By: Mekenzie Enloe
Society insists that when a baby is born it is either
male or female with no in-between. The
reality is that some children are not born this way. Some babies are born “intersexed.” Intersex or hermaphroditega is “a general
term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a
reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definition
of female or male.”[1] When parents are put in this situation they
must ask themselves whether they want to let their youngster stay “intersexed”
until it is certain which gender is correct or whether they want to pre-select
a gender and hope they are right.
There are many types of intersex, but the one I want to
focus on is partial androgen insensitivity syndrome. This occurs when the sex is unclear, meaning
that either the clitoris is too large to be labeled as female genitalia or the
penis is too small to be labeled as male genitalia. Many parents choose to have a corrective surgery
when their baby is born, but this brings up ethical issues.[2] In my opinion, it is better to wait until the
kid hits puberty and is able to become the person that he or she wants to
be. By doing is this way the parent does
not have to risk choosing the wrong children and their child having issues of
self-identification.
Try to
imagine yourself as a parent having a new child and ask yourself what you would
do if the sex was not clear. The Burdett
family, rather than having to imagine what they should do, had to physically
endure this situation. The mother of
this family was giving birth to her third child and when the baby came out she
expected the doctor to say, “Congratulations, it is a girl (or boy)!” What she heard instead would forever change her
life. The doctor told her that her baby
had partial androgen insensitivity syndrome and that the family needed to
decide what measures they wanted to take.
Being that the baby was born with 46 XY chromosomes the mother asked if
it would make sense to pre-assign the baby as a male and the only response Dr.
Leclerc could give was that “PAIS was complicated by many factor beyond DNA and
hormones.”[3] While this document did not give the decision
of the parents, I can sympathize with the conflict these parents had to endure.
Why as a
society do we make this saddening story even more of a disaster? The idea that a child must fall at one end or
the other of the gender binary makes everyone feel like if they do not fit the
categories that something is wrong with them.
These intersex children cannot change their DNA or take the problem
away. People need to do more to make
these children feel normal and parents need to allow their children to make the
decision on their own.
[1] Moore, Crystal University of North Carolina
at Charlotte , Charlotte , NC
[2] Intersex Society of North America ,
"Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (PAIS)." Last modified 2008.
Accessed January 31, 2014. http://www.isna.org/faq/conditions/pais.
[3]American Medical
Association, "Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome." Last modified
November 2005. Accessed January 31, 2014.
http://virtualmentor.ama-assn.org/2005/11/ccas3-0511.html.
No comments:
Post a Comment