Germany has become the first European country to pass a law which allows parents to choose a third option on a baby’s birth certificate, designating them as “indeterminate sex.”
The law was passed on Friday, in an effort to acknowledge children who are born intersexed or with both female and male genitalia. There has been concern among intersex advocates, who lobbied for the law, that parents of intersexed children were forced to make an emotional decision to surgically dedicate a subjective gender on the child before getting to know them and getting consent from the child.
However, the law does not address several issues that may arise years down the road such as which lavatory an intersex designee is supposed to use or whether an intersexed individual would be required to pick a gender as an adult.
Intersex advocates applauded the new law but argue the law doesn’t go far enough. The Association of Intersexed People in Germany would also like to see laws forbidding sex designation surgeries for intersexed people under the age of 16.
According to the Intersex Society of North America, children born with both male and female sex variations ranges between 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 births.