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The National Health Service continues to push back on radical gender ideology, this time by enshrining biological truth and the rights of patient privacy and free speech in its constitution.
England’s National Health Service (NHS) is moving to enshrine sex as a biological reality in its constitution in order to protect patients from invasions of their privacy and to ban the use of supposedly inclusive terms such as “people who have ovaries” rather than saying “women.”
Every 10 years the NHS must update its constitution. In the upcoming iteration, sex will be prioritized over gender identity.
The NHS announced that in the new constitution, “We are defining sex as biological sex.”
That will have a number of ramifications. For example, in 2021 the NHS issued a policy that put transgender patients in single-sex wards according to their gender identity, meaning that some women had to sleep in rooms with biological men. Under the new constitution, though, patients will no longer have to share sleeping accommodations with a person of the opposite sex.
The new constitution also ensures that women have the right to request a female doctor, rather than a male who identifies as female, for intimate care.
Health Secretary Victoria Akins has called out ostensibly inclusive language as confusing.
“We have said in the consultation that we would like language to be clear,” she stated. “We know that in some parts of the NHS some language is used which is meant with the best of intentions to include, be inclusive, but it can, I think, also actually exclude people.”
She noted that she had visited “a wonderful maternity unit recently full of warmth and joy and happiness with wonderful members of staff, but they were talking about ‘service users’ and I realized after a while they meant women or mums-to-be or mothers — the language that we would use in conversation when talking about someone having a baby. So that sort of language … we shouldn’t have to eradicate women from our language in order to be inclusive and welcoming.”
For that reason, terms such as “chestfeeding,” “people who have ovaries,” or “birthing people” will be banned as the NHS cautions on the importance of using sex-specific language.
Brighton and Sussex University Hospital was the first NHS trust to implement a gender-inclusive language code for its maternity ward. Midwives were told to use terms such as “human milk,” “breast/chestmilk,” and “milk from the feeding mother or parent” rather than simply saying “breastmilk.”
Akins is quoted in a government press release saying,
“We want to make it abundantly clear that if a patient wants same-sex care they should have access to it wherever reasonably possible.
We have always been clear that sex matters and our services should respect that.
By putting this in the NHS Constitution we’re highlighting the importance of balancing the rights and needs of all patients to make a healthcare system that is faster, simpler and fairer for all.”
Maya Foraster, who is the chief executive of the advocacy group Sex Matters, celebrated the move, stating, “Sex, of course, is a matter of biology, not identity, and it is welcome that the NHS is now spelling this out in relation to single-sex accommodation and intimate care.”
She said the new constitution was “a return to common sense and an overdue recognition that women’s wellbeing and safety matter.”
Foraster called it a major step forward in reversing NHS England’s “capitulation to the demands of gender extremists, which has damaged policies and practices, created widespread confusion and harmed patient care.”
“Clear language, single-sex wards and access to intimate care provided by a health professional of the same sex are crucial to the wellbeing and safety of female patients. They should never have been compromised,” she stated.
The update is another in a bevy of moves by the NHS in the last two years to reverse course on gender ideology.
In 2022, the NHS announced it would close the Tavistock Clinic, the nation’s gender identity clinic for minors. It also recently found that in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adulthood and, as a result, cautioned against not just the use of medical and surgical intervention in children but also against social transitions.
Earlier this year the NHS banned the use of puberty blockers in minors.
In April, Dr. Hilary Cass released her final report for the NHS, which encouraged a holistic approach to children with feelings of discontent about their sex and urged extreme caution in using puberty blockers and cross sex-hormones in children. Following the report, the NHS announced that it would conduct a separate investigation into adult gender facilities.
The U-turn on gender transitions comes as American governmental bodies demand an unquestioning approach.
The Department for Health and Family Services (HHS) has recommended the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in children.
In the last two weeks the Executive Branch of the federal government has released new rules for Title IX and guidance for Title VII demanding affirmation of gender identity.
The changes to enforcement of Title IX require that transgender people be granted access to locker rooms, bathrooms, or lodgings according to their chosen gender identity; mandate that transgender athletes be allowed to compete on sports teams of their stated gender identity rather than their biological sex; and compel students and faculty to use the preferred pronouns of transgender students. Violations of these rules can lead to a loss of federal funding for the schools, while students who refuse to share a locker room or dorm with a student of the opposite sex or who misgender a transgender student could be disciplined for harassment or discrimination.
The EEOC released guidance earlier this week saying that it is harassment under Title VII to refuse to allow an employee to use the bathroom of their gender identity or to refuse to use an employee’s preferred pronouns.
This zealous devotion to gender ideology and the sterilization of and experimentation on its young people on the part of the U.S. and some state governments, progressive schools, and medical professionals is truly akin to feverish cultism rather than science. Even while European countries now see the folly of gender transitions and have begun to exercise restraint, the United States government is engaged in a campaign of demanding that every single one of its citizens participate in mass psychosis and scientific quackery.
The evidence is clear: Puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and mutilating surgeries are not just morally wrong, they are physically harmful. Moreover, the demand that everyone assent to transgender ideology is leading to such lunacy as allowing men in women’s prisons and referring to mothers as “birthing people” and “chestfeeders.”
It’s time the U.S. government and other core institutions admit to the farce of gender ideology and lead a revival of common sense.
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