Democrats Seek Removal of Sex Designation from Pennsylvania Birth Certificates

Pennsylvania state Reps. Benjamin Sanchez (D-Abington) and Joe Webster (D-Collegeville) are planning to introduce a bill to remove male and female designations from Pennsylvania birth certificates.

The two Montgomery-County lawmakers say their proposal would not affect notations of biological sex on the U.S. Standard Certificate of Live Birth system that is used to gather medical and other statistics.

“Someone’s gender identity is a personal journey,” Sanchez and Webster wrote in a memorandum encouraging colleagues to cosponsor their legislation. “Many people struggle with the decision to come out about their gender identity in light of a society that has been slow to recognize transgender people as deserving of equal rights and respect. Unfortunately, bureaucratic roadblocks such as changing information on one’s birth certificate make this process even more complicated as transgender people face discrimination and multiple barriers when changing their sex on government documents.”

Sanchez and Webster’s memo observes that the American Medical Association (AMA) last July recommended that birth certificates cease to include gender designations. The AMA stated in its resolution on the issue that all states except for Tennessee and Ohio currently permit an individual to change his or her birth-certificate sex description, though the process required for doing so varies among jurisdictions. The association furthermore said that about one in 5,000 people are born intersex (i.e. with ambiguous physical indications of their sex) and that six in 1,000 people identify as transgender at some point in life…. (Excerpts from the Pennsylvania Daily Star)