AMAC Exclusive by: Aaron Kliegman
The left’s war on reality keeps reaching new levels of absurdity. Now, even the concept of assigning a sex to newborn babies has become unpalatable to liberals, as the American Medical Association (AMA) recently announced that biological sex should be removed from all birth certificates. According to a resolution from the AMA, the organization will “advocate for the removal of sex as a legal designation on the public portion of the birth certificate and that it be visible for medical and statistical use only.”
The announcement will undoubtedly come as a shock to most Americans who, until a few years ago, had probably never even heard the term “trans.” The concept of malleable gender identity — the idea that anyone can self-identify as male, female, or neither— is understandably foreign to most people. Until relatively recently, journalists weren’t writing about it, lawmakers weren’t legislating about it, and medical professionals weren’t thinking about it.
How quickly things can change. A recent report from the AMA expanding on the aforementioned resolution now says that gender must be removed from birth certificates “to protect individual privacy and to prevent discrimination.”
It’s no surprise given radical stances like these that the AMA has increasingly become a fringe organization made up largely of academics and lobbyists, not practicing doctors, that Democrats often use to provide their policy stances with a façade of “expertise.” In fact, less than 15% of active physicians were dues-paying members of the AMA as of 2019, and rank-and-file doctors have long criticized the AMA for acting as if it speaks for every physician.
But that hasn’t stopped AMA Board Chair-Elect Sandra Adamson Fryhofer from issuing sweeping statements suggesting that every doctor and hospital should follow their proposal anyway. “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,” she said recently. “This type of categorization system also risks stifling an individual’s self-expression and self-identification and contributes to marginalization and minoritization.”
One can agree or disagree, but the fact is that 48 states and the District of Columbia already allow people to amend their listed sex on their birth certificate to reflect their individual gender identities. If someone is trans, there’s nothing stopping them from changing the designation on their birth certificate from male to female or vice versa.
Why, then, is the AMA’s resolution even necessary? One reason the AMA board cites in its report is that only 10 states allow for a gender-neutral designation — typically “X” — on a birth certificate. In other words, the AMA, a professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students — supposed experts — is explicitly endorsing the notion that gender is not a biological reality but is rather a social construct that must be dismantled. It’s unclear what a designation of “X” on a birth certificate actually means, biologically or medically.
If all medical professionals were to embrace the AMA’s recommendation, the only logical outcome would be a fundamental reversal of how our society views gender. The AMA has already supported efforts to provide children under the age of 18 with “gender affirming” medical treatment. But even then, the idea was that babies would be assumed to be their biological sex until they are old enough to choose their own pronouns. Now, the AMA wants every American parent to instead assume that their child might be trans straight from the womb.
Although you won’t see opposition to the AMA’s resolution from any mainstream news outlets, many in the medical community have expressed concern about the implications of the statement. Robert Jackson, an MD from the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, recently told WebMD Health News, “We as physicians need to report things accurately… All through medical school, residency, and specialty training we were supposed to delegate all of the physical findings of the patient we’re taking care of. I think when the child is born, they do have physical characteristics either male or female and I think that probably should be on the public record.”
If someone gets older and wants to change their gender and update their birth certificate accordingly, that’s one thing. But eliminating sex distinctions from the very beginning of life ignores the most basic science — indeed, a fundamental, objective truth of biological life. This begs a troubling question: If we’re disagreeing about such clear objective truths, then how can we as a country ever hope to unite socially and culturally, let alone politically?
More concretely, the AMA’s decision poses a real medical risk. In 2019, a transgender man — a biological female who identified as a male — birthed a stillborn baby because nurses didn’t consider checking if the patient was pregnant. Such cases are only more likely to occur if birth certificates don’t specify one’s sex.
With the support of our major institutions, from the media to Hollywood, corporate America, and now the medical establishment, wokeness is on the march. And the gender issue is at the tip of the woke spear.
If such forces, including the AMA, have their way, soon enough parents won’t be asking whether it’s a boy or a girl. They’ll be calling their child an it, until he or she chooses a gender — or no gender at all.