NHS Midwives Record “Gender Identity” and “Sexual Orientation” of Newborn Babies
Midwives at NHS hospitals are recording the “gender identity”, “pronouns” and “sexual orientation” of newborn babies in what critics have slammed as a “farcical” and “ludicrous” state of affairs.
The Times has the story.
Several NHS trusts have launched a £450 million patient record system, called Epic, which is produced by a giant American IT company called Epic Systems.
The default settings for registering a new patient, including newborns, contain an optional form asking their gender identity. It also asks for sex assigned at birth, pronouns and sexual orientation.
Campaigners said it was “farcical” that NHS trusts had chosen to adopt “ludicrous elements of the software imported directly from the USA, such as the gender identity of babies”.
One midwife working at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust told the Mail on Sunday that they were “shocked” to find during a training session on the software that there was no option to record a baby’s biological sex on the form.
They said: “Why on earth hasn’t this form been adapted to be appropriate for a newborn? I hope that common sense will prevail and nobody will try to fill in those boxes. Unfortunately, common sense doesn’t seem to be in good supply.
“These are not mandatory fields. But this is the backbone of documentation that will follow babies for life. It’s proof the baby exists and is needed to get a birth certificate. The fact that it’s asking for assigned sex at birth is worrying.”
The US software has been adopted in at least 10 NHS hospitals, after Epic won contracts reported to be worth at least £450 million in 2023, including at King’s College Hospital and Guy’s and St Thomas’s in London.
The form for registering a new patient on the Epic system also includes an “organ inventory”, including “organs the patient currently has”, “organs present at birth”, “organs surgically enhanced or constructed” and “organs hormonally enhanced”.
In 2023, NHS bosses said the technology would be updated to record biological sex only, after midwives filling in forms for newborns reported they could only select “gender identity”.
Worth reading in full.