The care of transgender or transsexual patients by health systems is definitely a headache for many Western countries. While in France, the High Authority of Health has taken up this issue at the request of the minister, the United Kingdom is preparing to clarify the place of these patients in British hospitals. In the future, men who have transitioned to become women will no longer be able to access spaces reserved for women in hospitals (and vice versa, for women who have transitioned to become men).
This was announced on Tuesday, October 3, by the British Minister of Health, Steve Barclay, during a meeting in Manchester in front of Conservative Party activists, as reported by the Guardian. He also assured that patients who wish will have the assurance that care relating to their privacy will be provided by a person of the same biological sex as them. Steve Barclay announced that these measures will be included in a reform of the Constitution of the National Health Service (NHS), the British health system, moving towards better protection of the privacy, dignity and safety of patients in hospital.
During his speech, Steve Barclay also stressed that the NHS’s commitment to diversity and inclusion must not come at the expense of the importance he believes patients place, particularly women , to having access to spaces where they will be surrounded by people of the same biological sex as them. “Without this, we pose a risk in the long term for the protection of women,” he said, alluding to the slogan chosen by the Tories for this conference: “long-term decisions”.
He also regretted that the NHS took the decision some time ago to remove the mention of women from its site, with regard to certain pathologies from which only people of biological female sex can be affected, such as cervical cancer. of the uterus. He indicated that the NHS has now gone back on this, just as he indicated that he had instructed caregivers to no longer give patients the pronouns by which they wish to be called, a habit that transactivist associations are trying to eliminate. spread to prevent transgender people from being “misgendered” (designated by a gender with which they do not identify).
This speech sparked criticism, including from within the Conservative Party itself, whose MP Jamie Wallis last year became the first openly transgender MP in the United Kingdom. Jamie Wallis criticized the minister for “addressing a false problem” by saying that according to a survey, no British patient had complained about being treated alongside transgender patients. A survey… published by the TransLucent site, which specifically advocates for inclusion for transgender people.
Another Conservative MP, Elliot Colburn, head of a transpartisan parliamentary group dedicated to the rights of LGBT people, insisted that depending on whether they have received an operation on their sexual organs or not, all people transgender people do not have the same needs in terms of access to care. According to him, Steve Barclay’s decision therefore risks penalizing certain trans patients.