American Academy of Pediatrics Position on Intersexuality
News Release: American Academy of Pediatrics Position on Intersexuality
The American Academy of Pediatrics, a voice for children for over 60 years, is aware of the concerns and sensitive to the needs of intersexuals.
- Intersexuals are individuals who are born with anatomical characteristics of both males and females.
- The Academy is deeply concerned about the emotional, cognitive, and body image development of intersexuals, and believes that successful early genital surgery minimizes these issues.
- Research on children with ambiguous genitalia has shown that a person’s sexual body image is largely a function of socialization, and children whose genetic sexes are not clearly reflected in external genitalia can be raised successfully as members of either sexes if the process begins before 2 1/2 years.
- Management and understanding of intersex conditions has significantly improved, particularly over the last several decades.
- From the viewpoint of emotional development, 6 weeks to 15 months seems the optimal period for genital surgery.
The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 51,000 pediatricians dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children and young adults.
This press release is referenced in testimony by Morgan Holmes on the public protest outside the AAP convention.