A Colorado bill could put doctors, government employees or morticians in jail if they accurately record the sex of deceased people who identified as transgender.

The Colorado House is scheduled to hold a hearing on Feb. 25 examining legislation that would make it a crime not to abide by the chosen “gender identity” of deceased individuals on their death certificates. Medical experts expressed alarm at the attempt to erase biological reality from crucial state-issued documents.

“It’s dangerous and absolutely nuts to threaten doctors with a misdemeanor if they won’t forge a death certificate. But it’s what I’d expect in Colorado,” Dr. Travis Morrell, a Colorado physician and senior fellow with the conservative-leaning medical group Do No Harm, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“The first thing you learn in middle school science is to write in your lab book with a pen; honest data recording is science 101,” Morrell added.

Colorado law currently authorizes “qualified individuals” such as coroners, medical examiners and forensic pathologists to create death certificates. The proposed bill, sponsored by Democratic Colorado state Reps. Karen McCormick and Kyle Brown alongside Democratic Colorado state Sen. Mike Weissman, would require the document to “reflect the decedent’s gender identity.”

The three legislators did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

“An individual who knowingly and willfully violates these requirements commits a class 2 misdemeanor,” the bill says regarding those who prepare the certificates. This brings up to 120 days in jail and up to $750 in fines.

The bill says relatives can request a change to a death certificate by submitting a “gender identity document” proving the person identified as transgender or obtain a court order.

LGBT advocates have lobbied for years to change both birth and death certificates so that they record someone’s stated gender rather than their biological sex. “Unnecessary and invasive obstacles to updating one’s birth certificate gender marker can prevent many transgender and gender non-conforming people from obtaining identification that accurately reflects who they are,” the left-wing Human Rights Campaign wrote in 2018.

Washington, D.C. alongside states such as California, New Jersey and Rhode Island have passed laws requiring death certificates to reflect “gender identity,” though most do not mention criminal punishments.

Colorado already allows residents to change the sex listed on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates.

Morrell told the DCNF that maintaining accuracy when recording the information listed on death certificates is more important than appeasing left-wing groups.

“Death certificates aren’t buried when you die,” he said. “They’re evidence in court. They’re data for medical and public health research. Death certificates help doctors predict cancer survival or the deadliness of infectious or environmental agents.”

“The CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and scientists around the world use death certificate data,” Morrell noted.

The physician also referenced a CDC-funded study from 2017 showing that errors in Vermont’s death certificates were influencing national mortality numbers to illustrate the importance of accuracy over ideology.

Morrell said he is “not surprised they want to force doctors to lie at death” since “therapists aren’t allowed to affirm a dysphoric child’s actual sex,” according to a 2019 bill signed into law by Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis.

“This won’t be the end of attacks on medical integrity,” Morrell told the DCNF.

President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies in January to scrap the concept of “gender identity” in favor of “sex” as an inherent physical trait. The order further requires federally-issued identification documents, such as passports and visas, to “accurately reflect the holder’s sex.”

“Across the country, ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers,” Trump’s day-one executive order reads. “This is wrong.”

Featured Image Credit: Lucas Werkmeister