About 25 activists observed Intersex Awareness Day Oct. 26 with a protest on Chicago Transit Authority trains, calling attention to a local hospital's performing of what they say are medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex youngsters.
Many in the intersex community and their allies have been critical of reconstructive surgeries performed by Lurie Children's Hospital; they maintain that most of the patients are too young to give informed consent and unknowingly face serious long-term physical, psychological and medical consequences.
Before departing the Belmont "L" station with their colleagues the afternoon of Oct. 26, Pidgeon Pagonis, who is intersex and received such surgeries, said,"No one deserves a forced sex change, and that is especially true for young and vulnerable intersex children who are patients at Lurie."
