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​Tasmania To Remove Gender From Birth Certificates

​Tasmania To Remove Gender From Birth Certificates

It will become the first Australian state to do so

Jess Hardiman

Jess Hardiman

Tasmania is set to become the first Australian state to remove gender from its birth certificates.

The change would mean that people will no longer have to disclose their gender status for anything that requires them to prove their identity - such as applying for jobs.

Martine Delaney, a transgender activist, has said a change like this will have a huge impact on the transgender community.

"It is not doing away with gender. That information would still be recorded by the registrar and medical records in the hospital," she told The Australian.

"It just simply wouldn't be displayed on the birth certificate."

PA

However, some people are worries that the historic change could mean that the rights of transgender people are put above those of others.

A spokesperson for Women Speak Tasmania, Bronwyn Williams, said that gender markets need to be kept in order to 'protect the integrity of the historical record contained in birth certificates'.

She said in a statemnet: "Birth certificates are historical records that serve a number of demographic functions and inform both government policy and legislation on a wide range of areas."

Williams also said that laws where 'biological males can be declared legally female' are compromising women's rights.

"This fiction has already eroded the rights of women and girls to female-only spaces and services," she added.

"If male-bodied people are permitted to be legally recognised as female on the basis of self-identification alone, as proposed by groups like Transforming Tasmania, women's sex-based rights will be a thing of the past."

The Australian Christian Lobby also agreed with Women Speak Tasmania's argument that the change would impact women's rights, and would also diminish the 'significance' of official documents like birth certificates.

"Amending a legal document in this way would have many unintended consequences, like jeopardising women only safe-spaces and encouraging potentially dangerous competitive inequalities in sport," Mark Brown, ACL's state director, said in a statement.

"The sex a child is born with is a scientific and immutable fact. Birth certificates are used to detail such historical truths.

"A person's biological sex is changed or removed it greatly diminishes the significance and usefulness of birth certificates. Such changes, therefore, should be off-limits."

According to The Australian, the bill is expected to be put to a vote in Tasmania next month.

Featured Image Credit: PA

Topics: World News, News, Australia