Laudable HSE effort to be inclusive is blinkered

FOR a second I thought that the Polish minister who ridiculously described this country as a ‘Catholic wilderness with rampant LGBT ideology’ might be on to something during the recent discussion on Liveline about the HSE’s new brochures for its cervical cancer screening service.

The HSE has many problems, not least with its treatment of many of the women who passed through its cervical screening programme. Yet, it seems that whatever controversies are coming down the tracks, the one area where the health service won’t be found wanting is in transgender rights.

By aiming its CervicalCheck service from now on at ‘people with cervixes’, rather than ‘women’, the HSE is ensuring that transgender men and transgender women don’t feel belittled.

All very laudable indeed. But is the HSE’s readiness to obliterate women – who just recently were so ill-served by the screening programme to preserve the sensitivities of a far smaller cohort of women who, for biological reasons, don’t need to be screened – really so reassuring?

One caller suggested that women be included, along with transgender men, on the literature. English is not everyone’s first language she said, reasonably, and we need to be clear. Ignorance about female reproductive terminology and anatomy is another compelling reason for including ‘women’ in CervicalCheck material.

Joe Duffy steered the discussion with the vigilance of a UN peacekeeper.

A caller in support of the HSE said that those who complained should get a new hobby, while a freshly qualified doctor couldn’t see the problem as ‘people with cervixes’ obviously meant women too. Maybe the doctors and bureaucrats who run

CervicalCheck should know that transgenderism is not the only area of difference between women. Education, language, body confidence may not be so PC but they also have to be taken into account in targeting their service.