A birth coach has been ‘ostracised’ by her professional organisation after transgender activists branded as offensive a Facebook post in which she said that only women can have babies…

The Doula UK row started after Cancer Research UK dropped the word ‘women’ from its smear test campaign, instead saying screening was ‘relevant for everyone aged 25-64 with a cervix’.

In response, Mrs McCarthy-Calvert posted a photograph on Facebook of a negligee-clad woman somersaulting underwater, with the wording: ‘I am not a “cervix owner” I am not a “menstruator” I am not a “feeling”. I am not defined by wearing a dress and lipstick. I am a woman: an adult human female.’

Beneath it she wrote: ‘Women birth all the people, make up half the population, but less than a third of the seats in the House of Commons are occupied by us.’