Greece Bans ‘Sex-Normalizing’ Surgery on Intersex Babies

The Hellenic Parliament, the parliament of Greece, recently passed a law that effectively bans the proceeding of “sex-normalizing” surgery on intersex infants.

Intersex children are born with chromosomal, gonadal, hormonal, or genital features, causing their bodies to physically take on some combination of stereotypically male or female biological features. Namely, in the case that a child is born with variations in genitalia, doctors will commission a surgery to “correct” the child’s anatomic variation to match that of endosex children.

These non-consensual surgical procedures operate under the assumption that intersex anatomy is something that needs to be fixed rather than a natural biological variance. They have also been known to cause trauma to people later in life, who may grow up and feel dysphoria over whatever genitals the doctor decided they “should” have at birth.

The law forbidding this procedure does not stop at infancy; in fact, the newly installed policy forbids this surgery for children up to 15 years of age, noting that a child can consent to the procedure once are older than 15. As reported by NBC, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expresses his full support for the law, saying that he “was truly saddened by the mistakes of the past that led to dramatic situations because we were lacking the knowledge and courage,” ensuring the people of Greece that he will continue to advocate for the rights for all citizens throughout his term and after the upcoming election year.

Advocates for the total ban of corrective surgeries during infancy state that the procedure can lead to a lifetime of trauma and dysphoria, and that the surgery itself is largely unnecessary as well as abusive.

Rinio Simeonidou, the mother of an intersex teenager and secretary general of Intersex Greece, tells parliament that the bill’s approval would be “a truly historic moment for all intersex children in Greece,” hopefully kickstarting the global elimination of repeat violations of intersex people’s rights.

Greece’s passage of this law allots 15 years in prison for any surgeon who is found to have conducted the surgery, following suit with laws preexisting in Malta, Germany, and Portugal. Greece has also banned conversion therapy for LGBTQ youth, taking a strong and hopeful step forward toward equality and acceptance worldwide.