The second article of The Declaration reads:  “Reaffirming the nature of motherhood as an exclusively female status.”

Some governments have, in recent years, embraced the fiction that men can be mothers.  This is not a dated metaphor for “Mr. Mom” or a nurturing, stay-at-home Dad.  It is meant so literally that some governments are printing it on the birth certificates of newborns.  This happens when the father, because he claims the “gender identity” of a woman, requests to be listed as “mother” on his child’s birth certificate.  It also happens in cases, such as that of David Furnish (husband of singer Elton John) in the UK, in which the man neither claims a female “gender identity” nor has any biological relationship to the newborn, but requests the legal designation of “mother,” nonetheless.

Because this practice is so new, we do not yet understand the long-term psychological effects of wildly inaccurate family designations on children.  An authentic sense of identity, however, is recognized by the United Nations in Article 8 of its Convention of the Rights of the Child.  To designate a man as “mother” on a birth certificate is contrary to this right. It is also contrary to reality.

Protecting maternal rights and services

Article 2 of The Declaration states:

Maternal rights and services are based on women’s unique capacity to gestate and give birth to children. The physical and biological characteristics that distinguish males and females mean that women’s reproductive capacity cannot be shared by men who claim a female “gender identity.”

Motherhood is a uniquely female experience.  It is women, not men, who give birth to children after carrying them in our wombs, and it is women, not men, who have suffered through forced pregnancy and childbirth, maternal mortality, and obstetric violence.  It is women, not men, whose wombs are increasingly exploited by men (and some wealthy women) through the practice of surrogacy.  Too, it is women, not men, who have the capacity to breastfeed our babies, thereby providing perfect nutrition and unique immunity benefits.  It is poor and enslaved women, not men, whose breastfeeding ability has been exploited throughout history through the practice of wet nursing.

If we wish to advocate for the rights and needs of women, we must recognize the reality of womanhood and, by extension, motherhood.  In order to examine, critique, and ultimately overcome patriarchy, we must understand that men’s oppression of women is based on their exploitation of women’s reproductive capacity.  This has been true from the time of the agricultural revolution and is accelerating with the rise of commercial surrogacy in our own time.

Ensuring accurate language

Article 2 of The Declaration concludes by stating:

States should ensure that the word ”mother,” and other words traditionally used to refer to women’s reproductive capacities on the basis of sex, continue to be used in constitutional acts, legislation, in the provision of maternal services, and in policy documents when referring to mothers and motherhood. The meaning of the word “mother” shall not be changed to include men.

Unfortunately, the actions taken by the United States government in 2021 could hardly be more contrary to this guidance.  On January 1, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rules Committee Chairman James McGovern (D-MA) of the U.S. House of Representatives unveiled a rules package that included a commitment to “honor all gender identities by changing pronouns and familial relationships in the House rules to be gender neutral.”  That is, instead of honoring the reality of motherhood (or any other unique familial relationship), the House of Representatives now honors the fiction which states that identity can be based on self-assessed conformity to “gender,” i.e. a sex stereotype.

The executive branch, too, is accelerating its use of woman-erasing language.  The Biden Administration followed its infamous “day one” executive order (compelling all federal agencies to recognize “gender identity,” without regard to consequences for women and girls) with decisions to replace the word “mothers” with “birthing people” in its proposed 2022 budget and to omit all sex-specific language from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo about pregnant and nursing “individuals.”

These actions highlight the convergence of the movement to reduce the act of giving birth to a commodifiable function (as in the commercial surrogacy industry) with the movement to reimagine womanhood as a drag routine that can be performed by anyone, regardless of sex. They are also hard to square with an administration that claims to have science as its guide.

We must demand a reversal of this misogynist course.  We must demand that our government use sex-specific language that reflects women’s unique ability to be mothers.

To read the Declaration in full and become a signatory click here.

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