After multiple scandals, repeated warnings from experts, and a revolving door of health secretaries, the NHS will finally be made to stop the ‘eradication’ of the term women and the use of ‘artificial language’.
Health Secretary Victoria Atkins has today announced proposed changes to the NHS Constitution, a document enshrining what the health service is dedicated to achieve, in the matter of recognising the importance of biological sex.
Discussing the changes Ms Atkins said language the NHS uses should ‘be clear and make sense to people’, and not ‘eradicate women’.
She told Times Radio: ‘There will be listeners who are worried about the fact that they see articles in the paper about “chestfeeding” and language such as that.’
The change in attitude is also being matched with proposals to ensure trans patients only use single-sex wards and that patients have the right to request intimate care from a medic of their own sex.
Here, MailOnline explains how we got here amid years of scandal and multiple promises.
Health and Social Care Secretary Victoria Atkins (pictured) said that ‘if a patient wants same-sex care they should have access to it wherever reasonably possible’
Here are some examples of the woke language changes that have engulfed NHS communications. Some of these examples have been taken from national NHS communications while others are used by individual hospitals
While examples of individual NHS trusts erasing or avoiding terms like women from local advice had previously come to light, in 2022 it became a national issue.
MailOnline revealed NHS Digital had quietly scrubbed all mention of women from its landing pages for ovarian, womb and cervical cancer.
The previous version of the ovarian NHS cancer page featured the line: ‘Ovarian cancer, or cancer of the ovaries, is one of the most common types of cancer in women.’
This had been replaced by ‘Anyone with ovaries can get ovarian cancer, but it mostly affects those over 50.’
Then, just a few weeks later this website revealed ‘women’ and ‘woman’ had also been omitted from official advice about the menopause, which is unique to biological females.
The webpage previously described the condition as ‘when a woman stops having periods and is no longer able to get pregnant naturally’.
But the new, gender-neutral description stated: ‘Menopause is when your periods stop due to lower hormone levels’.
In total six mentions of ‘women’ and ‘woman’ have been scrubbed from the page.
Justifying the change, NHS Digital said at the time they wanted language to be ‘inclusive and respectful’.
The move was condemned by then Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who said ‘common sense and the right language’ should be used to ‘give people the best possible care’.
In 2022 then Sajid Javid promised to reverse gender neutral language in NHS advice after MailOnline revealed the term ‘women’ had been quietly erased from menopause advice
Dr Cass’s (pictured) report concluded this week that trans children were set on the path to irreversible change despite ‘remarkably weak evidence’ to support medical treatment
Health experts criticised the degendering change in language warning that vital health advice for women was being over-complicated.
Another example, which was reversed following backlash, was the NHS’s miscarriage page.
In the change NHS officials had replaced ‘women who know they’re pregnant’ with ‘people who know they are pregnant’.
Another line on the page was also criticised for saying miscarriage ‘only affects about one in 100 people’ instead of women.
However, it wasn’t the end of the scandals.
In that same year, the NHS was criticised over ‘ideological’ new advice for trans parents that failed to mention the word ‘breast’.
A page titled ‘chestfeeding if you’re trans or non-binary’ makes no mention of breasts and refers to breast reduction operations as ‘top surgery’.
The guidance also encouraged people to keep taking hormone transitioning drugs when they ‘chestfeed’, despite the NHS admitting ‘it is unclear what effect this could have on your baby’.
While being written a year prior to publication, the advice was only published online after nearly 12 months of internal NHS wrangling.
Even the final version provoked concern among nurses and maternity experts, who said it fails to warn people about health risks of such practices to both parents and babies.
In October 2023 then Health Secretary Steve Barclay announced his intention to reverse the tide of ‘ideological’ inclusive language in the NHS.
He slammed the ‘unacceptable’ use of gender-neutral language on advice pages for female-only conditions like cervical cancer.
Sex-specific language has now been ‘fully restored’ on offending health sections as a result of his intervention, he said.
Mr Barclay also revealed he was ‘going further’ as he unveiled proposals to ban trans women — biological men who identify as being the opposite gender — using female-only hospital wards.
He argued it was ‘vital women’s voices are heard’ and the ‘privacy, dignity and safety of all patients are protected’.
Amid the background of these language scandals another NHS controversy was being addressed — the standards and quality of care gender questioning children.
It wasn’t until earlier this year that damming findings of the Cass review exposed the ‘shaky foundations’ of NHS transgender treatment.
Led by renowned paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, it found vulnerable children questioning their gender have been ‘let down’ by medics who have used ‘remarkably weak evidence’ to dole out life-altering treatments such as puberty blockers.
While the mammoth 400-page report didn’t focus on language used in the NHS, it brought much needed clarity and focus to a controversial, exceptionally toxic and murky area of modern medicine.
It also highlighted how sweeping changes to health practices were being made in the name of gender inclusivity and weren’t being backed with evidence.
In the wake of the report the NHS announced it would launch a similar wide-reaching review into adult trans care services.
This will serve as a ‘Cass, part two’, it said, that encompasses the whole field.
The changes proposed in the NHS Constitution haven’t been finalised and will be subject to an eight-week consultation which will close on June 25.
However, they have already been broadly welcomed by women’s rights groups and gender critical feminists.
Maya Forstater, chief executive of Sex Matters, a human rights charity that campaigns for clarity on sex in law, policy and language, said: ‘Victoria Atkins explicitly referring to biological sex is very significant.
‘It will benefit anyone who needs same-sex intimate care in the NHS in England, or who may do so in the future.
‘We can expect an outraged response from trans rights activists, but this is simply a return to common sense, and an overdue recognition that women’s wellbeing and safety matter.’
