At the American Medical Association’s (AMA’s) Special Meeting of the AMA House of Delegates in mid-June, attendees voted to push for the removal of a sex designation on newborns’ birth certificates. The meeting is billed as a way to embrace policies that “help the AMA drive the future of medicine, remove obstacles that interfere with patient care, and improve the health of the nation.”

Aimed at protecting individual privacy and preventing discrimination, the AMA will advocate for the removal of sex as a legal designation on the public portion of the birth certificate. Under the policy, information on an individual’s sex designation at birth would still be collected and submitted through the U.S. Standard Certificate of Live Birth form for medical, public health, and statistical use only.

 

“Designating sex on birth certificates as male or female, and making that information available on the public portion, perpetuates a view that sex designation is permanent and fails to recognize the medical spectrum of gender identity. This type of categorization system also risks stifling an individual’s self-expression and self-identification and contributes to marginalization and minoritization,” said AMA Board Chair-Elect Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, M.D.

 

AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCEMENT

Some reactions from social media…

The AMA’s push to remove sex from the birth certificate makes even less sense given today’s Laurel Hubbard headline, which Twitter has graciously put front and centerhttps://t.co/k9LcIugS7c

— James David Dickson (@downi75) August 2, 2021