Zurich parliamentary action on intersex
“Children turned into girls in the Operating Theatre:
Zurich Cantonal Government has to take position” – Zurich Tages-Anzeiger, 26 October 2009
On Intersex Awareness Day 2009, Zwischengeschlecht.org / StopIGM.org called on the Zurich Cantonal Government in Switzerland to inquire about current practices at the Zurich University Children’s Hospital, and to state their position on the non-consensual “cosmetic genital surgeries” on intersex children there.
A further result of this initial protest targetting the clinic and subsequent talks with doctors was a ground-breaking exploratory study leading to the now-famous and much referenced publication of “Shaping parents (2013)“, illustrating how directive counselling leads to parents ‘consenting’ to mutilating treatments on their intersex children which they later often regret.