Please help me articulate why this makes me uneasy...

Can you reiterate that you're clear they realise language is important hence their inclusiveness for trans people. Then pull out stats highlighting how rare it is and language needs to accommodate and make comfortable the majority service users. The more protracted the language and service set up the more distance you add at a time when full transparency is needed?

It grates because the ability -if everything works- to carry a pregnancy and give birth is a key discriminator of ‘women’ from ‘people’.

If clinicians can’t grasp that basic fact and are happy to alienate thousands of women for a minuscule number of trans men (who have accepted the female role in procreation) - then they are in the wrong job.

Keep at it - I am in the NHS too - Reminding people that sex not gender affects disease incidence, treatment and outcomes. At a push I accept gender can affect behaviour which can impact on some disease incidence/ outcomes I.e smoking rates etc.

Be open and voice your concerns about how this change of term might negatively impact on the women’s engagement. You could use the response to the NHS / charities or removing the word woman from other campaigns - is cervical cancer.

Perhaps you could suggest a ‘pilot survey’ on how women want to be referred as - after all it should be centred on them- I can predict the outcome.

Personally - I think being pregnant is crappy enough without being erased.

Have they conducted a survey? If so who did they consult. Giving birth is the most fundamental aspect of being a woman. It can be both dangerous and exhilarating. It is an intensely biological process. Removing the word woman makes quite clear that they are not prepared to unequivocally centre the biological reality of their patients. Their job is to do that. Trans men who give birth should be treated sensitively but they are undergoing a female not male biological process. How can female patients trust medical practioners who do not understand this?
Perhaps they should read 'Invisible Women's- medicine has a pretty poor record in treating women.

Because it's erasing women and our lived experience.

"Birthing people" to me means the people around the birth, midwives, doulas, doctors etc. The ones who support the woman giving birth.

Just keep saying "woman" every time someone says something ridiculous which excludes the woman - and point out the exclusion. Only women can give birth after all.

Can you tell I'm getting a bit fed up with the tiptoeing around so-called inclusion and the erasure of actual birth-giving women?