Birth certificates can't be changed??

[NImumconfused]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/nov/19/baby-girl-registered-wrong-sex-mansfield-registration-office

How ridiculous is that? You can't get it changed if the registrar made a mistake, but you can if you decide you want to become the opposite sex?

It's ridiculous.

But the same registrar managed to make the same error twice in a short period... Even after reading back the correct info to the parents?

WTF?!

Yes, and the couple in the interview claim to have confirmed the correct details beforehand.

Am I being too suspicious to suspect an activist registrar causing problems?

Hadn't occurred to me, I was just assuming incompetence, but anything's possible!

What is the point of a birth certificate if it isn’t accurate, I can see no reason why it can’t be changed if it is factually incorrect, the child shouldn’t be punished because some adults made a mistake and her parents are right people will assume she’s transgender or had some birth defect that was picked up later.

How absolutely ridiculous. The mother sounds very upset, and rightly so. It's so sad that this completely unnecessary nonsense has shadowed her experience as a new mother. I hope they can somehow sort it out before it becomes a problem in the future.

How infuriating, when everyone agrees there was a mistake and no-one contests the truth. Yet for a fiver and a pinkie promise to 'live as' a certain gender you can change your birth certificate, no probs.

The problem is that the error can be corrected (as can the entry for an individual with a late-diagnosed DSD) but the existence of the error and its correction remain visible both on the register entry (which was always the case) and on any register extract (='birth certificate') based on it. Until recently you could at least get a clean replacement birth certificate incorporating the correction without 'track changes' as it were. Not any more, according to that article.

People with GRCs, otoh, get a clean replacement birth certificate which is not officially linked to the original registration at all.

People with GRCs, otoh, get a clean replacement birth certificate which is not officially linked to the original registration at all.

odd how red tape and bureaucracy flies out the window for a special category of people but something like this which is obviously human error absolutely definitely can’t be done cos bureaucracy

To be fair this isn't the fault of trans people, even though it does seem ridiculous.

I am hoping that the media attention will lead to an exception made for this bbay.

Crosses my mind it may have something to do with trans issues and an activist being awkward or even doing it on purpose, because sex is 'assigned'?

It's funny how an error like this suddenly, magically, reveals that having your sex wrongly "assigned at birth" is a clerical error wholly consistent with (and indeed entailing) the material reality of actual sex at birth.
<bitter, oh so bitter, hollow laughter>

It’s more that apparently immovable bureaucratic procedures don’t seem to be so immovable for people who have a GRC who can get a new birth certificate

whereas it’s apparently impossible to give this child a new correct birth certificate 🤷🏻‍♀️

Yes, the process seems to have been devised after a lot of wrangling, partly because the authorities didn't want to treat a gender reassignment as if it was the correction of an error (as had been done for transsexuals before the April Ashley court case) - hence the creation of the Gender Recognition Register. (According to trans friend, the certificates based on the GRR to begin with looked slightly different from a real certificate, thus blowing the gaff as it were. That got changed!)

I get my info from gov.uk and know nothing about genealogy, so would be interested to hear from family history buffs about this. For instance, gov.uk says a marker is put on the original registration linking to the GRR, but I'm unclear whether this is for the public's benefit or just for Registry employees.

In other words, could a clever genealogist find both girl Jane and boy John (all other parameters the same) and, if so, will the system that returned the search results tell him which is which as between the main register and the GRR?

How they managed to mark their child as the opposite sex is a bit of a mystery. But I guess it must happen sometimes. Of course the registration place could change it. Why on earth not? Just put down in notes 'error on initial forms- amended to correct sex- female' then just change the certificate? How hard can it be.
They're making her be branded trans from birth even though she's not! So weird and bizarre.

The child was assigned male at birth, so is male. That’s how it works, right? Arguing that sex is observed and registered not assigned is totally transphobic. Or it was yesterday; in Guardian world anything can change depending on what you want to be true today.

Don't think it was the parents' error but the registrars'.

Not assigned at birth in this case - I'd assume the hospital or wherever baby was born recorded a female child.

Agreed, definitely not the fault of trans people.

But definitely an example of a two tier system where the nebulous quality of 'trans' gives someone else a right that you or I (or this baby) doesn't have, despite really genuine & obvious reasons.

And that's not right.

@MelodyMalone in the article the registration seems to place the blame on the parents, and it mentions them being sleep deprived. It says it's from info the parents supply only. They can't exactly ask to look at the kid's genitals.
Not that I think they shouldn't just change it.

I thought the sleep deprived mention was that they had failed to immediately notice, not that they'd given the wrong info.

You'd think a registrar with any sense would double check a male child being called Lilah Jane Mary, anyway!

Am I being too suspicious to suspect an activist registrar causing problems?

For some reason the fact that the couples MP - who kindly has intervened - is one ":Lee Anderson" immediately made me suspect there is a lot to this use of newsprint that isn't being printed.

Other way around. Trans people don't have the right to have the (ahem) 'error' in their birth registration corrected, although I'm sure that's what they would have liked.

@MelodyMalone ha ha, yeah, you're not wrong! 🤣

The inequality is outstandingly stupid.