OII Australia welcomes news that the New South Wales Births Registry (BDM) will now permit administrative correction of intersex birth registrations.
Background
Tony Briffa in Victoria, provided the first case of an administrative correction of which we are aware, and we hope that other Australian states will accept these precedents.
We are aware that, in Western Australia, administrative corrections are not possible. Under Western Australian law, intersex people who reject their birth assignments have no choice but to comply with the rules contained in the Gender Reassignment Act 2000 (GRA). That entails, as it does for transsexual and transgender individuals, that sufficient parts of an intersex person’s anatomy should be removed or modified so that they might be seen to be appropriately bodied for the sex they wish to live as. OII Australia believes that this approach is inappropriate.
When a sex assignment is made on an intersex child there is no certain way to predict how that child might express their gender role as an adult. For those who discover their intersex as adults there’s also no certain way to say how their differences should inform their choice of gender roles.
Many intersex people will have experienced non-consensual cosmetic surgery as an infant to reinforce an assigned gender, and others will have atypical anatomy or features. These make it inappropriate to follow protocols designed for trans people.
The new procedures in NSW
The NSW Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages (BDM) is now prepared to make amendments to a birth certificate because of a mistaken assignment at the time of birth. OII Australia has been made aware of these changes by Ms Lisa Karam, an Assistant Registrar with BDM.
The legislation
Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 1995 No 62
Current version for 16 September 2009 to date (accessed 9 November 2009 at 13:45) Part Division 3
Division 3 Correction of Register 45 Correction of Register
(1) The Registrar may correct the Register:
(a) to reflect a finding made on inquiry under Division 2, or
(b) to bring an entry about a particular registrable event into conformity with the most reliable information available to the Registrar of the registrable event.
(2) The Registrar must, if required by a court, correct the Register.
(3) The Registrar corrects the Register by adding or cancelling an entry in the Register or by adding, altering or deleting particulars contained in an entry.
Case study
The following case study example was kindly provided by the NSW Registry:
Customer was born intersex in the late 1960s in New South Wales. Customer was registered with BDM as female but over the next forty years this was to prove to be incorrect. Customer supplied medical documentation outlining to the Registrar various diagnosis and procedures he had endured over a long period of time. Registrar amended the birth record of this person to show the correct gender. Registrar also added the person’s details to a child he had fathered regardless of the original birth registration as female.
Guidance
Each case will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Some relevant considerations are medical diagnosis, lived experience, gender preference and presentation. There are no firm rules on the kinds of documentation or experiences needed to have a change made; rather, a compassionate consideration of all the details will inform decisions.
It is currently not possible to have genders/sex other than male or female registered on NSW birth certificates, although this is possible in the state of Victoria.
Intersex individuals in NSW who wish to discuss this or apply to have their birth certificates amended should contact either Lisa Karam <Lisa_Karam@agd.nsw.gov.au> or Sharon Swinbourne <Sharon_Swinbourne@agd.nsw.gov.au>.
OII Australia thanks both Sharon Swinbourne and Lisa Karam for their sensible and compassionate actions in this matter.
