It's Time to Preserve and Restore Truthful Birth Certificates
Subjective Identities Are Not Facts
Currently in the US, new birth certificates are being issued decades after the births they are meant to document. These new certificates show names and sex markers changed from the originals. These replacement birth certificates are issued at the request of adults without their moms’ or dads’ knowledge, permission, or consent, even though the parent names are also on the document.
There are many reasons that someone might decide to present as the opposite sex, but none of them justify altering birth records in this way.
Vital records and parental rights should not yield to a child’s feelings or external appearance. These can change throughout a lifetime, whereas original birth facts do not change. Birth certificates are not validation or affirmation tools, and using them as such is a breach of ethical recordkeeping. It is unacceptable to rewrite historical records for subjective beliefs. Feelings, underlying comorbidities, and health issues can be addressed and cared for while maintaining the integrity of our birth records.
If birth certificates can be legally changed based on gender feelings, then imagine other types of feelings that might lead to requests for document changes, and the recordkeeping chaos that would ensue. For example, some people might feel younger than their current age; they might even have surgeries to look younger. Does that mean they should be able to change their year of birth on their birth certificate later in life to match the younger feeling or presentation? Obviously, this is ridiculous. Nevertheless, it is analogous to the current practice of changing birth documentation to align with later feelings and personal presentations.
We may continue to argue into the foreseeable future about the ethics of removing healthy body parts as a response to “gender identity.” However, an individual’s desire to be seen as outside his or her birth sex, even together with elective surgeries to remove or alter healthy body parts, should not be adequate bases for vital records agencies to effectively falsify the record of the historical facts of a birth. Nevertheless, many of the vital records agencies in the US treat the modification of these certificates as available upon request, flipping birth certificates’ sex markers and changing birth names in the absence of clerical error in the original document.
Ideologies, personal beliefs, and subjective feelings may come and go, changing, morphing, expanding, and retracting, but the facts of a birth are immutable and must be preserved.
Many kids and young adults who undergo the removal of body parts later regret it, and some reverse course and return to identifying as their birth sex. This is a lengthy, tedious process involving court orders, fees, red tape, and possible embarrassment. The process is especially complicated when the vital record of birth has been modified.
Many US states have reduced or eliminated parental rights to preserve truthful birth records displaying the facts of a child’s birth; this reduction in rights disrespects parents and families. An individual with a new gender identity is given the right to alter historical records, while the mother and father listed on the birth record have no rights to preserve historical facts. Parents, whose names appear on the document, don’t even have the right to be informed that birth records will be or have been changed.
Having truthful birth records matters to more than just parents. Many businesses, medical professionals, government officials of various kinds, and other segments of the public need to rely on official documents. States are entrusted with the responsibility to make and protect reliable historical records, including by recording the objective facts surrounding the birth of a child.
It bears repeating: A birth certificate is a statement of fact, issued by an official authority, attesting to the truthfulness of a birth. There is no legitimacy in any authority to modify this statement of fact, except to correct errors. One cannot just change facts after they occur. It is not possible to change one’s sex, only to modify the exterior appearance of sex traits with drugs and surgeries. One may exercise personal agency to request that others call one by a different name and opposite-sex language, and one may dress and style oneself as the opposite sex. Similarly, one may legally change one’s name for marriage, divorce, and other reasons; these name changes may occur on driver’s licenses and other forms of identification. It is quite a different matter to demand the erasure of facts on the historical record of a birth certificate.
A birth certificate is not the property of the child whose birth is documented. It is a factual record that belongs to the public. It is a factual record not only of the child in question but also of the mother who gave birth to the baby and, in most cases, of the child’s father. Besides the fact that changing the contents of an original document is not honest or in keeping with the public trust placed in the recordkeeper, it also is not respectful to the lived experience of a mother who vividly remembers the day of her daughter’s or son’s birth or of a father who also has his own vivid personal connection to the documented facts. It is with good cause that many US citizens are gravely concerned when historical/medical/birth/vital records have been altered based on wishes and feelings, not the truth.
It is time to preserve and restore accurate birth records in every US state. Previous government administrations changed laws in most US states to enable children and adults to falsify original birth certificates to indicate one was born as the opposite sex and to reflect a new name of their choosing. These laws eliminated original, truthful, and factual birth certificates, and the changes often occurred without parental knowledge, permission, or consent. Even if consent is obtained, falsified birth certificates are no longer documents of truth and fact. We must return to respecting the truthful, factual recording of births for all US citizens.
I am one person among many directly impacted by the birth certificate issue. My name is now on an “original” birth certificate that has been falsified and does not reflect the truth and facts about what occurred on the day of my daughter’s birth. This issue has devastated my family and thousands of other families and parents.
I am not addressing any other form of documentation, such as driver’s licenses, because the parents’ names are not on those documents. A mom, and usually a dad, are listed on a birth certificate, so that document is not the same as any other form of ID. As a nation and state-by-state, we must focus on birth certificates and ensure they remain factual historic records. The integrity of these records issued by our state vital records departments matters for medical, identity-establishment, actuarial formulas, and genealogical purposes. Additionally, the parents’ perspective and the impact on the whole family matter.
Birth certificates must be preserved as a truthful and factual accounting of a birth. Altered birth certificates need to be reinstated to their original, true facts. If birth certificates are modified to reflect identity preferences, a history of all versions must be included and visible within the document.
Previously altered birth certificates must be returned to their original state or be revised to show the original name and sex, along with the history of alterations to the document, and documentation of future births must be made with certificates giving a non-modifiable factual accounting of the day of the birth.
Accurate recordkeeping is vital not only to family history and genealogical records but also to sex-based statistical measures, medical research, and truthful journalism. National security, law enforcement, research funding, retirement and social security benefits, and proper medical care depend on accurate descriptions of one’s birth sex. The arguments for modification based on gender theory, gender identity, gender politics, or activist agendas are not of the same nature. While the latter can change frequently, the facts recorded at the moment of birth do not change with the winds or with whims of individual, subjective beliefs.
In recent years in the US, there have been a lack of common sense and a lack of respect for truthful and factual vital records. It also appears that there have been some public servants with an inclination to pander to the interests of those who favor untruthful public records. The time is now for new measures and laws to shift the tide in matters of preserving and restoring truthful, factual birth certificates.
Our legislative policies and laws must return to a reality-based, factual foundation rather than being driven by an ever-changing influence of theories and belief systems. Each US state must reinstate and preserve truthful, factual birth records.
The erasure of the facts and the truth surrounding a child’s birth must cease. The erasure of parental experiences must stop. Rewriting historical records for gender identity feelings is inappropriate, and we must return to the ethics of respecting accurate birth record documentation.
Subjective identity feelings are not facts. It is time to push back on the egregious practice of altering birth certificates and begin restoring previously modified birth records.
Previous articles on this subject:
Truthful and Factual Birth Certificates Are of Vital Importance
Erasing History and Parental Experiences for Feelings and Wishes
For more on this author.
It is absolutely insane that birth certificates can be changed. Lunacy.
It is Orwellian to change a historical document. I think my son has changed his birth certificate with his new "legal" name, which includes a different first and last name. How utterly insulting. A birth certificate that lists a different name from the chosen birth name and the incorrect sex is a mockery of my pregnancy and delivery, which inherently include substantial effort and medical risks. Changing a birth certificate is another ripple of the trans nightmare in which expressing the nuances about the tentacles of trauma and sorrow is elusive. The absurd defiling of reality and the well-being of everyone involved lurks underneath words.