Congratulations you have a boy, oh wait!.....

another excellent article from the NY Times this past weekend:

What if It’s (Sort of) a Boy and (Sort of) a Girl?
By ELIZABETH WEIL

I have a doctor friend who once was called in an emergency to do a test on a newborn baby due to "ambiguous genitalia". This condition is not common but is well known in a small group of medical specialties. If you want to see what this looks like and read more about the medical background go to this picture and this article. This friend of mine, who at the time was not in the specialties, had little familiarity with this condition and was therefore quite surprised getting called in the middle of the night to rush in to do a test for such a thing. He was told that they needed to know the sex of the baby right away or otherwise it would create a lot of psychological stress and anxiety on the baby (while growing up). He posed a question, somewhat inappropriately but understandably, if this was a stress on the parents or the baby? (a dismissive and irresponsible response would have been: why dont you just name the kid "Pat" and went back to sleep!)

This is an interesting condition that raises a lot of questions about human sexuality requiring discussions in medical, ethical, religious and social aspects. For decades, doctors have performed gender (re)assignment surgery by hacking off infants' and young children's' small penises and large clitorises, and created all kinds of "reconstructive" surgery like vaginoplasty (making a vagina out of a piece of bowel.) Needless to say these procedures are not perfect and the patients become adults with severe sexual dysfunction and self image issues. I tend to side with the Intersex Society opinion of opposing surgery without the patients consent. But this also raises a question about circumcision and other procedures done during childhood, as discussed in the NY Times article. (cleft lip repair is easy--I think it should be done--by a good surgeon, of course.) Sadly many unfortunate parents (and doctors too) are left with little information on how to deal with these issues. So kudos to Cheryl Chase who pioneered the Intersex Society.