As anti-transgender legislation has swept the country -- with lawmakers in many states preventing minors from undergoing gender-affirming care -- carve-outs have been allowed for surgeries on intersex children to continue.
Dr. Arlene Baratz, a Pennsylvania-based physician and medical and research coordinator for InterConnect Support Group for intersex people, said she finds the exception "interesting" considering that most transgender children do not undergo surgery until they are in their late teens and don't undergo genital surgery until they are age 18 or older.
They also are often required to undergo a psychological evaluation and have to live in the gender they identify with before surgery can be performed.
"The opposite is actually true for intersex children, and they [often] undergo surgery when they're infants. Again, they're not old enough to speak, some of them aren't old enough to walk," Baratz, the mother of two intersex children, told ABC News. "They know nothing about themselves, we know nothing about them, who they are, what they will like, how they are experiencing their gender."
She continued, "And so, I think that in order not to make mistakes with this kind of surgery, it should be available to people who want it and it should be available to people who can understand the consequences of it and that it should wait until they're old enough to be able to decide for themselves."