Canada is generally known as a progressive country. That progression may continue if babies born in Canada need not be registered as either male or female, but as gender unknown. A child born in British Columbia was issued a gender non-specific health card — the first in the world. Some rules under the family law umbrella continue to evolve.
The parent of this particular infant claims to be non-binary transgender — non-binary meaning not identifying as either male or female. The parent wants the baby to discover its own gender in its own time. The pronoun, their, is being used singularly when speaking about or talking to the child, rather than he or she. The parent is among eight individuals to bring cases to the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal to have their own birth certificates changed.
In the space where sex is indicated on a B.C. health card, a U is marked in the space on the baby’s card — meaning undetermined or unassigned. The parent wants birth certificates to be gender non-specific and also wants the baby’s gender removed from all identifying records in Canada. The parent believes specifying gender at birth could do more harm that good and believes people should make up their minds how they identify as they get to know themselves.
As of now, all babies born in Canada must be registered as either male of female. But laws change. Often British Columbia, as in this case, is on the front lines of those changes. Anyone with questions regarding changes in family law could find the answers by contacting a lawyer experienced in those types of issues. It is incumbent upon a lawyer to keep up with laws as they evolve and change.
Source: findlaw.ca, “Do babies have to be registered as a specific sex?“, Accessed on Oct. 27, 2017