Apparently it is no longer appropriate for pregnant women to be called "women." As far as Britain is concerned, those carrying babies should now be called "pregnant people" in order to avoid making transgender people feel excluded.
Britain is now lobbying the United Nations to change the term "pregnant women" to "pregnant people," according to the Daily Mail. If they are successful, the UN human rights treaty would be changed to include protections for transgender pregnancies.
Transgender pregnancies involve women who became transgender men but retained their wombs and ovaries in order to carry babies. So far, the U.K. has reported two cases of transgender pregnancies.
Not everybody is pleased with the government's move though. Feminists complained to The Sunday Times that this is just a trick to make "women unmentionable" in the guise of transgender equality.
"This isn't inclusion. This is making women unmentionable," said feminist Sarah Ditum. "Having a female body and knowing what that means for reproduction doesn't make you 'exclusionary.' Forcing us to decorously scrub out any reference to our sex on pain of being called bigots is an insult."
However, a Foreign Office spokesperson said that Ditum's accusations are unfounded since they are merely trying to be inclusive of transgender people. "The U.K. does not object to the use of the term 'pregnant woman.' We strongly support the right to life of pregnant women, and we have requested that the [UN] Human Rights Committee does not exclude pregnant transgender people from that right to life," the spokesperson said in a statement.
This move came after the Office for National Statistics considered making a person's declaration of sex voluntary in the 2021 census "for the benefit of intersex and non-binary people." Should this push through, any person filling out the form would no longer be compelled to answer "male" or "female" and could simply leave it blank.
