A new bill in California would prevent doctors from performing genital-altering surgery on intersex babies.
Senate Bill 201, proposed by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, would allow surgery only if deemed “medically necessary.”
In the bill, intersex is defined as “an individual born with sex characteristics, including genitals, gonads, and chromosome patterns, that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.”
Currently, parents can give consent for surgery.
Critics of the bill say that surgery later in life can cause complications and trauma and that each case should be looked at on its own, while advocates say the choice to have surgery should be made by the child themselves and that surgery without the child’s consent can cause trauma in itself, the Sacramento Bee reported.
The bill would prohibit surgery without the written consent of the intersex child.
“Intersex people are a part of the fabric of our state’s diversity to be celebrated, rather than an aberration to be corrected,” the bill says.
They should be “free to choose whether to undergo life-altering surgeries.”