Spectrum presents pseudo science on Intersex.

In a recent article on Spectrum Is There A Place For Bob and Others Like Her in the Adventist Church?

We read the following:

 In one major study of this particular population I found this conclusion:“In cases where the presentation of a child that is born with so noticeably atypical genitalia that a specialist in sexual differentiation is called in, the number comes to between 1 in 1,500 to 1 in 2,000 births.”1

I will try to give some perspective on the actual number of births that physically (externally) present as gender ambiguous, having minimally, both male and female genitalia. I will use the most conservative estimates of this population. This, by no means, covers the entire intersex community. It doesn’t even touch upon those who have internal differentiations such as in the case of Bob. In the world as a whole, the number would be approximately 9,000,000 births. That is greater than the entire population of many countries. Bringing it closer to home, there are between 450,000 to 500,000 births in the United States alone which are alive today. That would equate to approximately the entire population of Long Beach, California, a city that ranks #43 in population within the U.S. This simply is not a small segment of our population. These statistics only became available within the past two to three decades. 1. Dreger, Alice Domuret. 1998. “Ambiguous Sex — or Ambivalent Medicine? Ethical Issues in the Treatment of Intersexuality.” Hastings Center Report. 28, 3. 24-35.

The use of such a study does not give you the number of intersex individuals because there are a far wider spectrum of conditions which may cause atypical genitalia and not all of them are classed as intersex.

The intersex rate is far lower then the 1.7% rate that some use.

For more information please take the time to read this article. 

Here is just one quote on the intersex rate.

HOW COMMON IS INTERSEX?
Subtracting these five categories–LOCAH, vaginal agenesis, Turner’s syndrome, Klinefelter’s syndrome, and other non-XX and non-XY aneuploldies–the incidence of intersex drops to 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than the estimate provided by Fausto-Sterling. This figure of 0.018% suggests that there are currently about 50,000 true intersexuals living in the United States. These individuals are of course entitled to the same expert care and consideration that all patients deserve. Nothing is gained, however,, by pretending that there are 5,000,000 such individuals.