4. Intersex Rights: Ethical issues to do with sex assignment and surgery II
- 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'.
- '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.
- 'Despite the pain, Lauren said she thinks her parents made the right decisions on her behalf. s a kid, she felt normal...
- Problems with Surgery
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