The NGO Human Right Watch (HRW) has warned on Wednesday of the «avalanche» of legislative proposals carried out in the United States against transgender people in recent years, a fact that would be undermining «fundamental rights» of intersex children.
According to the organization, the bills passed in many U.S. states allow or encourage human rights violations against children born with intersex variations, since surgeons would be operating on intersex bodies from birth before the patients themselves can be conscious enough to give their consent.
«State legislation in the United States that targets trans youth is also harming intersex youth,» InterACT Executive Director Erika Lorshbough has signed, noting that of the total of dozens of proposed bills with intersex exceptions, three have already become state law.
«When lawmakers propose and pass explicit exceptions for surgeons to operate on intersex bodies before patients themselves can consent, it makes clear that these bills are about erasing bodily diversity, not protecting anyone,» Lorshbough added.
HRW has detailed that 1.7 percent of the population is born with inborn body traits that do not conform to conventional expectations of male or female bodies, also known as «variations in sex characteristics.»
Children with intersex variations often undergo «normalization» surgeries that are irreversible, risky and medically unnecessary, the NGO has said.
«These surgeries are performed without the patient’s consent and are most often performed in infancy or early childhood. The surgeries include procedures to reduce the size of the clitoris, create or enlarge a vaginal opening, reroute a functional urethra, or remove the gonads,» the organization said in a statement.
«These surgeries are justified by decision-makers on the basis that they will reduce stigma and prevent gender dysphoria, but they often have the opposite effects and also carry risks of scarring, loss of sensation, lifelong sexual dysfunction, urinary incontinence, psychological trauma, and permanent sterilization,» it added.
These surgeries have been considered human rights violations by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the World Health Organization and other authorities, but there have been only modest efforts in the United States to regulate these operations.
Also, recently proposed legislative measures have been aimed primarily at transgender youth, and often include provisions that expressly permit and sometimes encourage «medically unnecessary» surgeries on intersex youth, according to HRW.
«Combining the unconscionable assault on transgender children’s access to health care with provisions that allow medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex children are just two human rights violations for the price of one,» said HRW LGBT health researcher Kyle Knight.
«Transgender and intersex children are harmed when politicians use children’s bodies to advocate for regressive ideas about gender and sexuality instead of protecting everyone’s fundamental rights to bodily autonomy,» she added.
