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There is a vacuum of reliable data tracking the number of surgeries performed on intersex children. The few figures that exist reinforce the doctors and medical literature that describe the surgeries as continuing.

A government database, the Kids’ Inpatient Database (KID), suggests that in 2006 there were 139 clitoral reduction surgeries—the same operation that reduced M’s penis. This was a drop from 1997 when there were 204 procedures, but the estimated number then rose to 156 in 2009. KID data is compiled from estimated averages from a sample of more than 2,500 children’s hospitals but for rare conditions like DSD, the margin of error is high.

Dr. Arlene Baratz, a medical adviser and board member of the Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome-Disorders of Sex Development (AIS-DSD) Support Group, one of the country’s largest organizations for families of intersex children, said she was concerned that the medical recommendations parents received seemed inconsistent.

“Each doctor is saying something different in cases that we would view as pretty similar,” she said. “At some hospitals there’s a lot of pressure. Others are more flexible and encourage parents to take more time making decisions on irreversible procedures.”

Aliya, a mother of 10-year-old twins in Florida described the challenge of being caught in the crossfire of medical opinion.

“I can see how people can be swayed,” she said. “They led me to question myself because of how adamant they were.”

When Aliya’s children were born, her son weighed only one and a half pounds and had a very small penis. His urethral opening was near his perineum, not the tip of his phallus.

Multiple doctors told Aliya that she should do surgery immediately. The first time was in the hot, bustling, intensive care unit at the University of Florida where she was uncertain whether or not her son would live. A doctor Aliya didn’t know recommended that she raise her son as a girl. Then, after the baby's condition had stabilized, a surgeon told Aliya that she should allow him to operate to make her son's penis appear more normal, "if you want your child to be a real man.”

By that stage, Aliya had researched some of the risks of the surgery—urethral tissue that is unable to withstand urine and becomes damaged; nerve impairment; scar tissue; loss of sensation. The surgeon acknowledged these complications when Aliya raised them, but she says he didn’t want to discuss them. Fearing her son “might come out of surgery worse off than he went in,” she walked away.

When he was seven, she told him about the operation. “I like my penis just the way it is,” he said, and hasn’t brought it up since.

Amber, a mother based in Arkansas, described herself as "furious" that she allowed her daughter's internal gonad to be removed during an exploratory procedure. While Amber's eight-week-old baby was on the operating table, the doctor said that what he found might cause cancer, and he needed Amber to sign off on removing it.