Planned Parenthood Falsely Suggests that Doctors “Assign” a Baby’s Sex at Birth

In his recent article, "Is Sex 'Assigned' at Birth?," evolutionary biologist Colin Wright criticizes Planned Parenthood's claims that a doctor "assigns" a baby's sex at the time of birth. As Wright points out, a doctor merely notices and reports the baby's sex. Planned Parenthood's website makes as much sense as claiming that an obstetrician "assigns" a baby's two-leggedness or "assigns" the eye color of a newborn.

There's good reason to believe that Planned Parenthood intentionally misused the word "assign," given that this word appears 19 times on Planned Parenthood's highly problematic webpage, "Sex and Gender Identity." Here is an excerpt:

Sex is a label — male or female — that you’re assigned by a doctor at birth based on the genitals you’re born with and the chromosomes you have. It goes on your birth certificate . . . . Instead of saying “biological sex,” some people use the phrase “assigned male at birth” or “assigned female at birth.” This acknowledges that someone (often a doctor) is making a decision for someone else. The assignment of a biological sex may or may not align with what’s going on with a person’s body, how they feel, or how they identify.

Wright's article is a patient and focused response to yet another instance where activists are attempting to use ideology to rewrite biology. Wright's counter-measure consists of serving up the kind of accurate biology lesson that most high school science teachers have uncontroversially delivered over many decades. That lesson goes something like this: "Here's a male mouse. Notice the penis. Here's a female mouse. Notice the vagina. Here's a diagram of a male human and a female human. Same thing. Quiz tomorrow."

Real-life biology is something that many Critical Justice Activists have self-trained themselves to find irrelevant. They also find real-life biology incomplete--those biology books keep forgetting to talk about feelings when they discuss gonads! Many of today's Woke students don't like hearing any blunt talk that they are human animals or that it is Nature (not a doctor) that calls the shots regard to a baby's sex. Wright explains:

The claim that biological sex is “assigned at birth” is very misleading as it draws a false equivalence between transgender and intersex people, and suggests that identity, as opposed to reproductive anatomy, defines one’s biological sex.

Rather than being “assigned” at birth, sex is simply recorded at birth using genitalia as a very reliable predictor of underlying gonad type. The fact that doctors, on very rare occasions, are wrong in their assessment does not therefore immediately call everyone’s sex into question.

Planned Parenthood employs many highly educated and careful writers, so the wording on its website was not an accident. Planned Parenthood consciously decided to use the word "assigned" to falsely suggest that arrogant doctors steeped in scientism shoot from the hip whenever they designate a baby's sex. That's how I read their ideologically-laced webpage. They take this position despite the fact that the sex of almost every baby is determined about nine months prior to the birth. And once the baby is born, figuring out whether Nature chose pink versus blue is truly simple. Truly, a doctor merely needs to take a quick look. This process of sexing was perfected thousands of years before the patriarchy got around to inventing the multitudes of modern baby doctors, those people who arrogantly determine one's sex by looking at gonads.

I can feel Wright's frustration as he spells out the facts of life for activists (as well as for those of us who are unnerved by the vocal Woke mobs). This effort by Wright is merely the most recent of a series of basic sex-ed lessons he has been offering (see also here and here). It's unfortunate that any of his articles were necessary, but I'm relieved to see that he is out there offering accurate biology bit by bit, to try to keep us all on the rails.

What is my main reason for writing this article? Because new parents should never be made to feel any hesitation or shame when they announce "It's a girl!" or "It's a boy!" We have all heard many people announcing and celebrating the sex of their newborns. On every occasion that I've heard such an announcement, I'm certain that there was no hint of any animosity toward people who have undergone the process of transgendering. Announcing a baby's sex is always a perfectly appropriate thing to do, no footnotes and no asterisks needed. These joyous moments have no relevance to the hyper-sensitive feelings of transgender activists. In fact, if there were activists in my presence right now, I would urge them to each put one finger in one their own ears so the following information might stick: "When new parents joyously exclaim 'It's a girl!', this is an undeniable biological fact that has absolutely nothing to do with you. It's about the baby."

Since Planned Parenthood twice mentioned "intersex" on the above webpage, it's worth asking how often doctors get it wrong when they tell the parents what sex they have observed in the newborn baby. The answer: almost never. As Wright discusses, the reproductive anatomy of a baby is unambiguously male or female over 99.98 percent of the time. Many activists seem to think that it is insensitive to bluntly announce the sex of a baby because of "intersex." They claim this even when only 2 out of 10,000 newborns are diagnosed with intersex conditions. They claim this despite the fact that intersex conditions have absolutely nothing to do with the issue of transgendering. I suspect that transgender activists keep bringing up intersex conditions because it confuses and extends what would otherwise be swift endings to bad arguments.

Planned Parenthood, an organization claiming an expertise in medical matters, needs to get its medical facts right, then revise its webpage accordingly. There's a lot of work to do. One thing they desperately need to be add is this: For the great majority of people, biological sex robustly aligns with gender. This fact is not something shameful, insensitive or mean-spirited. It accurately describes most human beings, except in Planned Parenthood's namby-pamby world of biology where this is a fact that must not be uttered. [More . . . ]

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Science Re-Takes the Stage in the Gender Debate at NHS and BBC

From Julian Vigo's Aug 5, 2020 article at Quillette: "At the NHS and BBC, Important Steps Toward Restoring Balance in the Gender Debate." Politicians in the UK have regained their footing, relying upon the scientific method. They are moving forward based on the idea that they should "Do no harm.  Here is an excerpt:

BBC Woman’s Hour has reported that much of the language on the NHS website referring to gender dysphoria was removed or entirely reworded last week, so as to more accurately reflect science instead of ideology. Crucially, the NHS no longer repeats the fiction that puberty blockers such as Lupron are “reversible,” since there are few studies on the physical or psychological effects. (It has been known since 2017 that trials of peripubertal GnRHa-treatment, i.e., hormone blockers, in sheep reveal “permanent changes in brain development [and] raises particular concerns about the cognitive changes associated with the prolonged use of GnRHa-treatment in children and adolescents.”) Also removed from the NHS site: Emotionally loaded references to suicide, which had previously served to terrify parents into seeking rapid treatment, lest any delay lead a child to end their lives. The association of “gender identity” with regressive stereotypes also is gone. And the website no longer suggests that sex itself can be changed. Instead, we get more accurate language to the effect that “some people may decide to have surgery to permanently alter body parts associated with their biological sex.” That the NHS now uses the term “biological sex” at all is itself a huge win, even if such language is obviously appropriate on the level of science and medicine. . . .

As with so many other things, the campaign for trans rights began with good intentions. For some people, dysphoria is very real—the feeling of being in the wrong body. It’s a problem that has to be managed, and people who suffer from this condition should get the help they need. But rather than urge that dysphoria be treated in a humane and realistic way, many activists prefer to cast it as a vestige of an invented inner spirit called “gender identity,” which universally suffuses us all, like a spark of the divine.

Such fantasies are the basis of religion, and it is fine for people to believe in them. But over the last decade, this particular fantasy has been encoded into law—which is very much not fine. And it was only a matter of time before ordinary people realized that a fraud had been perpetrated on them under cover of human rights. . .

Of course, it’s taken too long, and much damage has been done in the interim. But for the sake of the many women and children who remain at risk, better late than never.

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