The moment when a BBC newsreader corrected the phrase ‘pregnant people’ to ‘women’ live on air is being hailed as a “return to common sense and sanity” by an Independent Senator, while women’s rights campaigners welcomed the on-air correction.
BBC newsreader Martine Croxall was reading from her autocue for a story on heat-related deaths and was quoting a researcher who had used the phrase “pregnant people”, a construction which has become commonly used in academia, government communications, and political debate but which use has been strongly criticised by women’s groups as “erasing women.”
Croxall read: “Malcolm Mistry, who was involved in the research, said the aged, pregnant people…”, before stopping for a half a beat and correcting to “women” with some visible exasperation.
The correction was described as ‘brave’ by Spectator columnist Samantha Smith, who added that Croxall should be protected “at all costs”, while Spiked said her reaction as “the eye-roll’ that spoke for the nation, while tennis star Martina Navratilova commented “good for her”, and Harry Potter author JK Rowling said she had a new favourite BBC presenter.
Independent Senator Sharon Keogan told Gript today that she was delighted to see the BBC presenter’s correction, hailing it a “return to common sense and sanity” and said increasing numbers of people were “calling out the nonsense of gender ideology for what it is.”
“Women get pregnant, women give birth, women breastfeed, women have cervixes,” she said. “It was great to see this nonsense corrected live on air on such an influential media platform. We need to see more of this here in Ireland too.”
Laoise de Brún, barrister and founder of The Countess said that “Martine Croxhall spoke for all of us when she correctly her autocue script which said “Pregnant People” and suffixed it with a pointed, “women” with barely concealed irritation at this senseless, dehumanising language.”
“You know the tyrannical reign of DEI is almost over when a BBC News Anchor is refusing the language live on air,” she added. “There are no such thing as pregnant people because only women can be pregnant. We need to get to this stage in this jurisdiction but as usual, we are almost a decade behind. Our campaign video These Words Belong to Us stopped the government replacing the word “woman” with “pregnant women” in maternity legislation. The HSE is using the word women again in Cervical Screening literature thanks to our work and the work of many activists in Ireland. Our video gathered the testimony of women in Ireland and explains how important the words Woman, Mother, female, girl are and how they belong to us.”
The controversy around the terms such as “chestfeeders”, “birthing person” “pregnant people” and “people with cervixes” arose after the constructions were adopted by health authorities in Britain and elsewhere – with the HSE also embracing the trend – while women’s rights campaigners such as The Countess said the use of these “gender neutral terms” has “repercussions for the safeguarding of women and girls”, arguing that “if women and girls cannot be named, we cannot be protected, and we cannot achieve equal human rights. Our right to single-sex spaces and fair sports competitions, our bodily integrity and healthcare, are under threat from gender ideology.”
A paper by The Countess, entitled “The Erosion of Sex-based Language in Irish Legislation and Public Discourse”, said that gender ideology sets out to change language in policy and law and that impacted women.
“The proliferation of activist NGO’s, who are paid to promote government policies, and the undue influence they exert over politicians has led to policy capture at the level of government and public institutions, including academia. This has created an echo chamber that acts against the best interest of society, and women and children, and LGB people in particular,” the group wrote.
The paper argued that “the threat to women’s rights has come about due to a number of factors”, namely “The tension between two pieces of legislation: the Equality Acts and the Gender Recognition Act 2015 (GRA)” and the fact that “the GRA introduced the legal fiction that people can “change sex” once a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) is issued.”
Yesterday, Ms Croxall posted on X: “A huge thank you to everyone who has chosen to follow me today for whatever reason. It’s been quite a ride…”