GLMA Calls for End to Nonconsensual Surgeries on Intersex Minors!

Earlier this week, GLMA, the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, adopted a new resolution on the medical treatment of intersex kids, titled, “Medical and Surgical Intervention of Patients with Differences in Sex Development.”

screen-shot-2016-11-04-at-11-26-07-am

As GLMA states on their website: In what is believed to be a first for a US-based health professional association, GLMA recently revised its position statement on care for children with differences of sex development (DSD) to call for delay in any medically unnecessary surgical intervention until the patient can provide consent/assent to the treatment. The revised policy statement is being released to coincide with activities related to the 20th anniversary of Intersex Awareness Day.

GLMA was also among a host of organizations, including the Intersex Campaign for Equality, that signed a joint resolution this past Intersex Awareness Day, October 26th. The resolution  reaffirmed the following three demands of the Third International Intersex Forum, in Malta, co-organized by ICE founder and director Hida Viloria:

1)      All intersex people have the right to make their own decisions affecting their bodily integrity, physical autonomy, and self-determination.  

2)      Medically unnecessary treatment, surgeries, and sterilizations of intersex people should not occur without said intersex person’s full informed consent.

3)      Intersex people and the families of children born with intersex traits should have access to non-pathologizing psychosocial and peer support.

We thank and commend GLMA for supporting intersex activists and people everywhere in our quest for self-determination and bodily integrity, and for being the first medical association in the United States to do so!