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girl with a penis feel when her boyfriend rejects her in disgust? It’s cruel to subject boys and girls to that kind of humiliation!”
    He cleared his throat and settled back in his chair. “I urge you to consider surgical correction.”
     
     
    Michael and I took his sketches home with us.
    We’ve known for less than a week that we’re having a baby in three months. Now we have to face the ethical dilemma of whether to surgically correct her penis. Katzen’s solution sounds at least as dogmatic as that of the transgender activists, and terrifyingly irreversible. In the meantime, the gender ambiguity made choosing a name . . . complicated.

Salt-Wasting
    Genital ambiguity has few known causes. Exposure to excessive hormones in utero, such as the synthetic estrogen I was taking for the first six months of pregnancy, can cause birth defects, including genital deformity. It can also be caused by CAH (Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia), a rare, salt-wasting genetic disease, fatal if not treated daily. Genital ambiguity is the only outward physical sign of CAH.
    Dr. Wong, at New York Hospital, was an expert on Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. Her beautiful young associate Dr. Melina Christopoulos wore a short white robe over her red miniskirt and thigh-high black boots. Her Greek-accented breathy voice enhanced her hot-chick-in-a-doctor’s-robe look.
    “All you need is love for baby,” says Dr. Christopoulos. “Do not worry for CAH. Like diabetes, but easier. No shots. Give one pill a day, or she will die. So easy. All she needs is love and one pill. CAH girls are strong and athletic. Many grow up to be lesbians. But I think your baby does not have CAH. I think her penis is from estrogen pills Alice took during pregnancy. I will look at baby on day she is born. If genital ambiguity, I will take her to emergency room to rule out CAH.”
     
     
    “It’s going to be okay, Alice,” says Michael.
    I don’t share his confidence.
    At home, I read the twelve-page patient information insert from my hormone prescription. “Do not take during pregnancy. . . . Deformities in newborn rats when taken during pregnancy. . . . Abnormal masculinization of female genitals.” The pill I took every day for the first six months of pregnancy caused this baby girl to have a penis. And who knows what other injuries, as yet undetected, she has; what cancer time bomb might detonate?
    “You’re overthinking this,” says Michael, accurately.
    What have I done? Fourteen years ago I’d longed to get pregnant and have a baby. Fourteen years ago, I knew I would take care of my baby from the beginning of my pregnancy. I would never bring a baby into the world this way! I’ve injured her. Let me start over.
    But start over is my not-so-secret code for abortion , and it’s too late for an abortion, and this is too terrible a thought to tolerate now that we’ve all said yes to this baby and yes to being a family.
    “She’ll be our baby, she’ll be great, we’ll be great,” says Michael, and he means it. But he can tell he’s not getting through to me. He can tell I’m tumbling into an abyss, and it scares both of us.
    I had been unhappy before, but I had never thought about killing myself. I’ve never been able to watch violent scenes in movies. I usually close my eyes before the shooting starts. Now when I close my eyes, and sometimes with my eyes open, I see violent scenes in which I play the central, fatal role.
    What I Know
    1. I’m having a baby girl in three months.
    2. Unless she’s premature.
    3. She probably has a penis.
    4. Genital surgery can change her penis into a clitoris.
    5. Surgical correction is recommended by the AMA.
    6. Surgical correction is considered unethical by people with genital ambiguity.
    7. She may have a fatal disorder.
    8. She will be a lesbian athlete.
    9. I have uncontrollable thoughts about killing myself.
    10. I have too many responsibilities to commit suicide.

Scene 2
    Yom Kippur
    “On Rosh