The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women called for submissions of information on issues affecting queer, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people during reproductive health care and childbirth.
Special Rapporteur Dubravka Simonovic has declared mistreatment against women during reproductive health care and childbirth the topic of her next report, to be presented in front of the UN General Assembly in September 2019. interACT staff submitted information on the treatment of parents who give birth to intersex children for consideration.
View the full submission to the UN on Intersex and Violence Against Women here (PDF).
interACT’s submission focuses on calling out the treatment of intersex children by pediatric urology:
[The Societies for Pediatric Urology] recognized that non-consensual and unnecessary interventions on intersex children have been classified as torture but nevertheless failed to call for a ban on such surgeries, instead stating that more information must be gathered and that surgery could be justified “to restore more normal visible anatomy, and avoid ambiguity which is often the parents’ wish.”
Doctors at a major U.S. conference presented information from one registry in the U.S. regarding surgery on children with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), one of the more common intersex conditions. They noted “544 patients underwent feminizing genitoplasty between 2004-2014,” with a median age at initial surgery of just 9.9 months. This conference included discussions of how to ensure these surgeries continue to be cost- effective/profitable for health care institutions. One study on intersex babies documented that 25 of 26 participants had undergone genital surgeries.
