Germany becomes the first European country to allow babies born with characteristics of both se_xes

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German parents are now allowed to leave the gender graph blank on birth certificates of their newborns. Thus, Germany has become the first European country to allow babies born with characteristics of both sexes to be registered as neither male nor female.

This is to relieve parents of stress of making on-spot decisons on sex assignment surgery for newborn infants.

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As many as one in 2,000 people have characteristics of both sexes, and in Germany, they will falll into a new category of "indeterminate sex".

'Bruised and scarred'

They are known as "intersex" people because they have a mixture of male and female chromosomes or even genitalia which have characteristics of both genders.

The intense difficulty for parents is often that a gender has to be chosen very quickly so that the new child can be registered with the authorities. Sometimes, surgery is done on the baby to turn its physical characteristics as far as possible in one direction or the other.

The law in Germany has been following a review of cases which revealed great unhappiness.

In one case, a person with no clear gender-defining genitalia was subjected to surgery. The person said many years later: "I am neither a man nor a woman. I will remain the patchwork created by doctors, bruised and scarred."

German passports, which currently list the holder's sex as M for male or F for female, will soon have a third designation, X, for intersex holders, according to the interior ministry.

It remains unclear what impact the change will have on marriage and partnership laws in Germany.

Current laws define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and civil partnerships are reserved for same-sex couples.

BBC