4. Intersex Rights: Ethical issues to do with sex assignment and surgery II

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  • Created by: Alasdair
  • Created on: 09-12-17 15:30
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  • 4. Intersex Rights: Ethical issues to do with sex assignment and surgery II
    • Problems with Surgery
      • There is a lack of evidence about the long-term benefits of early surgery
      • Surgery may be in contrast to how people grow up to identify
      • One rationale often given for automatically performing normalising genital surgery is that it relieves parental distress
        • Activists argue this is inappropriate because it is not focused on the welfare of the patient
    • Treatment decisions
      • Increasingly, decisions are made through discussion between parents and clinicians (pediatric endocrinologists, pediatric surgeons)
      • This places major responsibility on the parents
      • Some parents push heavily for normalising surgery against advice of clinicians
      • Some parents are guided by a preference for one sex or the other
    • In favour of parental wishes
      • We often trust parents to make best decisions about their child's welfare
      • Challenging received social understandings of gender can be difficult
      • Having surgery might be best for a child's welfare in certain circumstances
        • Parents might be in the best position to judge this
    • Quote from Caplan-Bricker (2017)
      • 'Despite the pain, Lauren said she thinks her parents made the right decisions on her behalf. s a kid, she felt normal...
        • 'She changed in front of the other girls before gym class. 'I didn't think, 'Do I have to sit to pee or stand?' I didn't go, 'Do I have this or that?' I wasn't confused,' she told me.
          • 'Gender is one of our most defining categories, and Lauren seems to draw comfort from the ways the surgery helped her fit inside the lines'.

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