AIC in the media

AIC in the news and coverage of the current debates.

AIC’s history & mission

Founded in 2006 through an Equal Justice Works Fellowship and continued with a 2008 Echoing Green Fellowship, Advocates for Informed Choice (AIC) is the first organization in the U.S. to undertake a coordinated strategy of legal advocacy for the rights of children with intersex conditions or DSDs (differences of sex development).

AIC uses innovative legal strategies to advocate for the civil rights of children born with variations of reproductive or sexual anatomy. Our project:

These activities are grounded in a sense of respect and compassion for the children, parents, doctors, and intersex adults involved.

Story ideas

  • Resolve: The idea of medical apology in any context is new, but gaining ground. Leading medical schools are piloting apology programs for medical errors. The American Medical Association recently issued an apology to African-American physicians for their history of discrimination. Resolve’s innovation takes medical apology to a new level: healing the relationship between the medical community and an entire patient community.

  • Cornell University responds to criticism of “genital sensitivity”: After months of public outcry and internal investigation, Weill-Cornell Medical College has issued a response to questions raised by AIC and others about Dr. Dix Poppas’s research into genital surgery on children with intersex conditions or DSD. Dr. Poppas has been a focus of criticism for conducting clitoral reduction surgeries on young children with atypical genitals, and then following up with “clitoral sensitivity tests” on conscious girls as young as six years old.
  • Sterilization implicates a minor’s fundamental right to control reproduction, and courts treat this issue differently from other medical decisions. Where parental consent is not adequate to authorize sterilization, a court order approving the parents’ decision is necessary. Otherwise, the physicians as well as the parents could face liability even decades after the procedure.

AIC’s Executive Director, Anne Tamar-Mattis, J.D.

Curriculum Vitae

Founder and Executive Director Anne Tamar-Mattis brings to AIC more than eighteen years of experience in community organizing and nonprofit organizational management, primarily with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) and youth communities. She spent six years as the Director of the LYRIC Youth Talkline, a national peer-support line for LGBTQ youth, and she was the first Program Director for San Francisco’s LGBT Community Center. In 2003 she took a brief hiatus to attend law school, graduating from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) in 2006.

Anne is the author of Exceptions to the Rule: Curing the Law’s Failure to Protect Intersex Infants (Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, 2006). Her work in service to the LGBTQI communities has been recognized by Equal Justice Works, Echoing Green, National Lesbian and Gay Law Association, the Pride Law Fund, Uncommon Legacy and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. In 2010, Anne was honored by KQED (Northern Calif. Public Media) as an Unsung Hero. Anne has been an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall) since 2008.