Pregnancy charity chief: We must say ‘women’

A FORMER head of the National Childbirth Trust has signed an open letter supporting a pregnancy charity’s pledge to continue to use the word ‘women’.

Belinda Phipps, who spent 15 years at the NCT, Britain’s largest parenting charity, is among more than 1,200 signatories including members of the House of Lords, leading doctors, midwives and academics.

Some charities and hospitals have decided to replace the words ‘mother’ and ‘woman’ with gender-neutral terms to avoid offending the trans lobby.

The letter endorses the British Pregnancy Advisory Service’s stance to keep using the words.

But some signatories have chosen to withhold their names for fear of being targeted by activists. One NHS paediatric consultant asked for anonymity ‘to avoid being hounded out of my career’.