smh.com.au: 'Anti-lesbian' treatment

by admin on Thursday, 19 August, 2010

http://oiiaustralia.com/10582/smhcomau-antilesbian-treatment/

    A hormonal treatment to prevent ambiguous genitalia can now be offered to women who may be carrying a foetus with the rare disorder.

    It is not without health risks but, to its critics, they are of small consequence compared with this notable side effect: the treatment also might reduce the likelihood that a female with the condition, known as congenital adrenal hyperplasia, will be homosexual. Further, it seems to increase the chances that she will have what are considered more feminine behavioural traits.

    That such a treatment would ever be considered, even to prevent genital abnormalities, has outraged gay and lesbian groups, troubled some doctors and fuelled bioethicists' debate about the nature of human sexuality.