Major investigations into NHS maternity failings have sparked a backlash by referring to ‘birthing people’ and ‘birthing population’ rather than simply ‘women’.
Campaigners said only women can get pregnant and give birth and ‘unscientific jargon’ that pretends otherwise adds ‘insult to injury’ for the families affected by care scandals.
The language used appears to have been ‘shoe-horned in’ to pander to the trans lobby, they add, and shows a ‘shameful disregard’ to the mums harmed.
The National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation, chaired by Baroness Valerie Amos, today found maternity units are ‘not fit for purpose’ with filthy and crumbling hospitals leaving mothers suffering unsafe and undignified care.
It found the NHS continues to inflict harm, ignore women and cover-up mistakes despite years of reviews, inquiries and hundreds of previous recommendations.
But it seemingly fails to notice the irony of highlighting the role of medical misogyny and the repeated failure to listen to women’s voices while using the phrase ‘birthing people’ throughout.
The report defends its wording in a breakout box before the foreword by saying it uses what it describes as ‘an additive approach to language’.
‘By this, we mean that the report seeks to centre the experiences of women and mothers, while also recognising that not everyone who is pregnant, gives birth or uses maternity and perinatal services identifies as a woman or mother,’ it adds.
Senior midwife Donna Ockenden (pictured) led the inquiry into Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.
The report came less than a week after an inquiry into Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, led by senior midwife Donna Ockenden, found more than 500 mothers and babies suffered avoidable harm or died due to ‘deeply embedded systemic failures’ at the ‘toxic’ hospital trust.
That report also used the phrases ‘birthing population’ and ‘birthing people’.
Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns at sex-based rights charity Sex Matters, told the Daily Mail: ‘It’s a disgrace that Baroness Amos and Donna Ockenden refer to ‘mothers and birthing people’ in their investigations into NHS neonatal and maternity services.
‘There have been so many heartbreaking stories of mothers and babies gravely let down by NHS trusts across the UK, but someone decided to shoe-horn “birthing people” into both the Amos and Ockenden reports, presumably so as not to offend the trans lobby.
‘The pain and loss is felt by mothers and fathers, but only women can become pregnant and give birth. To pretend otherwise shows shameful disregard for women harmed by these systemic failures in the NHS.
‘They are all mothers, not “birthing people”.
‘The priority in the NHS should be the treatment and care of pregnant women and their babies, not pandering to transactivists with this unscientific jargon, which adds insult to injury for families affected by these scandals.’
Writing on X, Independent MP Rosie Duffield also took aim at Lady Amos, saying ‘Got to say, it’s incredibly irritating, and entirely unnecessary that every single time the word “women” is used in the report, it’s immediately followed by “and birthing people”.
Baroness Valerie Amos (pictured) chaired the National Maternity and Neonatal Investigation.
‘A tiny handful of women, doing a physical thing that only our sex is capable of, identify otherwise.’
Claire Coutinho, the shadow equalities minister, told the Daily Mail: ‘This review should be a major turning point for maternity and neonatal services, exposing some of the awful failings that have seriously let women and their babies down.
‘Adopting activist language in a way that erases the role of mothers seriously undermines the importance of its findings.
‘The women at the heart of this issue deserve better than to written out of the story completely.
‘It is yet another example of how our public services have been captured by an obsession with equality and diversity.’
Families whose children were harmed or died due to NHS maternity failings said Lady Amos’s report is not sufficiently independent, as they renewed their calls for a statutory public inquiry.
The Maternity Safety Alliance said plans for a new national maternity commissioner in the format she proposed are ‘dangerous’, while there is not enough scrutiny of regulators such as the Care Quality Commission and General Medical Council.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that the chairman of inquiries into maternity scandals at Morecambe Bay and East Kent resigned from Lady Amos’s review in a dispute over ‘normal birth ideology’, which sees women pressured into having a vaginal birth even if they request a c-section.
Independent MP Rosie Duffield (pictured) said use of the phrase ‘birthing people’ was ‘incredibly irritating’.
Dr Bill Kirkup stepped down from his position as expert adviser, with Health Service Journal reporting it was due to him wanting a stronger line on the patient safety consequences of a normal birth ideology than Lady Amos would agree to.
Lady Amos said in her review they ‘did not find that “normal birth ideology” was currently widespread in the maternity services we visited in England’.
Ms Ockenden also criticised the Amos report and threw doubt on whether she would accept the job of national maternity commissioner if offered it.
She told Times Radio: ‘I’ve looked at it overnight and I don’t see anything that we didn’t already know, that hasn’t already been spelled out very clearly.’
Asked if she would take on the role, Ms Ockenden said: ‘I wouldn’t want to be a failure because of lack of time or lack of focus or effort by others who should be doing more.’
Health secretary James Murray today told the Commons that maternity failures in the NHS are ‘on a scale that shames our society’.
And Wes Streeting pressed the Government to bring in the Hillsborough law before the summer to improve NHS maternity services.
The former health secretary said culture change will not happen without proper accountability and its duty of candour rules will help stop the NHS’s ‘cover-up culture’.
