Protest: Chicago Intersex Activists Demand Lurie Children's Hospital End Medically Unnecessary Surgery

WHEN

Intersex Awareness Day Thursday, October 26th at 12:00 pm CST.

WHERE

Lurie Children’s Hospital, 225 E. Chicago Ave (live stream will be at fb.com/pidgeon)

WHO

Intersex activists Pidgeon Pagonis and Sean Saifa Wall of Intersex People of Color for Justice ( IPOC), with support from members of For the People Artist's Collective, Chicago Black Trans & Gender Non-Conforming Collective and Chicago Dyke March Collective.

WHAT

Protest for intersex human rights demanding Lurie Children’s Hospital change policy to become the first hospital in the United States to end unnecessary intersex surgery. [RSVP to to the FB Event!]   #LurieEndSurgery.

WHY

Intersex children should be allowed to determine if they want surgery when they are adults. 

CHICAGO 10/26: Chicago Intersex activist and filmmaker Pidgeon Pagonis, a national leader in the fight for intersex rights, is a survivor of numerous medical procedures described as “corrective” measures, performed at Children’s Memorial Hospital (now Lurie) during their childhood.

“When I was a child, doctors at Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital chose my sex and performed multiple surgeries to make my intersex body conform to their choice,” says Pagonis. “We are uniting in protest at Lurie, demanding they change policy to become the first hospital in the US to ban unnecessary intersex surgery.”

Chicago’s largest LGBT center, Center on Halsted, has endorsed a moratorium on medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex kids. Human Rights Watch, United Nations experts, the World Health Organization, Amnesty International, every major LGBT legal organization in the US, three former US surgeons general, American Medical Association Board of Trustees, the AIS-DSD support group for intersex people and their families, and intersex-led organizations around the world have called for an end to medically unnecessary non-consensual surgeries on intersex kids.

 Lurie Children’s continues to advertise medically unecessary intersex surgeries on their website. We’re demanding the SDP become a leader in the nation by instituting an immediate ban on all medically unnecessary genital and gonadal surgeries on intersex children.

What is Intersex? Even though there are about as many intersex people as there are people with red hair, the term is not well understood. According to the Free & Equal Intersex Fact Sheet: Intersex is an umbrella term describing the 1.7 percent of babies who are born with chromosomes, gonads or the internal or external sex traits that differ from societal expectations. While the vast majority of these children are born perfectly healthy, they are often still subjected to unnecessary and irreversible surgeries to force their genitals to conform to societal aesthetic “norm,” risking future fertility, scarring, incontinence, loss of sensation and psychological trauma, and a lifetime on synthetic hormones.