A US government funded prison report has come under fire after replacing the term ‘women’ with ‘birthing people’ and ‘birthing parent’.
Experts told DailyMail.com it was another sign of ‘progressive jargon’ creeping into important medical literature and health advice.
The study looked at how pregnant women in female prisons are treated and was partly-funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
But an abstract of the research published on the NIH website curiously does not use the words ‘women’, ‘woman’ or ‘female’.
Instead, gender-neutral terms like ‘people who give birth’, ‘birthing parent’, ‘people who want to provide milk’, ‘birthing people’ and ‘incarcerated people’.
The term ‘chest-feeding’ is also used once in the paper.
Stella O’Malley, executive director of the advocacy group Genspect, told DailyMail.com: ‘Over-the-top and elaborate efforts to be inclusive for certain groups often end up excluding other groups.
‘The [National Institutes of Health] should revert to simple and clear language if they want to help the most people possible.
‘People who don’t speak English fluently will not be able to understand this report, and this is in itself exclusionary.’
It comes after DailyMail.com revealed ‘women’ had been scrubbed from official flu advice.
The report uses phrases like ‘people who give birth’, ‘birthing people’ and other references to ‘people’ rather than ‘women’ throughout the report
Some have accused medical institutions of confusing people and erasing women by using gender neutral terms when discussing pregnancy or menstruation (file photo)
The report is titled ‘Lactation Support for People Who Are Incarcerated: A Systematic Review’, published in Breastfeeding Medicine.
It was a meta-analysis of 20 existing studies on the topic, and was carried out by experts at the University of North Carolina (UNC).
The report was led by Dr Kathryn Wouk, an adjunct professor of maternal and child health at the UNC Gillings School of Public Health.
DailyMail.com has approached Dr Wouk for comment.
There are hundreds of references to women throughout the 35-page report and dozens of gender-neutral terms, which experts say confuses things even more.
Ms O’Malley said: ‘Women are bound by our biology, and pregnancy and lactation are intrinsically female experiences.
‘If a person who has medically transitioned becomes pregnant, this means that they are perfectly aware of the reality of being female and don’t need complicated language to dance around the fact that they are female.’
Patrick Brown of the Ethics and Public Policy Center told DailyMail.com: ‘This report is another example of progressive jargon trying to obscure reality.
‘Using artificial, off-putting language like “birthing person” or “people who want to provide milk” erases the specific health care needs women have around childbirth and breastfeeding.
‘Shoehorning woke identity politics into worthwhile initiatives, like providing breastfeeding support for incarcerated women, does nothing to help moms and babies, and instead turns the topic into a counterproductive culture war football.’
Dr Mahri Irvine, executive director of the Women’s Liberation Front told DailyMail.com: ‘Women are the only people who are capable of becoming pregnant, giving birth, and breastfeeding babies; women face unique physiological and psychological issues related to pregnancy and breastfeeding.’
‘Erasing the fundamental biological realities of motherhood is a sign of extreme disrespect to women everywhere. Women are not “birthing people” – they are women.’
She also asks, ‘Why is the NIH seem so intent on obfuscating the basic fact that only women give birth, and only women experience challenges related to nursing?’
This is not the first time leading public health institutions in the US have come under fire for erasing women in favor of gender neutral language.
On Monday, DailyMail.com revealed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had removed the word ‘women’ from its flu vaccine guidance.
An analysis found a dozen changes in the CDC’s flu guidance in August, all removing phrases like ‘pregnant women’ to replace with ‘pregnant people’.
The CDC was slammed, with the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) said there was ‘no logical scientific reason’, claiming it was ‘clearly a political move’.
In September, DailyMail.com revealed that the agency was using the phrase ‘pregnant people’ in its guidance for monkeypox.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk