Transsexualism and sex reassignment surgery – Arising medicolegal issues

Introduction: Transgender community in India has been facing challenges in various issues since ages. They are debarred from their rights related to marriage and child adoption. Pertaining to rights related to inheritance, wills and trusts, employment, access to Government, public and private health care services, and use of social welfare and health insurance schemes, they are far behind. The recent advances in the field of medicine have made the treating physicians belief that after careful selection of the patients based on standard criteria, the gender identity disorder or transsexualism can be diagnosed and successfully treated by reassignment surgery, which in turn created, a new gender. This new gender, has further led to many legal complications for postoperative transsexuals in our country. Materials and Methods: Desk review and qualitative data were consummated for the purpose of this study. Result and Conclusion: This article examines transsexualism in purview of the historical perspective and its genesis factors, and also draws attention to medico-legal considerations arising of Sex reassignment surgery.