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The Catholic Medical Association has voiced opposition to a resolution of the American Medical Association calling for the removal of a baby’s sex from birth certificates.
In a statement issued this week, the Philadelphia-based CMA said that it is endorsing “appropriate documentation at the time of birth.”
Confusion is increasing around the reality of biological sex, and gender ideology is distorting reality, the organization said.
The statement was developed in response to an AMA resolution to remove the sex of the baby from birth certificates. The resolution, from the AMA’s medical students section, was “aimed at protecting individual privacy and preventing discrimination.” Information on an individual’s sex would still be collected and submitted through the U.S. Standard Certificate of Live Birth form for medical, public health, and statistical use only, it said. But designating sex on birth certificates as male or female and making that information available on the certificate’s public portion “perpetuates a view that sex designation is permanent and fails to recognize the medical spectrum of gender identity,” said AMA Board Chairwoman Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, M.D. “This type of categorization system also risks stifling an individual’s self-expression and self-identification and contributes to marginalization and minoritization.”
The AMA said the new policy would align with existing AMA policy recognizing that every individual “has the right to determine their gender identity and sex designation on government documents.”
But the Catholic Medical Association contends that biological sex is “not something that can be assigned by the physician or society. Rather, it can only be ascertained and recognized.”
“Human beings reproduce sexually,” the CMA said. “By definition, to reproduce sexually requires the equal contribution of individuals with complimentary sexual differentiation, that is, males and females. As a commitment of professionalism, medical personnel bear a responsibility to their patients and their legitimate decision makers to accurately present information. This responsibility includes accurately ascertaining and then recording the biological sex of individual patients.
“Such accuracy and honesty is a clinically necessary part of promoting the health and well-being of all patients equally, without discrimination, because accurate information is essential to the informed decision making process,” the statement continued. “Accurate information allows treatments to be tailored to the specific biological conditions, health needs and interests of the patient. For medical professionals, being allowed to discuss the patient’s objective biological and anatomical conditions with accuracy and honesty is a fundamental element of professional integrity and necessary for high, person-centered quality care. Withholding or misrepresenting basic health information harms the patient-provider relationship in a fundamental way.”
According to Dr. Kathleen Raviele, an OBGYN who is former president of the CMA, one member of the committee that drafted the CMA statement commented, “The implications of this resolution reach beyond medical care and public health, as bad as that is. We all have read the news about schools, public and private, contending with biological males competing in girl’s/women’s sports. Catholic schools, dioceses and seminaries (yes, seminaries) are in the midst of contending with the infiltration of the LGBTQAI+ agenda and are composing policies to protect their students, families and Catholic identity. Some policies include that persons will be addressed according to their biological sex as indicated on their birth certificates. This resolution would eliminate that possibility or, as in the state of Wisconsin, where parents have the option to indicate ‘gender neutral’ on birth certificates, further complicate the ability to make simple reliable policy. For example, one would have to resort to DNA testing to verify a person’s sex, as was the case for an individual admitted to seminary.”
Said Dr. Raviele, “Who would have thought that we would come to this state of affairs.”
