‘Pregnant People’ — Woke BBC Faces Backlash for Gender Neutral Abortion Coverage

LONDON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 08: A Demonstrator waves a Transgender flag during the Trans Act
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The publicly-funded British Broadcasting Corporation has drawn criticism for using the phrase “pregnant people” in its news coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to revoke federal protections for abortion under the Roe v. Wade decision.

The typically woke BBC used the controversial phrase “pregnant people” when discussing the ruling from the court on abortion, which has seen widespread pushback from pro-abortion European leaders such as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron.

In a report from BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight programme from an abortion clinic in Arkansas, presenter Sophie Long stated: “The clinical director and chair of the National Abortion Federation, Lori Williams, said knowing how many women and pregnant people would now not be able to get care was “devastating.”

The BBC’s news website followed suit in adopting the gender-neutral phrasing in another report, which said: “In 1973, the court had ruled in Roe vs Wade that pregnant people were entitled to an abortion during the first three months of their pregnancy.”

The Roe V. Wade ruling did not use the phrase “pregnant people”, instead opting for the words “mother” and “women” to lay out its now-overturned ruling on the supposed Constitutional right to abortion.

Criticising the woke language from the supposedly politically neutral publicly funded broadcaster, the director of advocacy for campaign group Sex Matters, Helen Joyce told The Mail on Sunday: “Irrespective of where you stand on the abortion issue, we need clear, polite, unapologetic language about the reality of human existence and that’s man, woman, male and female.”

Responding to the critiques, a spokesman for the BBC said: “We made clear in all our reporting that the overturning of Roe vs Wade ends the constitutional right to abortion for women in America.

“Sophie Long was quoting the language used by the chair of the National Abortion Federation. We have amended an online article.”

Meanwhile, a report from the British broadsheet, The Telegraph, claimed that during so-called diversity training at the BBC, staff were instructed that there were over 150 recognised genders.

The woke re-education seminars were run by the pro-transgender group “Global Butterflies”, which told BBC staff that they should include their gender pronouns in work emails in order to be “party of your trans brand” and as an “inclusive and welcoming… brilliant show of ally support.”

Global Butterflies presented the staff with a series of gender pronouns including “xe, xem, xyrs” and were told that “people can self-identify themselves in over 150 ways, and increasing!”

Earlier this year, the UK’s civil service — which like the BBC is also intended to be politically neutral — also reportedly told civil servants that there are over 100 genders.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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