No, babies do not have ‘gender identities’

Doctors at some NHS hospitals are now being asked to fill in forms to indicate whether patients have a penis, vagina, uterus, cervix, breasts, prostate, testes and ovaries.

It’s probably useful for doctors to know that a patient’s organs are all present and correct. But this bizarre ‘organ inventory’, as it’s been called, isn’t really about checking whether a patient is missing a bit or two – it’s yet another confusing and hamfisted attempt on the part of the NHS to appease the trans lobby. So fearful is management of using old-fashioned biology-based terms like ‘male’ or ‘female’ that it is having to resort to lists of body parts instead.

It gets worse. The contents of each of these ‘sexual orientation and gender-identity forms’ are to be included on a person’s Electronic Patient Record (EPR). In addition to ticking boxes relating to the possession of male or female genitalia, medics are also asked to indicate a patient’s sexual orientation, gender, sex ‘assigned at birth’, preferred pronouns, whether or not they have transitioned and whether or not they plan to do so in the future. All this info is recorded for digital posterity, regardless of whether it’s relevant to a patient’s treatment.

These new forms are being rolled out in hospitals across London and England as part of a brand new IT system. It’s predicted to cost nearly half a billion quid over the next 15 years. If only there was a less complicated, less expensive way of answering the question, ‘are you a man or a woman?’.

NHS staff haven’t just been filling in absurd gender-identity forms using the new IT system. A whistleblower has told the Daily Mail that midwives at two hospitals in London – King’s College Hospital and Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital – have been having to record newborn babies’ ‘gender identities’ rather than their sex. It shouldn’t need to be said, but babies cannot have a gender identity. They cannot have an inner sense of their ‘gendered selves’ that may differ from their biological sex. Because they’re babies.

The NHS has since claimed that its infant gender-identity register was an ‘error’. But it’s difficult to believe it was simply a mistake. After all, over the past few years, the NHS seems to have fully embraced gender-identity theory. On countless occasions it has manipulated language around gender and sex in order to promote trans ideology. NHS trusts have issued guidelines advising staff to refer to ‘chestfeeding’ rather than ‘breastfeeding’, to use ‘birthing parent’ for ‘mother’, ‘front hole’ for ‘vagina’. And so on.

This isn’t all the NHS’s own doing. Trans lobby groups, such as Stonewall and the LGBT Foundation, have played a key role in this trans makeover. They have pressured hospital trusts across England to adopt this ‘trans-friendly’ jargon. And they helped to develop the NHS Rainbow Badge scheme, a rating system to rank hospitals based on how trans-inclusive they are. So if hospitals use ‘gendered’ language, such as ‘mother’ on maternity wards, or ‘women’ when calling up patients for smear tests, they lose ranking points.

It sounds almost comical. But this manipulation of language in the name of trans inclusion is not only absurd, it also affects patients’ healthcare. There have even been reports that women have missed smear tests and men have missed prostate-cancer checks because their sex is no longer listed correctly. It seems the NHS is potentially putting patients at risk, all to accommodate a tiny portion of the population who don’t conform to gender norms?

Of course, many of the doctors and nurses within the NHS recognise the problems caused by this manipulation of language. But they’re afraid to speak out. The whistleblowing midwife who approached the Mail about the gender-identity register, claims there is a ‘climate of fear’ among hospital staff. And no wonder. Those who do express concerns that gender ideology is being put above patient welfare are accused of ‘transphobia’ or even ‘homophobia’.

And so, at a time when the NHS’s waiting list has hit a record high of 7.75million in England, staff are expected to familiarise themselves with a new trans lexicon and painstakingly document the history of a patient’s penis. The NHS really needs to get its priorities straight.

Lauren Smith is an editorial assistant at spiked.