In a marked rejection of transgender ideology and a win for women’s rights activists, the constitution of Britain’s National Health Service will publicly declare that sex is a biological reality that must inform how patients are treated.
Following the move by the National Health Service to prohibit the prescription of life-altering puberty blockers to children, another major pillar of wokist medicinal thought, that sex is a fluid concept, looks to be dismantled as the NHS’ constitution will state: “We are defining sex as biological sex.”
In practice, the update to the governing document of the socialised healthcare system will mean that so-called transgender women will be barred from female-only hospital wards, The Telegraph reports.
At present, there is no recognition of sex as a biological fact when determining where patients were placed, resulting in some female patients being forced to share a room with biological males who claim to be transgender women.
The new constitution will state that NHS patients will “not have to share sleeping accommodation with patients of the opposite biological sex”. Previously, the document said that patients would be placed in the ward of the sex they identified as.
In response to objections raised by female patients over being seen by a transgender nurse or doctor, the constitution will also allow patients to request to be cared for by a healthcare professional of the same sex.
The changes have come at the direction of government ministers, who are tasked with updating the NHS constitution at least once every ten years. The document was last updated in 2015. However, in addition to the input from ministers, a two-month public consultation will be conducted to allow members of the public and from the healthcare industry to submit further suggestions for changes to the constitution.
Responding to the announced changes, Health Minister Victoria Atkins said: “By putting this in the NHS constitution we’re highlighting the importance of balancing the rights and needs of all patients to make a healthcare system that is faster, simpler and fairer for all.”
The move to recognise sex as a biological reality was hailed by women’s rights activists, who have long argued in Britain that the encroachment of transgender ideology into the government has seen an erosion of rights for women in favour of male-born transgender people.
Chief executive of the Sex Matters campaign group Maya Forstater — who was previously fired from an anti-poverty think tank for declaring that transgender women were still, in reality, men — hailed the changes as “excellent news:”.
“The confusion between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ in official policies like the NHS constitution is what has enabled women’s rights to be trampled over in the name of transgender identities,” she said, claiming that many in the healthcare industry have been “confused and frightened” by transgender ideologues.
Forstater said the move is “simply a return to common sense and an overdue recognition that women’s wellbeing and safety matter.”
However, not everyone was pleased with the updates, with the chief executive of the NHS Confederation Matthew Taylor saying that the health system should not be dragged into a “pre-election culture wars debate”.
Taylor said it is important that “high-quality care for all is maintained”, particularly for supposedly marginalised groups “including “trans and non-binary patients” to reduce “inequalities”. He went on to demand that changes to the constitution are “clear and workable for NHS staff, who should not expect to have to interpret ambiguous guidance at a local level.”
Addressing the need for clarity in the healthcare system, government ministers have also demanded the updated constitution require providers to operate with “clear terms” and scrap controversial woke phrases like “chestfeeding” and “people who give birth“.