Baby Girl Birth Certificates
The laws are changing regarding the entrance into Canada and Mexico from the United States. People are now required to have a passport to cross the borders. In the past a driver’s license or birth certificates were suggested, however they were rarely checked. We live in the state of Minnesota so there are many opportunities to cross the border into Canada. Our next door neighbor’s are retired so they spend the winter months in Texas, so they go across the border often. They went to get their passports and have run into quite a problem.
To begin with my neighbor has had a rocky relationship with her mother for her entire life. Her mother has made it very clear that she never wanted a girl. My neighbor’s mother is now 93 years old and has been on her death bed for five years. She tells my neighbor how much she enjoys when her sons come to visit, but she rarely says anything about my neighbor driving four hours to visit her twice a month. My neighbor has a healthy attitude about this poor relationship with her mother, and she does not let it affect her life.
When the neighbors went to get their passports they had their birth certificates and other documents that are required. They were told that the birth certificates had to be certified copies from the county that the birth was recorded in. My neighbor’s husband had his, but she had the certificate that is given out from the hospital with the footprints on it. These are considered souvenir birth certificates and cannot be used for legal documents. My neighbor contacted the county that she was born in and they sent the certified copy of her record of birth. In the location for the name it stated baby girl. The souvenir certificate had her name on it, but not the official certificate. My neighbor did not think this was going to be a problem because all the other information matched.
When she took both birth certificates back to obtain the passport she was told that she needed to show prove that she was baby girl. They told her a copy of her marriage certificate would work, but she is married a second time so her maiden name is not on her current marriage certificate so that the two last names are not linked. She has contacted the drivers license bureau to get a copy of the original drivers license that she had with her maiden name, but that was so many years ago they could not locate it. She did locate her high school transcripts and have had them sent over to the passport bureau. This process has taken several weeks so most of us now refer to her as baby girl. She states that even from her death bed her mother is making it known that she never planned on having a girl because she did not even have a name picked out when she went to the hospital.