NHS England about to roll out its Maternity gender inclusion programme - open letter

[SiobhanSharpe]

We Are with Women, a campaign group of healthcare professionals for pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding concerns is sending an open letter to Lizzie Streeter, NHS England National LGBT Programme Manager requesting a plan to roll out ideologically led HCP training be paused due to lack of peer reviewed evidence, impact assessment or pilot project evaluation.
On Twitter. (see With Women)

Signed

If people cannot see what disservice this is to women, it’s beyond believe.

put that money against training to reduce mortality of BAME women at birthing and perinatal care.

Not taking from non-binary care, but that training is not medical. It seems just language policing.

What's your twitter handle?

Took me a while to find. It's With Woman and the twitter handle is @wearewithwoman

Given that the census has shown us that 0.5% of the UK population believe they are the opposite sex what is the data on how many women accessing maternity services believe they are not women? I would guess that it might be lower than 0.5. How is it justifiable to change maternity services to suit less than 0.5% of users to the detriment of the much higher number who will not be native speakers of English or have low literacy or find not having their status as women and mothers distressing, offensive and disempowering? What will the unintended consequences be for the mother infant dyad?

Yes. All of that.

I've signed.

signed

It shows the terrifying levels of capture in the NHS with abysmal statistics about inadequate maternity care country wide, countless women and babies harmed, Black women being four times more likely to die in childbirth and numerous maternity services being rated inadequate. Yet every trust is expected to divert money and resources to this luxury belief involving a miniscule number of people.
There are some good insights on this other thread:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4714803-open-letter-to-lizzie-streeter-nhs-england-national-lgbt-programme-manager-requesting-ps100k-maternity-gender-inclusion-programme-is-paused

I have found this related link

with-woman.org/2023/01/09/press-release-clinicians-and-researchers-urge-nhs-england-to-pause-100k-transgender-midwifery-training-covering-40-trusts/

It defies belief that NHS England would roll out a new training programme based on this 'research' which frankly does not deserve to be called research, let alone without further consideration of all users and where the priorities should lie.

48k transmen according the the census. When that gets broken down further we'll see how many are in their fertile years.

Plus the Enbies, of course, but hopefully they will have grown up a bit before deciding to bring children into the world.

We have not got the money to waste on this shit. If you decide to do what only females can do eg give birth, then I've no sympathy at all if someone misgenders you.

And of that 48,000 how many will need to access maternity services. It seems that they would be less inclined to motherhood than their peers and that they would be more likely to be infertile due to induced menopause by puberty blockers, testosterone or even hysterectomy.

This. And the truly dysphoric and likely to be massively triggered by real language are seeking surrogacy.

What percentage of people are we really talking about? A lot less than those who'll be disadvantaged by real language.

When I recently gave birth, a MW told me this was women's superpower.

Signed

Hear hear to that. But the PC crowd do not think in that logical manner as they are wedded to a cult.

I would also like to add that the average reading age in the UK is 9 years old.

Medical language especially needs to be as clear and as simple as possible to allow everyone access to health care.

If an individual wishes to be referred to by terms that do not relate to women, this is their choice and should be respected of course. However, reducing women to cervix havers or birthing parent or chestfeeders strikes me as...dehumanising.

Is it possible to sign this if you’re not on Twitter?

Try with-woman.org
with-woman.org/2023/01/04/open-letter-pause-midwifery-training-based-on-flawed-research/
The letter seems to be on there too with a request to sign it.