The Government will remind the General Medical Council (GMC) of the “importance of the use of correct language”, after it faced a backlash for removing female-specific words from its maternity and menopause policies.
Responding to a question in the House of Lords, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care The Lord Markham CBE promised to convey “the clear feelings of all of us in the House today about women who are women and mothers, and men who are male and fathers”.
Although he noted that the regulator for UK doctors is independent from the Government and responsible for its own staff guidance, he said he “will be very clear on medical issues and the belief of all of us here in this House”.
‘Biological sex matters’
Lord Markham stated: “The Government are clear that biological sex matters and that there are different health needs between the sexes. Removing language around biological sex has the potential for unintended and adverse health consequences.”
He added: “I believe that, more than anything in society, we have to be tolerant of people and their ability to have free speech and express their views freely.
“I think we have all seen circumstances where people feel intimidated in expressing what they feel is right, particularly in this circumstance of stating clearly when a woman is a woman and when a man is a man.”
Removing language around biological sex has the potential for unintended and adverse health consequences.
A GMC spokesman stated: “We have clearly titled policies for our staff, including maternity, paternity and adoption policies. We review these regularly in consultation with our staff.”
Erasing women
Last month, The Daily Telegraph reported that the GMC had updated its maternity guidance in May, where it ditched the term “surrogate mother” in favour of “surrogate parent”.
a concerted effort to ignore the existence of women
The GMC now also defines menopause as “a natural event in some colleagues’ lives”, which will take place for “a person” in the UK at the average age of 51.
A female employee warned: “It’s a concerted effort to ignore the existence of women.”
“It’s not appropriate for a medical organisation to ignore biology. They should stick to science. People are worried about putting their heads above the parapet” and are having “the organisation’s ‘woke’ ideology forced on them, it’s not right”.
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