A grieving mother fought back tears in an impassioned plea for NHS doctors to remove ‘dehumanising’ gender-neutral language.
Addressing a group of Lords on the Committee on Preterm Birth, Ciara Curran held a hug in memory of her unborn daughter Sinead, who died in utero at just 24 weeks.
Choking, she recalled how during the emergency that led to Sinead’s death, doctors saw me “just as a body on a bed,” adding: “I was not seen as a woman in need of health care.”
Mrs Curran, from Chinley, Derbyshire, said seeing the words mother and wife erased from healthcare communications reminded her of that traumatic experience.
She said the removal of such terms, part of a wider woke movement within the NHS, was incredibly hurtful to other mothers who have also lost their babies.
Demanding, sex-based language retained Ms Curran said: ‘It is extremely important that women who have experienced pregnancy or infant loss are recognized as mothers and not just as a generic parent.
‘Denying us this status of mother in language is incredibly hurtful.’
Ms Curran is the founder of Little Heartbeats, a charity that supports women suffering from premature rupture of membranes (PROM).
This happens when an expectant mother’s waters break earlier than normal, increasing the risk of the baby being born prematurely and increasing the risk of both the baby and mother developing a dangerous infection.
Ms Curran said many women who have experienced PROM, or premature PROM disease (where rupture occurs before the 37th week), often felt ‘dehumanized’ by their experience.
She went on to say that this trauma was often reignited as women saw their terms replaced with gender-neutral alternatives.
“We see language used by the NHS referring to women that is dehumanizing,” she said.
‘We are not gestational carriers, we are not bodies with cervixes, but when this language is used it can be retraumatizing.
‘Where I see the words mother and woman erased, it reminds me of how they only saw me as a body on the bed, I was not seen as a woman who needed healthcare.’
Ms Curran added that there appears to be no research by the NHS into the impact of these language changes on women.
“No one seems to have taken into account the impact of the loss of these terms on women who have lost babies,” she said.
“We can erase our language without any medically based research and without understanding the impact it has.”
She told Lords in the group, which also included Baroness Cumberlege and Lord Winston, how she lost her baby Sinead after being diagnosed with PROM at 24 weeks in 2010.
One of the main causes of PROM is infection, and Mrs Curran developed a urinary tract infection in week 16 of her pregnancy with Sinead, just weeks before her waters broke prematurely.
She told The Express last year how she was repeatedly turned away by NHS medics, despite her concerns about breaking her waters so early.
‘I went to the GP and birth center several times and called the main hospital at least five or six times, but everyone kept telling me not to worry anymore. I was told to use sanitary pads and even call a prenatal yoga teacher. It was my first pregnancy so I didn’t know what to expect and I trusted them,” she said.
Even after she finally got to the hospital, after she started having blood clots, she had to beg to be admitted.
An ultrasound subsequently confirmed her worst fears: there was almost no amniotic fluid around Sinead and Mrs Curran was told the baby would be severely disabled and advised to have a termination of pregnancy.
“My baby just got written off,” she said,
Woman, breastfeeding, and vagina were all standard terms used within the medical community. But they’re just a selection of words that have been replaced by some woke NHS trusts, private hospitals and charities as part of an inclusivity drive
Sinead, who would have been Mrs Curran’s first child, died a week after her mother’s waters broke.
Ms Curran sued the NHS over the care she received and settled out of court.
Her experience motivated her to start Little Heartbeats, which both sends care packages to women suffering from PROM, including a ‘comfort mascot’ teddy bear, and also funds medical research into the condition.
The NHS has been embroiled in controversy over the replacement of sex-based terms with new gender-neutral alternatives.
“Breastfeeding” in place of breastfeeding, “biological parent” in place of mother or father, and “bonus hole” in place of vagina are just a handful of terms that have crept into official documentation.
Proponents of the so-called woke phrases claim they are more inclusive for trans patients, who can be triggered by terms like “breast” or “vagina.”
But experts have sounded the alarm about the move, warning it risks overcomplicating the messaging of vital healthcare to the public.