change. I hope these parents win their lawsuit.

[msmerymac]

Noooooo. No, no, no. You can't arbitrarily assign gender to someone! And sex is so often related to gender.

Even though gender correction was controversial 10 years ago, I'm guessing the doctor making the choice was trained 20-30 years ago, or more, so...

[karinothing]

Aug 14, 2015 10:19:50 GMT -5 LoveTrains said:

Aug 14, 2015 10:17:58 GMT -5 karinothing said:

I learned about it in college in my human sexuality class in 2003 or so? So I think so. But I guess that doesn't mean every hospital followed that. I think most intersection babies were originally made into girls because the surgery is/was easier

 I only ask because it seems to me that there is a lot more knowledge and discussion in the public sphere about intersex and gender identify now than there was ten years ago. I don't know the answer. 

Yeah I do not know the answer either. Probably something different in major cities vs not too.

[curbsideprophet]

I don't think letting the child choose was standard ten years ago but it is becoming more common.

Don't read the comments.

[mouse]

Aug 14, 2015 10:24:48 GMT -5 AJL said:

We need to stop "correcting" intersex children. There is nothing to correct until that child feels there is something to change. I hope these parents win their lawsuit.

I seriously thought that had stopped in the 80s. I have horrible sinking feeling this was done to make him more adoptable.

[kershnic]

I'm fairly sure that doing nothing was the standard of care 9 years ago, but it's not exactly unusual for foster kids to not get the standard of care. I hope the parents win their lawsuit, this never should have happened.

Someone I know from high school was born intersex. His dad was in the military and they were stationed in Germany when he was born. His mom had some medical issues after his birth (not sure the details) and the doctors decided to perform surgery to make him female without the parents' consent. He didn't learn about this until he was a teenager and struggling with his gender identity and felt male. He has now transitioned and lives his life as a man. What a terrible injustice in the early 80's, and to think that it continues is so sad.

[marriedfilingjoint]

According to the Intersex Society of North America, being born with both genitalia is not as rare as we believe; as many as one in 2,000 babies are believed to be born intersex.

I've heard the rate is much higher than that, but maybe they are saying in North America only while the stat I heard is worldwide.

We were visiting my grandma and her neighborhood had a 4th of July picnic.  She pointed out another family visiting with small children.  She told me that they had the 2 girls first and so when their third was born intersex, they decided to have the surgery to make him a boy.  This was around 2010.  (I may have the sexes reversed)  I can't imagine being like, "well, we always wanted a boy, so ... :shrugs:"

[karinothing]

Aug 14, 2015 12:04:43 GMT -5 kershnic said:

I'm fairly sure that doing nothing was the standard of care 9 years ago, but it's not exactly unusual for foster kids to not get the standard of care. I hope the parents win their lawsuit, this never should have happened.

Someone I know from high school was born intersex. His dad was in the military and they were stationed in Germany when he was born. His mom had some medical issues after his birth (not sure the details) and the doctors decided to perform surgery to make him female without the parents' consent. He didn't learn about this until he was a teenager and struggling with his gender identity and felt male. He has now transitioned and lives his life as a man. What a terrible injustice in the early 80's, and to think that it continues is so sad.

I heard this is what happened a lot of the time. Horrible

[mcsangel2]

I wonder if I have been misunderstanding intersex since my college genetics class. I think I assumed that intersex persons still had normal chromosome counts, and therefore, the assignments that used to happen in the olden days didn't anymore, because they could just type the child's chromosomes to see which sex they were. I suppose it must be the case that they have both XX and XY chromosomes, or else this kind of thing wouldn't still be happening today (at least in the US). I get that gender isn't ALWAYS tied to sex (hence transgendered persons), but there's like a 99% correlation.

[Deleted]

Aug 14, 2015 13:00:51 GMT -5 mcsangel2 said:

I wonder if I have been misunderstanding intersex since my college genetics class. I think I assumed that intersex persons still had normal chromosome counts, and therefore, the assignments that used to happen in the olden days didn't anymore, because they could just type the child's chromosomes to see which sex they were. I suppose it must be the case that they have both XX and XY chromosomes, or else this kind of thing wouldn't still be happening today (at least in the US). I get that gender isn't ALWAYS tied to sex (hence transgendered persons), but there's like a 99% correlation.

I think your confusion (and mine at first) is with the term intersex. That is a term used to describe any disorder where a person is born with ambiguous genitalia. So it doesn't seem to be a medical diagnosis. There are specific diagnoses that often make a person have ambiguous genitalia, hence the term intersex. So as you said above in regards to chromosomes, that's not always the case. There are some medical diagnoses, for example 17 beta hydroxy dehydrogenase deficiency, that arr purely due to hormones, so the person will have XX chromosomes, yet ambiguous genitalia. So it's not as easy as doing a chromosomal analysis to determine a person's gender.

[litebright]

Aug 14, 2015 13:00:51 GMT -5 mcsangel2 said:

I wonder if I have been misunderstanding intersex since my college genetics class. I think I assumed that intersex persons still had normal chromosome counts, and therefore, the assignments that used to happen in the olden days didn't anymore, because they could just type the child's chromosomes to see which sex they were. I suppose it must be the case that they have both XX and XY chromosomes, or else this kind of thing wouldn't still be happening today (at least in the US). I get that gender isn't ALWAYS tied to sex (hence transgendered persons), but there's like a 99% correlation.

I can tell you that DNA typing was done in the case of my 5YO nephew, who has a rare genetic disorder that results in malformed genitals. BIL and SIL were told their baby was a healthy girl at their 20-week ultrasound, and when he was born, his genitals were basically indeterminate. They had to wait for a DNA test to come back before they knew his sex, and he underwent surgery pretty early on because of issues with his urethra. I don't know to what extent they've done any construction or reconstruction, but they've proceeded based on his XY chromosome as a guide. 

Sometimes you can't wait very long for at least a basic surgery, because deformed genitals can mean that the urinary tract doesn't work and/or malfunctions in such a way to put the child at risk of frequent UTIs, and at the very least you have to make some kind of surgical correction. It's a very tough position to be in, both for the families and I imagine for the surgeons who have to figure out how to create and/or retain internal and external function to the extent that it's even possible. 

PDQ, I may delete. 

[WOT?*]

The part that gets me is Doctors reported MC’s hormone levels were consistent with a male baby at his age.

So WTF to assigning him as a female if testing returns male results?

[nsuhomer]

I'm not sure if it was a standard of care situation, or parental advocacy, but my third cousin (20yo) was born intersex and they did nothing. At around 11 she and her parents made the decision to undergo surgery.