By Caroline Lowry
Each year, hundreds of individuals are born intersex, meaning they have genitalia that do not meet the criteria for being exclusively male or female. For decades, doctors have performed corrective genital surgeries on intersex infants in an attempt to make it easier for them to grow up as “normal” boys and girls. In recent years, however, there is a growing consensus that cosmetic genital correctional surgeries are both unnecessary and often harmful to the long-term wellbeing of intersex individuals. Given increasing recognition of negative outcomes over the past decade, critics and activists have called for a moratorium on corrective genital surgeries performed on infants. In 2017, an intersex youth named M. Crawford obtained the first legal settlement ever in the United States challenging infant correctional surgeries under the doctrine of informed consent.
This Note explores the implications of this the landmark legal settlement on efforts to combat nonconsensual genital correction surgery performed on intersex children. In particular, this Note explores the strengths and weaknesses of pursuing litigation based on the informed consent claims raised in M.C.’s lawsuit. This Note also offers alternative methods to combat the practice of performing intersex correctional surgeries.