Is it true that British doctors were forbidden to use the words “mother” and “women's milk”?

On February 10, 2021, several Russian media at once reported that the British healthcare service (NHS) ordered its employees to use “women's milk”, “mother” and some others to its employees, a new gender and wintering vocabulary. We checked whether this is really so.

In the winter of 2021, Russian media talked about the fact that the UK proposed changing the usual terms that were used in gynecology and obstetrics for a long time. Note on this on Lenta.ru It was called “Substackers in Britain will be forced to use the word" mother "because of transgender people, and material on Life I went out Under the heading of “British doctors, they called for the name of breast milk human. In order not to offend anyone. ” Did not stand aside either "Tsargrad" With Radio Sputnik. In the evening of the same day, the plot on this topic I went out in the program "Time" on Channel One.

In a note on lenta.ru It is said: “The division of the National Health Service (NHS) of Britain in Brighton and Sussex will prohibit midwife to use the word“ mother ”and other words related exclusively with the female sex, when discussing motherhood issues with patients. A new language policy for medical institutions was created to protect the feelings of transgender. ” The authors of the material report that in communication with the patients “mother” they proposed replacing “more neutral” words such as “giving birth”. Breast milk (Breast Milk) is proposed to be called gender-neutral words Chest Milk (English Chest denotes any chest: male and female) or Human Milk ("human milk"). The publication refers to a press release issued by the perinatal department of the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH) trust: “We try to protect transgender and non-warn persons using our services from additional pressure due to terminology, which has a significant impact on their psychological and emotional well-being”.

In the report of Timur Siraziev, output On the First Channel in the “Time” program, it is not directly said that the words “mother” and “women's milk” are prohibited, but the correspondent claims that in the new official instruction “instead of“ pregnant woman ”, it is proposed to say an asexual“ pregnant person ”, and the pronoun“ does not use it ”. The essence of the initiative of Siraziev retells under the article in the newspaper The Times: “Gender identity can be a source of oppression and inequality. We strive to overcome this inequality in a medical basis in relation to all our patients. ”

A document called "Gender-Indian language in perinatal medicine" really Publishedbut its action does not apply to the territory of the whole Britain. Recommendations were prepared by one of the BSUH trust departments. The activities of this organization are concentrated in two hospitals in the south of England: Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton and Princess Royal Hospital in Heivort-Hit. The trust is also engaged in medical care in another six hospitals and seven clinics in Sussex along with other trusts, while the monopolist in the region is not at all. In total in NHS 223 trusts, in the counties of Sasssex and Sarray act 13 trusts, as well as a dozen other NHS organizations engaged in medical care of the population, private hospitals and medical rooms. So BSUH is only part of the healthcare system even on the scale of its region. And to argue that the service instructions published in one of his branches determine the policy of all national medicine is incorrect.

We must also understand that BSUH is a special trust. The Telegraph reportsthat he positions himself as a leader of LGBT-claria and is closely cooperating with the charitable organization of Stonewall, standing on the front border of the struggle for gender self-identification. At the same time, Stonewall's human rights ardor does not always meet support even in Tolerant Great Britain. It can be assumed that most other organizations included in NHS are unlikely to fight for gender-indester vocabulary with the same enthusiasm as BSUH.

But it is even more important that in the recommendations of BSUH MATERNITY ("TUDITICH", as this document They called it On the First Channel), and in some publications in the British media dedicated to this topic, it is said that the trust does not refuse the usual terminology, and suggests using new words in addition to existing ones. “The vast majority of those who use obstetric services are women, and for them we have suitable words. This will not change, and we will continue to call them pregnant women and talk with them about breastfeeding (Breast Feeding), ”the second page of the leadership says. The new words (including Birthing Parent, and Chest Milk and Human Milk) in personal communication are proposed to use in cases where patients prefer it, but there are no instructions to apply them to all women in labor, without exception, and not to use traditional words. By the way, the same thing is said in article The Times, which was referred to by the reporters of the first channel, for some reason ignoring the most part of the text.

IN Recommendations BSUH MATERNITY also has a table of examples of how, according to the new rules, in public statements and documents, people and phenomena related to the topic of motherhood should be called generally. This table does not say that it is necessary to use the word “giving birth” instead of the word “mother” or “human milk” instead of “breast milk”. But it says that where “mothers” were written in the documents, it was better to write “mothers and giving birth to parents”, and instead of “woman” - “woman or person”, etc. About the word “she”, the instruction was said about the abolition of the first channel, the instruction recommends using the pronoun They (“they”), but only in those statements, where Woman ry ry Person, not everywhere and everywhere. There is no language innovation in this: in English, They is everywhere used in relation to one person when his gender / gender is not known to the speaker.

It is worth noting that not only Russian, but also some The British media, including respectable, wrote about the initiative of BSUH MATERNITY in a similar way: supposedly the NHS trust proposes to use new words instead of old ones, without specifying that in fact we are talking about the parallel use of old and new words depending on the circumstances. In this regard, on February 10, BSUH MATERNITY Management Published An additional message, in which he once again explained that the staff did not receive instructions to stop using the words “woman”, “mother” and other familiar English words. Moreover, on the website of the unit can now be found a large number of publications in which still Used Worm Women. They did not refuse BSUH and obviously genderly painted word Midwife ("midwife").

Thus, the fact that the obstetric branch of the BSUH trust has proposed using new gender-in-winging words to its employees remains the fact. At the same time, the reports are that the employees of this department are forced to use neologisms instead of old vocabulary. Where you need to call people or phenomena generally, the leadership recommends using both words, and in communication with a specific patient - those words that the patient prefers. The formulations used by Russian and some world media are also incorrect: “banned”, “was urgently recommended to replace”, “recommended to exclude”, “rewritten the laws of nature”. It is also incorrect that the recommendations published by BSUH Maternity are addressed to other units of the trust, other NHS or British medicine in general.

Most of the untruth

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. https://www.bsuh.nhs.uk/maternity/wp-content/uploads/7/7/2021/01/gender-inclusive-in-perinatal-services.pdf
2. https://www.snopes.com/Fact-check/chestfeeding-breastfeeding/