Fury as GMC removes word ‘mother’ from staff maternity guidance as part of ‘concerted effort’ to ignore women

The General Medical Council has swapped the word ‘mother’ for neutral terms in its maternity guidance for staff.

Its updated guidance for when employees become pregnant now entirely omits the term ‘mother’. 

The internal document now refers to ‘surrogate parents’ instead of ‘surrogate mothers’ , with all female-specific terms removed from the text.

Separate guidance on the organisation’s menopause policy was also tweaked to remove references to women.

One GMC employee said the move was a ‘concerted effort’ to ignore women and biology, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

They added that people were having ‘woke’ ideology forced upon them because they were too afraid to speak up against it.

It comes after some NHS hospitals threatened employees with disciplinary action if they failed to refer to staff with the correct pronouns.

A Mail on Sunday investigation revealed that 999 operators were told to not use terms such as Sir or Madam but ask callers their preferred pronouns to avoid misgendering them.

Other NHS guidance allows transgender women to use female-only hospital wards , irrespective of whether or not they’ve had surgery or legally changed their sex.

A government funded report recommended last year that the NHS use terms such as ‘chestfeeding’ and ‘frontal birth’ instead of gender-loaded words, in order to not offend pregnant trans people.

Heather Welford from activist group With Woman said the choice of terms was ‘ideologically driven’ and ‘insulting’ to women.

The move comes amid a series of questions about ‘woke ideology’ being imposed on the health service. Last month The Mail on Sunday revealed that 999 operators were being told to use callers’ correct pronouns rather than addressing them Sir or Madam

The GMC’s menopause document also contains suggestions that it is not an issue exclusive to women.

While maternity guidance published in 2015 refers to ‘surrogate mothers’, the updated version refers to ‘surrogate parents’.

Helen Joyce, the director of Sex Matters said that the decision to erase the word ‘mother’ by a leading medical organisation ‘beggars belief’.

The GMC said that maternity, paternity and adoption policies were clearly titled and regularly reviewed.