CHARLESTON, S.C. (CN) - South Carolina’s Department of Social Services ordered doctors to do irreversible, medically unnecessary sex-assignment surgery on a year-old child in state custody, her adoptive parents claim in court.

�����Pamela and John Mark Crawford sued three doctors and four Social Services workers on behalf of their child, M.C., in Federal Court. M.C. is 8 years old.

�����”This lawsuit challenges the decision by government officials and doctors to perform an irreversible, painful, and medically unnecessary sex assignment surgery on a sixteen-month-old child in state custody. Defendants performed this surgery for the purpose of ‘assigning’ the child the female gender despite their own conclusion that he ‘was a true hermaphrodite but that there was no compelling reason that she should either be male or female,’” the complaint states.

�����M.C. was taken into state custody because his mother was deemed unfit and his father had abandoned him, according to the complaint. The Crawfords say the parental rights of the child’s biological parents were terminated.

More: State Decides Hermaphrodite Baby’s Gender With Irreversible Sex-Assignment Surgery