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Just when you thought it was safe to assume that breastfeeding mums are real women – and not part of the “cancel culture” craze – they too seem to be going “woke”!
Well, some of them.
Activists in the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA), working with an LGBTQ group called “Rainbow Families” have produced a new booklet called Breastfeeding, Chestfeeding and Human Milk Feeding.
The booklet is designed to be “transgender inclusive”. Activists claim that the term “breastfeeding” can trigger bodily discomfort in biological females who identify as men.
But one of the ABA’s traditional counsellors – a breastfeeding mum herself – is not happy. She has told The Australian about her concerns on condition of anonymity.
Incredibly, our society is getting to the stage where using time-honoured words like “mother” instead of “gestational parent” could land you in big trouble if you are a nurse or breastfeeding counsellor in a “perinatal” (formerly “maternity”) hospital ward.
This year, midwives in Sussex, UK were told to stop using terms including “breastfeeding” and “breastmilk” when working with transgender patients.
Nursing staff were told to avoid using the word “mother” on its own. They were given a list of alternative terms, including “mother or birthing parent”, “breast/chestfeeding” and “maternal and parental”.
But the Australian breastfeeding counsellor said she and most of her ABA colleagues “identify very strongly as mothers, … the mother-to-mother space that the association has always provided”.
She said the new ABA booklet for transgender parents “undermines breastfeeding and mothers, and science and female biology, and mother-to-mother support… It opens the door to biological males to participate in ‘human milk feeding’ with babies, and babies deserve better than that.”
And that is the especially disturbing part. Biological men who identify as women are now seeking to breastfeed babies born to female partners.
Three years ago a medical journal reported a case study, where a doctor and a nurse at a clinic used a cocktail of medications to enable a “transwoman” to fulfill his goal to breastfeed his adopted infant.
The female-identified male patient, referred to as a “she” throughout the study, explained that “her” partner was pregnant but not interested in breastfeeding. The transwoman, who had not had reassignment surgery, hoped to take on the role of being the primary food source for the infant.
The transwoman had a male body but was taking female hormones to achieve enlarged breasts. The transwoman was also taking anti-anxiety drugs and an androgen-blocker that was ineffective and allowed testosterone (male hormone) levels to remain high.
The transgender woman was then given domperidone, a drug banned in the US due to heart risks, to induce milk production.
A doctor commenting on the case was concerned that babies fed milk from an artificially stimulated man would be at risk of various physical and mental disorders later on.
There is no evidence that the mother knew about these risks. We do not know what happened to her baby later on.
But the case is an eerie reminder of what happened to UK teenager Keira Bell. She was given puberty blocker drugs, quickly moved on to male hormones and surgery, and now deeply regrets her treatment. No one had explained all the risks to her – even if she had been capable of giving informed consent.
In the very first chapter of the Bible – Genesis 1:27 – we read that God created us male and female.
When will we learn that we meddle with His design at our peril? We would greatly appreciate your prayer and financial support as we work to uphold reality: men and women, mothers and fathers, and women who breastfeed their babies.
Peter Downie - National Director
FamilyVoice Australia