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In a potential world first, an eight-month-old Canadian baby has been issued a health card without a gender marker.
The baby’s parent, Kori Doty, identifies as neither male or female and prefers to use the pronoun they.
Presently, the health card has been marked with a ‘U’, which could mean either “undetermined” or “unassigned”.
Because of this, eight-month-old Searyl Atli doesn’t have a birth certificate and will not be issued with one without a gender designation.
Parent Doty is of the belief that just inspecting the baby at birth does not determine the gender they will have or identify with later.
In a statement, Doty said:
“I am not going to foreclose their choices based on an arbitrary assignment of gender at birth based on an inspection of their genitals.”
Doty, a community educator, said that assigning a baby a gender at birth could leave them with problems later in life if they want to change their gender.
“When I was born, doctors looked at my genitals and made assumptions about who I would be, and those assignments followed me and followed my identification throughout my life,” Kori Doty said.
“Those assumptions were incorrect, and I ended up having to do a lot of adjustments since then.”
Supported by the Gender Free I.D.Coalition, of which Doty is a member, they has applied for a judicial review regarding Searyl being denied a birth certificate.
Doty argues that “requiring a gender marker” violates the baby’s rights “as a Canadian citizen to life, liberty and security of the person.”
“I want my kid to have all of the space to be the most whole and complete person that they can be.”
