Following a three-year public protest campaign by Intersex Justice Project which garnered over 45,000 petition signatures, Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago quietly posted a first-of-its-kind public apology Tuesday for harming intersex youth. The statement responds to IJP’s #EndIntersexSurgery campaign and promises to act quickly on several demands.

After decades of advocacy and activism, internal pressure from Lurie staff initiated by Dr. Ellie Kim, and a public call-out by transgender celebrities spearheaded by POSE star Indya Moore, Lurie becomes the first U.S.-based hospital to commit to ending the practice of unnecessary genital surgeries on intersex children. Surgeries to change the appearance or sexual function of an infant’s genitals—such as reducing a clitoris, moving a working urethra, removing functional testes, and creating or extending a vagina—have been condemned by every major human rights organization to consider the issue.

Since their first public protest in Boston in 1996, intersex activists in the United States have been calling on the medical community to put an end to genital “normalizing” surgeries, and to leave intersex people their own choices about their bodies. Intersex Justice Project’s historic victory continues this legacy, centering the voices of Black and Brown intersex activists. While Lurie’s statement recognizes the harm of infant surgeries and commits to doing better, the next step is reparations—IJP further demands free medical care that does not position intersex variations as problems to be fixed. This includes providing hormones and psychological support for intersex young people and their parents. —Press release excerpts, written by IJP and interACT