The ACT Government has released an Australia-first draft bill to end defferable medical or surgical interventions on intersex children until they are old enough to consent.
If passed the bill would ban treatments — that are not required to prevent disease or illness — that permanently affect sex characteristics in babies and children who are born intersex. The term for people with chromosomes, reproductive organs or hormones that differ from female or male medical norms.
Unfortunately, these procedures are pretty common and are usually done to make babies develop in a more typically male or female way as decided by the parents.
But intersex and medical experts who have been advocating for the legislation for years said the procedures can safely be deferred until the child is old enough to decide how they identify.
Intersex Human Rights Australia executive director Morgan Carpenter said in a statement this draft was a “historic moment”.
“For more than twenty years, the intersex movement in Australia has sought legal reforms to protect people with innate variations of sex characteristics in medical settings,” Carpenter said.
“The persistence of so-called ‘normalising’ interventions, intending to make the bodies of children with intersex variations fit gender stereotypes, has been our most intractable issue.”
He said the legislation aimed to ensure all intersex people can make their own decisions about their own bodies.
To the maximum extent possible, everyone should be able to make decisions about what happens to our own bodies. Congratulations to the ACT gov, now consulting on draft legislation to protect the rights of people with intersex variations in medical settingshttps://t.co/Z59OlQHNHP
— Morgan Carpenter (@morgancarpenter) May 26, 2022
Senior project officer at IHRA and Canberra resident Cody Smith also said they felt an “overwhelming sense of relief”.
“As an odd kid that grew up in Canberra with unexplained surgical scars and a few too many doctor’s visits, it’s difficult to find the words that capture all the things I feel on a day like today.
“There’s a deep sense of pride and joy at being part of the process that produced this groundbreaking work … [and] a very tangible grief for the children that couldn’t be protected sooner and for the activists we’ve lost along the way.”
This is huge and very late and will hopefully pave the way for more states.
