Parents fail in bid to block gender-change surgery for 48-year-old
Christine Kitzler had spent 16 months preparing for gender-reassignment surgery scheduled Tuesday, including a 24-hour fast.
But the medical procedure didn’t take place as scheduled, because the parents of the 48-year-old transgender woman asked a Pennsylvania Common Pleas Court judge to block the surgery. They claimed she is incompetent to make medical decisions and sought the court appointment of a temporary guardian in the Bucks County case, the Associated Press reports.
At a Tuesday hearing, Judge Theodore Fritsch Jr. said Kitzler’s parents had failed to prove their case. However, by then, the surgery had to be rescheduled,
Kitzler’s father, Klaus Kitzler, testified against the “barbaric” procedure and said he wanted an independent psychiatrist to review the medical matter. If that physician OK’d the surgery, he would accept it, the father said.
“I accept it, but I want to stop it,” he told the judge. “I would love to have a son back who goes to church with us on Sunday mornings.”
Christine Kitzler lives in South Carolina. It appears that the court case was brought in Pennsylvania because that is where the surgery is scheduled to take place.
“They have a daughter. They don’t have a son,” she said of her parents. “I’ll have the parts. I am a woman.”
Philadelphia lawyer Angela Giampolo is representing Kitzler. She said she and her client are concerned that the parents want to get Kitzler to Ohio, where they apparently reside, win a court case there and block the surgery permanently, CBS News reports.
