Under the NHS Rainbow Badge Scheme, hospitals will display a rainbow banner, or badge, at the entrance which suggests that the hospital is free of transphobia and safe for trans-identified patients to seek care. Hospital staff members are also welcome to wear an “LGBTQ+ Ally” badge which signals to LGBTQ patients that they are “safe to speak to,” Telegraph reports.
After 77 trusts joined the NHS Rainbow Badge Scheme, which grades them for eliminating "gendered language" from policies, forms, and signs, furious MPs demanded that ministers take action.
The trusts get points for calling cervical screening clinics "colposcopy" instead of "women's health" and for referring to pregnant patients as "clients,” according to Daily Mail. If hospitals do not display this badge, then it will imply that they are not compassionate to the trans-identified community.
The NHS, according to former cabinet minister Ranil Jayawardena, is "willing to erase women so they can appease radical ideologically-driven campaign groups."
“It's extraordinary to learn that the NHS is prioritizing pronouns over patient care. Surely the simple biology that women are mothers is not lost on today's NHS management?” Jayawardena said. “It seems that the NHS is willing to erase women so they can please radical ideologically-driven campaign groups. Ministers must step in now.”
The LGBT Foundation and Stonewall, two outspoken advocacy groups for trans rights, are in charge of the program's administration and will rate the hospitals, which is funded by NHS England.
Caroline Ffiske of Conservatives for Women asserted, “We have to ask ourselves, who is running the NHS? We are in the absurd situation whereby Stonewall dictates important policies by the back door,” according to Daily Mail.
A source close to Health Secretary Steve Barclay said, “Any scheme which does not recognize the role of women and biological sex in the NHS directly contradicts ministerial steers and raises serious questions of propriety.”
“The Secretary of State has been very clear that women should be called women and freedom of speech upheld. He expects that guidance to be followed,” they said, according to the Mail.
During an appearance on Talk TV with host Julia Hartley-Brewer, author Helen Joyce explained that the Rainbow Badge Scheme is not about LGBTQ rights, but rather about erasing women from society.
Both Joyce and Hartley-Brewer questioned why there are never any attempts from the trans-identified community to erase male-gendered words, such as “men’s health” or “men’s prostate cancer,” with Joyce explaining that the trans rights movement is “a men's rights movement.”
