Canadian Province Issues 1st Gender-less Health Card After Parent Refuses to Identify Baby’s Sex

Kori Doty wants to keep the baby's sex off all official records, but authorities have refused.

By Liberty McArtor Published on July 3, 2017

A parent in Canada is refusing to give her baby a “gender marker” indicating whether it is male or female, the BBC reports

According to the BBC, parent Kori Doty is “a non-binary transgender person who identifies as neither male nor female.” Doty gave birth in British Columbia in November. The baby is named Searyl Atli. Doty wants to wait until Searyl has “the sense of self and command of vocabulary to tell me who they are.” 

Doty intends to keep the baby’s sex off all official records. But authorities have refused to issue a birth certificate without the sex indicated. The province did issue Searyl a health card marked with a “U.” The “U” in the “sex” space stands for “unassigned” or “undetermined” (or “unspecified” or “unknown”). It is the first health card to be so labeled.

Now Doty is taking the issue to the courts.

According to Doty’s lawyer barbara findlay (who spells her name without capital letters), “The assignment of sex in this culture is done when a medical person lifts up the legs and looks at the baby’s genitals. But we know that the baby’s own gender identity will not develop for some years until after they’re born.”

CBC News notes that some Canadian provinces are working to add a third gender option to official documents. So are several nations. Doty, however, would prefer that official documents contain no sex indicators. Doty is a member of a group called the Gender-Free I.D. Coalition. The coalition works to that end.

“No one knows a baby’s gender at birth since gender identity takes years to be known,” the group’s website states. “The only acceptable solution is to remove gender altogether, from all identity documents.”

Studies and doctors have found that children who identify as the opposite gender usually change their minds. Conservatives and even some liberals have pushed back against the idea that someone can be transgender, or that there are more than two sexes.

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