By MAMAMIA TEAM
There’s no such thing as being born with both genitalia.
But the closest thing would be this.
Eight years ago, a baby in the US was born with ambiguous genitalia and both male and female reproductive organs.
The child, who goes by the name M.C in all media reports, was under state care when it when it underwent a procedure to remove the child’s male genitalia on the advice of South Carolina doctors.
M.C was later adopted as a girl by a husband and wife named Mark and Pam Crawford.
The problem is however, M.C. now identifies as a boy. He feels like a boy, acts like a boy, has been accepted by his family as a boy – and refuses to be called a girl.
M.C.’s adoptive parents have now decided to sue the people responsible for his procedure, arguing that South Carolina mutilated their son by having his male sex organs removed.
The surgery took place when M.C. was only 16-months-old, after his biological mother was deemed unfit to make decisions about his wellbeing.
Apparently, decisions such as these are not uncommon.
About 1 in 2000 children born every year, are classified as intersex, and many doctors argue that it is beneficial to ‘assign’ a gender to a child sooner rather than later in development. And so children who are born intersex frequently undergo surgery at a young age to assign them a distinct gender. Male or female. Anything that deviates from this binary, is a problem to be fixed.