Intersex children: Who are we really treating?

Abstract

Surgery to align an infant child’s genitals to a medically assigned sex is controversial because it is irreversible and therefore may potentially be detrimental to the child as they develop into a gender identity. I argue that the significant issue for genital-normalizing surgery is decision-making and that English law does not promote or protect the best interests of the intersex child or the inherent human rights that are protected by both domestic and international law. Using a doctrinal and socio-legal methodology along with a close analysis of bioethical arguments, I argue that the interpretation of the best interests of infant intersex children is manipulated to support the lack of social, legal and medical acceptance of intersex as an ‘abnormality’ that must be corrected, in order to conform to the accepted normality of binary male and female sex. In acknowledgment of this legal and professional standards deficit, I will propose a shared-decision-making approach to support the welfare of the child, which, at its core, places the child as the primary decision maker.