A South Carolina couple has filed a groundbreaking lawsuit against their home state over a gender reassignment operation performed on their adopted son when he was just a year old.
WYFF 4 reports that the child, who is now 8 years old and identified by the network only as "M.C.," received the surgery after being born with both male and female reproductive organs and identified as intersex. Doctors removed M.C.'s male genitals in April 2006 and he was raised as a girl by his adoptive parents Mark and Pam Crawford, but he now identifies as a boy.
"We don't think that [the doctors who performed the surgery] are evil people," Mark Crawford, who adopted M.C. a few months after the surgery, noted. The Crawfords' lawsuit alleges that the decision to turn M.C. into a girl never went before a judge, nor did the doctors involved ever go before an ethical consultation.
"It's not like he turned into a boy -- he's the same exact child as he has always been," Pam noted.
"We just think that what they did was ill-considered," Mark added. "It was careless."
M.C.'s case is particularly unique because it involves a child in foster care, whereas similar gender-altering surgeries have been under the jurisdiction of parents of intersex children, the report pointed out. Both the hospitals and the doctors named in the lawsuit filed a motion to dismiss the case, which has since been denied.
Meanwhile, the Crawfords say that regardless of the court's decision, they hope the case will serve as a wake-up call to those in charge of children in state care, according to SheKnows.
CORRECTION: The original version of this article identified the Crawford family as being from North Carolina. They are actually from South Carolina.