South Carolina Adoptive Parents Allege "Sex-Reassignment" Surgery Of Baby Born With Male and Female Genitalia Violated Constitutional Rights And Was Medically Negligent.
The adoptive parents of a baby born with both male and female genitalia claim the state of South Carolina violated their child’s constitutional rights by subjecting the child to sex-reassignment surgery.
The child, identified as “M.C.,” was 16 months old when surgeons removed the toddler’s male genitals before the adoption, report the Raw Story, U.S. News & World Report, the New York Times and the Southern Poverty Law Center website. The child is now 8 years old and identifies as a boy.
DUE PROCESS LAWSUIT
The complaint (PDF) filed in federal court in Charleston claims the surgery violated the M.C.’s 14th Amendment due process rights to “bodily integrity, procreation, privacy, and liberty.”
“Defendants usurped these intimate and profound decisions from M.C. when he was barely older than an infant, knowing that surgically misassigning M.C.’s sex would lead to disastrous results,” the suit says. “Unfortunately, medical technology has not devised a way to replace what M.C. has lost.” The current standard of care is to raise an intersex child as either a boy or a girl, without surgery, until a gender identity emerges, according to the suit.
[see, M.C., by and through his parents Pamela Crawford and John Crawford v. Aaronson, Amrehein, Yawappiagyei-Dankah, et al., U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina-Charleston Division, Civil Action No. 2:13-cv-01303-DCN; www.abajournal.com/news/articles/May 15, 2013/"Sex-Reassignment Surgery of Infant in State's Care Violated Due Process, Adoptive Parents Allege"; www.nytimes.com/2013-05-15/US/ "South Carolina: Sex Surgery Unnecessary, Lawsuit Alleges"; www.usnews.com/news/newsgram/articles/2013-05-14/ "Parents of Intersex Child Sue Over 'Unnecessary' Surgery"; www.splcenter.org/get-informed/case-docket/05-14-2013/ "M.C.V. Aaronson"]
Medical Malpractice (Med Mal) Lawsuit
In addition to the 14th Amendment due process rights lawsuit filed in this matter, supra, plaintiff M.C. and his adoptive parents have also filed a medical malpractice case against the Medical University of South Carolina, the South Carolina Department of Social Services, and the Greenville Hospital System, saying:
"This lawsuit challenges the decision by doctors to perform an irreversible, painful, and medically unnecessary sex assignment surgery on a sixteen-month-old child in state custody, and the failure of the South Carolina Department of Social Services to protect him from this surgery. Doctors, acting as agents and servants of Defendant hospitals, performed this surgery for the purpose of 'assigning' the child the female gender despite their own conclusion that he 'was a true hermaphrodite but that there was no compelling reason that she should either be male or female."
[see, Pamela and John Mark Crawford, as Parents of M.C., a minor, vs. Medical University of South Carolina, et al., Court of Common Pleas, County of Richland, South Carolina, Civil Case No. 2013CP 4002877 (May 14, 2013)]
Attorney Charles Jerome Ware is renowned and consistently ranked among the best attorneys and legal counsellors in the United States. [GQ Magazine, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Columbia Flier, USA TODAY, The Howard County Sun, The Anniston Star, The New York Times, et al.]
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