Should a 16-Year-Old Autistic Boy Be Allowed to Get a Sex Change?

[Butterfly]

Should a 16-Year-Old Autistic Boy Be Allowed to Get a Sex Change?
Posted by carolyncastiglia
29 December, 2010



http://blogs.babble.com/strollerderby/2010/12/29/should-a-16-year-old-autistic-boy-be-allowed-to-get-a-sex-change/



The question here seems pretty obvious: at what age does a person have a right to make these types of decisions for themselves?  I feel for O's plight, but should he have been made to wait until he turned 18 before beginning a gender transformation?

In researching transgendered teens, I was surprised to learn that Children's Hospital Boston has a unique wing called the Gender Management Service Clinic.  It's described as a "multidisciplinary clinic that treats the medical and psychosocial issues of infants, children, adolescents and young adults with disorders of sexual differentiation."  Sexual differentiation disorders include, for example, intersexuality that can result in ambiguous genitalia.  The clinic also bills itself as the first major program in the United States to work with transgendered children and young adults.