The U.K.'s National Health Service has issued new guidelines which require people to use hospital spaces that accord with their biological sex, rather than their gender identity. In other words, trans women will not be allowed in female hospital wards.
Trans patients should be placed on wards according to their birth sex rather than their gender identity, updated NHS England guidance has confirmed.
This means hospitals can lawfully exclude patients who are trans women from female wards, and those who are trans men from male wards.
Under previous NHS guidance, trans patients could be accommodated on single-sex wards based on the gender with which they identified.
The publication of the updated guidance on Thursday comes just over two months after wider guidance on single-sex spaces written by Britain’s rights watchdog officially came into force, and 18 months since the Supreme Court ruling on biological sex.
This outcome was a victory for nurses who had campaigned to protect single-sex spaces for women.
An employment tribunal found that County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust had harassed and discriminated against them by allowing a colleague, who is biologically male, to use the female changing room.
Bethany Hutchison, one of the nurses, said the Government needed to ensure NHS trusts implemented the guidance.
She said: “Biological sex is not an optional belief. It is a material reality and, following the Supreme Court’s judgment, it is the basis upon which sex must be understood in equality law. We therefore welcome this clear and necessary guidance from NHS England.
“The test now is whether NHS trusts will actually follow it. Too many NHS institutions have been ideologically captured on these issues, leaving front-line women to defend rights and protections that their employers should have upheld from the outset.”
As mentioned above, this ruling came after a lot of slow-walking by figures in the Labour government.
Soon after the Supreme Court ruling, Wes Streeting, the Defence Secretary, who was health secretary at the time, said he would issue guidance “in the coming weeks”. Instead, it has taken 18 months for the updated guidance to appear.
Of course trans activists are upset about the ruling.
In a joint statement, campaign groups TransActual and Trans+ Solidarity Alliance said: “This NHS guidance emphasises clinical judgment as the priority over blanket exclusion, but leaves individual healthcare professionals unclear on how to safely look after trans patients.
“Forcing trans people into spaces for our sex assigned at birth will never be the most clinically appropriate decision, and would push trans people away from accessing care.
“Doctors and nurses need to be able to prioritise looking after the person in front of them, not juggling scarce side rooms and writing breach reports in order to keep trans patients safe.
“This guidance will not survive contact with reality in resource-strapped hospitals and will create unworkable operational challenges. The Government failing to get a grip of this legal mess is sadly putting politics over patient care.”
How to safely look after trans patients? What do they think is going to happen to trans women in hospitals? Are they going to be attacked by other men on the ward? I realize this is the same argument made by biological men demanding to be housed in women's prisons, but is there really danger in a hospital setting? It seems unlikely, but if they really believe this danger exists, why is putting biological men in a women's ward preferable? Isn't the danger there somewhat greater or at least equal?
As for pushing trans people away from accessing care, I don't think that's likely either. If you're fine with explaining to doctors and nurses that you're a "woman with a penis" then you probably have the fortitude to survive sharing a restroom with other men.
Maya Forstater, chief executive of the charity Sex Matters, called on the NHS to go further to ensure that people feel free to speak up after years of being bullied into silence by trans activists.
Ms Forstater added: “After a decade of policies based on self-ID and the influence of trans activist campaigners, many NHS trusts have embedded a culture of gender ideology that has pushed staff to treat a claimed transgender identity as if it is a person’s sex.
“NHS England must now follow up with a clear directive to reverse trans ideology within trusts and consider the publication of scenarios or case studies that will empower all staff to speak honestly, and enable regional leadership to stand up to trans activist bullies.”
Not addressed in the new guidance is whether nurses and staff are still required to use a patient's chosen pronouns. If the hospital is allowed to recognize biological sex when placing patients in wards, can a nurse use biologically accurate pronouns or will that still result in punishment or even termination?
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