by Jacinta Taylor, Daily Mail
Midwives are being asked to fill out ‘farcical’ electronic forms which record newborns’ gender identity and sexual orientation as part of the rollout of a £450 million software upgrade across the NHS.
A whistleblower told The Mail on Sunday that staff at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust were ‘shocked’ to find during a training session for the Epic software system that there was no option to record a baby’s biological sex on registration forms, which are filled in just hours after a baby is born.
Instead the form – described by campaigners as ‘ludicrous’ – asked healthcare staff to log infants’ legal sex, sex assigned at birth and gender identity alongside the birth time and date, with a drop-down menu giving options for sexual orientation.
The midwife, who asked not to be named, said colleagues were ‘worried’ by the forms but afraid to raise the issue with NHS managers in case they were labelled as bigots.
Last night, women’s rights campaigners hit out at the NHS for being so ‘in thrall’ to gender identity ideology that it failed to acknowledge its software could impose misleading information on newborns for life.
It is understood the US software, embedded with the options to appease trans rights activists who had successfully lobbied the Biden administration for their inclusion, has been adopted in at least ten NHS trusts.