{"id":43427,"date":"2013-06-19T15:57:22","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T14:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/justice-for-m-c\/43427\/"},"modified":"2013-06-19T15:57:22","modified_gmt":"2013-06-19T14:57:22","slug":"justice-for-m-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/justice-for-m-c\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice for M.C."},"content":{"rendered":"
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A South Carolina hospital is being sued for irreparable harm caused by surgery on a toddler\u2019s genitals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

M.C. was 16 months old, in the care of South Carolina\u2019s Department of Social Services, when doctors and department officials determined the child had an intersex condition\u2013a difference in anatomy that resists typical definitions of female or male\u2013and took it upon themselves to make M.C. a girl.<\/p>\n

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M.C.\u2019s adoptive parents, Mark Crawford and Pam Crawford, have sued. They assert that South Carolina violated M.C.\u2019s substantive and procedural due process rights by excising M.C.\u2019s healthy genital tissue. The child, now 8, faced surgery about three months before the adoption was final.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThey disfigured him because they could not accept him for who he was\u2013not because he needed any surgery,\u201d said Pam Crawford.<\/p>\n

For indeed M.C. is a male child; that\u2019s because M.C. gets to decide.<\/p>\n

The doctors committed medical malpractice, say M.C.\u2019s parents, who are suing the Greenville Hospital System and the Medical University of South Carolina as well as Social Services.\u00a0Attorney Alesdair H. Ittelson\u00a0said<\/a>:\u00a0\u201cNo one advocated for M.C.\u2019s right to be free from unnecessary medical intervention at a time when the state was entrusted with his safety and well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, the doctors and officials will be called to answer for their decision, and its irreversible impacts on a child\u2019s life.\u00a0\u00a0M.C. v. Medical University of South Carolina<\/i>\u00a0is pending in County of Richland Court of Common Pleas.\u00a0M.C. v. Aaronson<\/i><\/a>\u00a0is pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina. The legal work comes from\u00a0Advocates for Informed Choice<\/a>\u00a0as well as the Southern Poverty Law Center, and pro bono counsel for the law firms of Janet, Jenner & Suggs and Steptoe & Johnson LLP.<\/p>\n

Why Does the Child Have to Be Ordered?<\/b><\/p>\n

Curtis Hinkle, founder of the\u00a0Organisation Intersex International<\/em>\u00a0(OII), calls M.C.\u2019s parents \u201cgreat\u201d in the way they\u2019re standing up for M.C. The goal of OII is\u00a0equality for intersex people, and the end of human-rights violations including non-consensual genital surgeries.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI personally feel that the tragic mutilation of M.C. reveals the violence perpetrated on all of us, to some degree\u2013by the very act of assigning a gender,\u201d says Hinkle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe legal separation of all humans into just two genders is rooted in a desperate need to impose stereotypical identities on all of us. I have met countless people who have been emotionally mutilated as a result of this socially sanctioned act.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Acknowledging that\u00a0people will hold various views,\u00a0Organisation Intersex International<\/em>\u00a0respects an individual\u2019s self-defined identity. Thus,\u00a0OII supports children who make the decision for intervention, once they have a real voice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/i>Yet the group\u2019s ethos considers sexual identifications socially and medically constructed. For OII,\u00a0human being<\/i>\u00a0is\u00a0the fundamental identity of a child. The group asserts that male and female are not absolute terms, and an official binary stigmatizes and marginalizes those who don\u2019t fit.<\/p>\n

Intersex advocates recommend that medically unnecessary genital surgery be postponed until the child is old enough to self-identify with a particular gender\u2013or find satisfaction just being a mix of female and male. For intersex is not a disorder, says Hinkle\u2014who asks, \u201cWhy does the child have to be ordered?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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M.C.\u2019s case highlights the reality that operations on intersex kids\u00a0cause\u00a0<\/i>medical problems\u2013pain, scars, diminished sexual sensation, lengthy dependence on hormones and doctors\u2013accompanied by the struggle to come to terms with irreversible decisions they weren\u2019t allowed to make for themselves. Intersex kids have long been expected to appreciate such decisions, and adults have doubtless believed their decisions advanced the children\u2019s interests. Frequently, though, adults conceal the medical history from the child. OII is working to open communication channels between intersex people and their parents by\u00a0providing an online support system<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0As Hinkle explains, \u201cIt is important not to make parents feel guilty, nor to demonize doctors. We are all part of this system. Working peacefully to create more respect and love for the diversity that nature has given us is more productive.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

What happens in M.C.\u2019s case will help decide whether being intersex is understood as a natural variation in human biological sex, as well as who has the legal right to consent to medically unnecessary procedures. And the case follows this year\u2019s release of a United Nations\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0which expressly names intersex persons as it \u201ccalls upon all States to repeal any law allowing intrusive and irreversible treatments, including forced genital-normalizing surgery\u201d\u2013indicating that people should have social equality without having to agree to be male or female.<\/p>\n

The government and doctors \u201ctold M.C. that he was not acceptable or loveable the way he was born,\u201d said Pam Crawford. But global norms are changing. And in the United States, thanks to M.C.\u2019s case, these surgeries will never again\u00a0be business as usual.<\/p>\n

\u201cM.C. is a charming, enchanting and resilient kid,\u201d Pam Crawford said in a Southern Poverty Law Center press release. \u201cWe will not stop until we get justice for our son.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the online momentum (hashtag: #justice4mc) will challenge\u00a0social assumptions that have long constrained all human beings.<\/p>\n

Lee Hall\u00a0<\/b><\/em>is Legal VP for<\/em>\u00a0<\/i>Friends of Animals,<\/a><\/i>\u00a0a candidate for Vermont Law School\u2019s LL.M. in environmental law (2014); and the author of\u00a0<\/em>On Their Own Terms: Bringing Animal Rights Philosophy Down to Earth<\/a>\u00a0(2010). Lee presented work at the nexus of intersex and animal-rights activism at the<\/em>\u00a0<\/i>University of North Carolina Asheville Spring 2013 Queering Spaces \u2014 Queering Borders Conference.<\/i><\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: Counterpunch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A South Carolina hospital is being sued for irreparable harm caused by surgery on a toddler\u2019s genitals. M.C. was 16 months old, in the care of South Carolina\u2019s Department of Social Services, when doctors and department officials determined the child had an intersex condition\u2013a difference in anatomy that resists typical definitions of female or male\u2013and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-43427","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}