Does Anyone know what a birthing person is ?

[Teacupover5]

Listening to Nicky Campbell on 5 live this morning 9-10 minutes in if anyone wants to listen again .Guest is discussing investigation into declining standards in maternity services .
Refers to women and birthing people being let down .
AIBU to not understand what a birthing person is ,and to wonder if this focus on inclusivity has had an impact on declining care for women ?

I guess that trans identifying women (ie trans men) don't need any accessible information on breast cancer, or be supported to access smear tests regularly then? By your logic? I don't think I get to dictate what a minority group needs in order to make access to healthcare or medical information more accessible when I'm not in that group. I do however believe that they need to access that healthcare and have that information and if it encourages them to actually get over the door to get a lump checked or a smear done then to me that is worth it. I don't need to fully understand WHY they need it in order to recognise that they are consistently advocating for this for more accessible and sensitive healthcare. If I'm still getting clear and factual information directed at me as a woman around my health then who am I to take that away from someone else who may be more vulnerable.

Do you actually think they are so stupid that they don't understand that they are female and can't understand that the word woman or female applies to them, despite the fact that they have given birth?

That's pretty transphobic to be honest.

Why would trans identifying women not have access to breast cancer information? Or not be able to access smear tests? They know they are women and their breasts and cervix don't magically fall off if they change their pronouns.

In what way would this language have an impact on the declining care for women? (Since they are biologically women but prefer not to be referred to as such). Wouldn’t it just be the same but using different words with that patient? Genuine question. I feel like most major issues with healthcare come down to lack of funding?

So you are talking about lack of funding impacting care but you are fine with the fact that funding is being spent on changing language rather than being spent on actual care?

No NHS funding should be spent on this.

It should be spent on medical need.

Well David Lammy thought men could grow a cervix. Men are in some hospitals being encouraged to chest feed chemical milk to babies.
So maybe adulterating and eroding the meaning of language has an effect on grinding down understanding and boundaries. Birthing people are also surrogate, hired wombs.

The NHS needs to know when a person is female or they might miss checking a transman ( born female) for pregnancy if they come into hospital in an emergency - unfortunately these scientists’ NHS records are not always clear:
A growing tendency in official data to ask a person for their gender identity rather than their sex is having serious consequences in some areas of healthcare such as missed cancer screenings and mistakes in blood testing. March 2025
www.bmj.com/content/388/bmj.r589

Written by midwives, this is an excellent article about the importance of sexed language:
.Effective Communication About Pregnancy, Birth, Lactation, Breastfeeding and Newborn Care: The Importance of Sexed Language | Global Women's Health
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fgwh.2022.818856/full?fbclid=IwAR2LxA0PL7cJ0SbS_Jq9df5jfLbCCwfVz86vd7aYWkeAq23liD_TpfEpuqA

And it's weird how this only works one way. We don't see NHS leaflets on prostate issues using language like "men and ejaculators". It's only women who are named by their bodily parts or functions.

Do you think that’s what the OP meant then, the marketing (and potentially staff training?) costs of changing the wording could be better spent elsewhere? I don’t think that was clear in the OP. Is that a big enough budget to make significant impact on medical care of the funds were redirected?

No I don't think trans or non binary people are stupid. I've already given an explanation none of which alluded to a lack of understanding. Feel free to read it.

@Bluemin a smear test or a breast check are very intimate things that we have to go through and there's a massive reluctance among many, many women to engage with these services for very valid reasons. Do you not think that would be harder still for someone experiencing gender dysphoria? So it might be reassuring for someone in that position to know before they arrive that they will be treated sensitively and small adjustments could be made to help reduce that in any way? That has to be done through advertising and public healthcare messaging to get them over the door in the first place which is surely, ultimately what we want? How does that affect the service you receive when you go or read the information relating to women using female specific language?

As long as both are included and provided for, then we are not removing services from women. We are increasing the access to services for a minority group of biological women who identify as trans/ non binary/ a gender.

It’s simple really - women give birth and breasts produce milk.

Aside from the term 'birthing people' including trans and non-binary (which obviously you know already) it does also technically include children, who aren't women but definitely do sometimes give birth and need maternity care.

"actual care?"

So how does someone who's experiencing significant gender dysphoria feel able to access that "actual care" when they are very concerned about how they will be received by their hcp. Particularly when related to a very intimate, potentially trauma triggering procedure that we know trans men and non binary people report as triggering gender dysphoria? We need people to attend services in order to receive 'actual care' and just because that care does not impact you, does not mean it isn't important to someone sense. Especially given that breast and cervical cancer are potentially deadly if not caught and treated as early as possible? To me that is very much a priority that we include as many people in that catchment as possible.

No I don't believe it increases access at all. In particular it is confusing for people with low literacy levels and for those with English as a second language - who are often genuinely the most vulnerable members of society.

The more I understand about the harms of gender identity ideology - both for women and girls AND for people asserting a trans identity - the more I am convinced that we should not affirm damaging delusions. It is not kind. It is lying. It is harming many, many vulnerable people including children.

And do you not think women who don't identify as someting other than women feel less less safe, less understood, less respected when faced with langiage like "women and birting people"?

How is there any way to interpret than other than "this provider believes womanhood is a mental characteristic and if I say I am a woman they will fit me into that frame regardless of how I may think of myself"?

Why do you think that is somehow better for women to be seen as a type of personality, and not "a woman is just someone with a female body, and other than that she can be anyone she wants"?

I sure as hell do not feel safe with people and organisations that use neo-sexist language about women.

Plus when you consider this, if both are being included then there's always roll outs of updated healthcare information the difference is that we are now just including another social demographic in the same budget without expanding it. Because its as well as not instead of.

And staff training should of course be invested in given that healthcare staff are the best resource we have in healthcare. Many providers offer free training on this topic and this could be rolled out during study time for students as well thus reducing costs but training in a sustainable way. Or delivered in conjunction with other scheduled training.

Personally? It wouldn't make me feel any less safe because I would assume that those providers were recognising what I am - that some people are born female, have female bodies and female specific organs and yet will really struggle with that. I don't think that acknowledging someone else finds that hard and needs an adjustment in how they receive a service reduces me to anything in any way.

Yes actual care.

We are told that trans people have always existed, yet it's only recently that there is a demand for language to be mangled in a way that harms female people.

To be trans you have to know you are the sex you were born.

It is not for a national health service that is woefully underfunding to affirm people who know which sex they are.

By all means treat people for mental health conditions but to change literature and language around this when people are unable to get basic health needs met is frankly ridiculous. They know if they need sex based treatment. Stop pretending they don't know which sex they were born and that they are incapable of seeking sexed based care.

Health professionals should give care based on material reality, and not be "trained" to pretend that someone has magically changed sex.

Are you aware of the women who was raped on a female hospital ward and the "trained" NHS staff said that it couldn't have happened as there were no men on the ward, while knowing full well that there was a transwoman on the ward. It looks months for the CCTV to be released to show that it was the transwoman who raped the woman. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/17/hospital-told-police-patient-not-raped-alleged-attacker-transgender/

This is the kind of thing that makes women genuinely unsafe. Altering language to conform to distorted reality has harmful real world consequences. I will not be part of that.

"No I don't believe it increases access at all. In particular it is confusing for people with low literacy levels and for those with English as a second language - who are often genuinely the most vulnerable members of society"

I do understand your concerns with this comment, but I think that is why it's very important that information is also provided visually in a way that doesn't require ANY language for it to be understood and female specific language should always be part of it. I think this is more of a risk when you have information going out that ONLY uses neutral language which I disagree with.

I dont think going back to picture books is the right way out of this mess.

I guess I think more deeply about things than you do then.

I do feel less safe with this language, because it means an organisation either truly believes that "women" are a personality type, and if you believe that then the very clear connection between the way female people are treated in society and the need for female-only support and resources is broken and those protections and supports become hard to justify, or perhaps even worse, the organisation doesn't believe it but is happy to pay lip service to it despite the manifest unfairness to women of having our name, political voice and cultural history rewritten.

To me this is a separate issue - a rapist is a rapist is a rapist they aren't a rapist because they are trans, this speaks to the need for women only spaces to remain completely women only which I fully support. Same for women having the right to be treated by a biological female should they so wish. Of course trans people know they are trans and need to receive treatment based on their biological sex, but that's not to say that NO adjustments can be made along the way to make that easier or more comfortable for them such as using neutral language while still medically treating them as their biological sex.

nor do I.

It's absolutely absurd (and transphobic) to suggest that a trans identifying female doesn't understand their sex and that there are health risk associated with their sex.

Remember this thread is about trans identifying women who go on to give birth (about the most female thing a woman can ever do!)

If their mental health is so fragile that they can't cope with the reality of their sexed bodies then they should receive mental health care for that as that is awful.

Millions of pounds should not be spent on training or literature to erase women, making it harder for disabled, low intelligence and people for whom English is not the first language to access care.

A rapist is not a rapist because he is trans, but that rapist in a women-only space was a rapist in a women-only space because he was trans.

Midwife friend once had to
lift a faux meat and two veg out of the way to deliver a baby. That’s a birthing person for sure.