Historic Report on Intersex Health Scrubbed from National Health Website

A few weeks back, the Department of Health and Human Services released a groundbreaking report on the health—both psychological and physical—of intersex individuals in the United States. Now it is no longer publicly available.

The report was titled “Advancing Health Equity for Intersex Individuals,” issued by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, and was published under the Biden Administration. Within the report, multiple revolutionary points bubbled to the surface that would aid healthcare providers in understanding this unique group of individuals, allowing them to provide more comprehensive and effective care. Some key points from the report are as follows:

• Early surgeries can produce more than physical harm; they can also produce body dysmorphia and medical mistrust.
• These surgeries rarely take into consideration the health of the intersex individual, performed rather with the goal of conforming to a single sex.
• Self-acceptance and affirmation is critical among intersex individuals for mental health, especially from guardian figures.

A more comprehensive analysis of the report itself and several quotes from it can be found at LGBTQ Nation, who got eyes on the report before its disappearance from the Department of Health and Human Service’s Website. Perhaps even more fortunately, it would appear that one of the statistical links in their article accesses the report itself.

Intersexuality is a natural part of human genetic diversity. Approximately 1.7% of the human population is born intersex, with 40 different known variations. The vast majority of cases bear no danger to the long term health of the individual. However, history has not been kind.  Stigma abounds and pushes intersex individuals and their parents towards procedures that can irreparably damage their bodies at young ages.

Greece’s Hellenic Parliament ruled back in 2022 that no surgeries are to be performed on intersex children until the age of 15, at which point the child themselves may consent to surgery. This aligns with the age of consent in many countries for sexual activity. In the U.S., this ranges from 16 to 18 depending on state. This is the age around which most teenagers begin to question their identity and sexuality, and thus serves as an excellent reference point for when they can start to make these sorts of informed decisions about their bodies.

The bottom line that we can understand from the report?

Children cannot consent to bodily modifications, should not have their bodies forcefully altered before they can understand the repercussions unless it is a matter of life and death, and that visibility and understanding are critical to how these individuals operate in our society. Unfortunately, it would appear that the current political climate does not agree with these facts of life.

Censorship will never fail to be concerning. We’re simply lucky enough this time that we found the back door.