ABC 7.30: intersex woman seeks answers about irreversible surgery when she was a baby
Huge congratulations to InterAction board member Stephanie Saal and family for this intimate and thoughtful segment on ABC 7.30!
No-one should undergo unnecessary and poorly-evidenced medical interventions with lifelong impacts, and no-one should have to battle for access to medical records!
"I feel like there is a second version of me in another universe that got to explore [having children].
We all deserve the autonomy to make our own decisions in our own time, with the best information and support for us and our families.
Reading between the lines on the clinical responses
Risks of gonadal cancers are clearly supported by high quality evidence for some innate variations of sex characteristics. However, they are not supported by evidence for many variations (Ho et al 2025, Jones et al 2026).
The ongoing practice of early intervention itself limits the evidence available to understand actual risk levels (Ho et al 2025, Jones et al 2026).
Queensland clinicians in 2019 reported that gonadectomies are still routine in children with innate variations of sex characteristics presenting to a paediatric and adolescent gynaecology clinic, including for traits like complete androgen insensitivity syndrome where the risks are now known to be low (Adikari et al 2019, Weidler et al 2019).
The hospital statement that "Surgical intervention in infants and young children is only undertaken when it is medically necessary and cannot safely be delayed" has a long history but, sadly, there is also a long history of evidence of deferrable and non-urgent interventions continuing despite these assertions (Adikari et al 2019, Australian Human Rights Commission 2021, Carpenter 2024, Equality Australia 2025).
Experiences in Australia of unnecessary medical interventions for poorly-evidenced cancer risk give serious cause for concern (Ussher et al 2024).
What can you do?
Write to your local Health Minister
In the ACT you can ask for masculinising surgeries to be protected by legislation. In Victoria you can call for improvements to psychosocial support. In all other jurisdictions you can ask for legal protections from harm in medical settings.
Join our mailing list to get regular emails about what you can do.
Further reading
Adikari, T., B. O’Brien, T. Bagchi, and RMN Kimble. 2019. ‘Presentations and Outcomes of Patients with Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD) in a Tertiary Paediatric and Adolescent Gynaecology (PAG) Service’. RANZCOG Annual Scientific Meeting 2019, Melbourne. https://ranzcogasm.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/243.pdf.
Australian Human Rights Commission. 2021. Ensuring Health and Bodily Integrity: Towards a Human Rights Approach for People Born with Variations in Sex Characteristics Summary Report. Australian Human Rights Commission. https://humanrights.gov.au/intersex-report-2021.
Carpenter, Morgan. 2024. ‘Fixing Bodies and Shaping Narratives: Epistemic Injustice and the Responses of Medicine and Bioethics to Intersex Human Rights Demands’. Clinical Ethics 19 (1): 3–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/14777509231180412.
Equality Australia. 2025. The Missing Voice: A Thematic Analysis and Stories of Ongoing Medical Interventions on Intersex Children in Australia. https://equalityaustralia.org.au/take-action/campaigns/intersex-human-rights/.
Ho, Cindy, Brian D. Earp, Cynthia Kraus, Morgan Carpenter, and Dominic JC Wilkinson. 2025. ‘Malignancy Risk in Turner Syndrome+Y, Early Gonadectomy, and the Ethics of Parental Choices’. Pediatrics, July 8, e2024067171. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2024-067171.
Jones, Nat C., Avanish Madhavaram, Mary Katherine Haver, and Gwendolyn P. Quinn. 2026. ‘Testicular Cancer in Intersex Individuals: A Systematic Review for Clinical Practice’. International Journal of Cancer. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijc.70302.
Ussher, Jane M., Morgan Carpenter, Rosalie Power, et al. 2024. ‘“I’ve Had Constant Fears That I’ll Get Cancer”: The Construction and Experience of Medical Intervention on Intersex Bodies to Reduce Cancer Risk’. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being 19 (1): 2356924. https://doi.org/10.1080/17482631.2024.2356924.
Weidler, Erica M., Maria E. Linnaus, Arlene B. Baratz, et al. 2019. ‘A Management Protocol for Gonad Preservation in Patients with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome’. Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology 32 (6): 605–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpag.2019.06.005.