Respect the rights of intersex children

I want to thank columnist Kimberly

Mascott Zieselman for writing “I was an intersex child who had surgery. Don’t put other kids through this.” Her column woke people up to reality.

Although I myself am not intersex, I am interested in human rights issues, and I think forcing cosmetic surgery on children and babies is one. It seems that surgery on intersex children is not even really necessary. A person should have the right to decide what happens to his or her body. Unfortunately, intersex children often don’t. I think it’s also important for people to realize the difference between surgery for medical purposes and one that is purely cosmetic. Doctors and parents choosing the gender of an intersex baby is unnecessary. Doctors performing surgery on that intersex child without the child’s consent is, in my opinion, completely cosmetic.

A surgery like that is not done for the health of the child. It’s done to “normalize” the child for the sake of the parents and the doctors.

Children who are intersex can live perfectly healthy lives without undergoing the complications that surgery can bring. These include scarring, infertility, loss of sexual sensation, physical and emotional pain, and psychological damage. Cosmetic surgery that would simply make their bodies more acceptable is not worth any of those risks.

In addition, it may be possible that the intersex child becomes an adult who elects never to have surgery. The child may also grow up and not identify with the gender that doctors and parents have chosen. I can only imagine what it must feel like for someone born intersex to find out as an adult that a doctor made such a critical and life-altering decision about his or her body without consent. Yasmine Juarez Cicero, Ill.