Susan J. Pearson, "The Birth Certificate: An American History" (UNC Press, 2021)
New Books in Law
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The Disadvantages of Not Having a Birth Certificate
If you are non white, if you are an immigrant, if you live in a rural area, if your birth is attended by a midwife rather than a physician, all these factors mean you are less likely to have your birth registered. That means that later on in life, particularly as my story moves forward in time, and birth certificates become more routinely required as a form of identification, those people who do not have them are going to have a harder time accessing basic institutions like school, employment, social security, a passport, a driver's license, all those things. So there's a disadvantage that flows from not having registration. But in certain cases, there's also aadvantage that
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