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December 21, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – The New England Journal of Medicine joined the ranks of medical institutions elevating “social justice” above sound medicine last week with the publication of an article calling for “rethinking” how biological sex is recorded on birth certificates.

“Sex designations on birth certificates offer no clinical utility, and they can be harmful for intersex and transgender people,” argued the paper co-authored by Vadim Shteyler, MD; Jessica Clarke, JD; and Eli Adashi, MD, of Brown University and Vanderbilt University Law School. “Moving such designations below the line of demarcation wouldn’t compromise the birth certificate’s public health function but could avoid harm.”

The paper explained that moving sex below the line of demarcation means that while it would technically remain part of the birth records, alongside data such as parents’ marital status “which is used for statistical purposes,” while preventing it from “appear(ing) on certified copies of birth certificates.”

“Designating sex as male or female on birth certificates suggests that sex is simple and binary when, biologically, it is not,” the paper argued. “Sex is a function of multiple biologic processes with many resultant combinations” such as “chimerism, mosaicism, or micromosaicism, conditions in which a person's cells may contain varying sex chromosomes, often unbeknownst to them.” Further, “assigning sex at birth also doesn't capture the diversity of people's experiences” with “gender identity” versus “social expectations.” 

The authors go so far as to claim that “sex designations on birth certificates offer no clinical utility; they serve only legal — not medical — goals,” while potentially inviting “scrutiny” and “shame,” as well as thwarting gender-confused individuals’ ability to access opposite-sex locker or shower facilities or serve in the military. 

“Fears about privacy and safety violations in public accommodations aren't supported by evidence,” they claimed, despite testimony from female students as to the emotional stress of having to share intimate facilities with males, or allegations of sexual assault enabled by opposite-sex access to girls’ restrooms.

“Articles like this certainly have their place in debating transgenderism. But when they appear in the most influential medical journal in the world, it calls into question the editors’ ability to dispassionately choose which medical papers to publish,” responded National Review’s Wesley Smith. “I mean, if a reputable study reached conclusions that were scientifically sound but cut against the grain of transgender ideology, do you think it would ever make the pages of the NEJM? Not a chance!”

“Publishing ideological advocacy in what is supposed to be a journal that primarily publishes objective scientific information contributes to the growing public distrust of the science sector,” Smith continued. “That doesn’t help people with gender dysphoria specifically, or contribute to the betterment of society overall.”

While LGBT activists insist that being a man or woman is strictly a matter of self-perception, in reality sex is rooted in an individual’s chromosomes and reflected by hundreds of genetic characteristics. Despite insistence that indulging gender-confused individuals’ chosen “identity” is essential to their health and happiness, gender confusion has been linked to a variety of long-term mental and emotional ills, including higher suicide rates.