President Biden's promise to "build back better" apparently also applies to "birthing people," according to the 2022 budget proposal from his administration's Office of Management and Budget.
In the section on "strengthening public health infrastructure and meeting crisis-related needs," President Biden claims his budget "reduces maternal mortality rate and ends race-based disparities in maternal mortality."
The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations, with an unacceptably high mortality rate for Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and other women of color. To help end this high rate of maternal mortality and race-based disparities in outcomes among birthing people—and in addition to the investment in maternal health included in the American Families Plan—the Budget includes more than $200 million to: reduce maternal mortality and morbidity rates nationwide; bolster Maternal Mortality Review Committees; expand the Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies program; help cities place early childhood development experts in pediatrician offices with a high percentage of Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program patients; implement implicit bias training for healthcare providers; and create State pregnancy medical home programs.
Science is back, baby!
"Birthing people" (along with its related term "chest feeder") is nonsense leftist gobbledygook that's used to signal tolerance because, of course, saying that women are the exclusive source of children is exclusionary. Or something. Biology means nothing, science is out the window, and to argue otherwise makes you a terrible person, or so leftists—and exceedingly more Democrats including the President of the United States—say.
It would be interesting to see the rationale through which the Biden administration decided to begin using "birthing people" in lieu of "women" or "mothers" because the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics does not refer to women as birthing people, based on the World Health Organization's definition for maternal mortality: "the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy."
If you're woke, you might conclude that the WHO is a bunch of bigots for their backward, antiquated, but scientific definition. But the Biden administration seems to be unable to get its story straight on how to refer to those individuals who have the biological capacity to grow life.
Elsewhere in Biden's 2022 budget, the word "mother" does appear—in a section about paid family leave, no less: "Paid leave has been shown to keep mothers in the workforce, increasing labor force participation and boosting economic growth."
Because not everyone has taken a swig of the woke Koolaid, the reaction to the budget's lack of sanity drew a predictable reaction.
"Biden is erasing women," noted Dana Loesch. "Wait til they find out what mater means in Latin," added Lyndsey Fifield. The cognitive dissonance in substituting birthing people for mothers in a budget item relating to maternal statistics was highlighted by Allie Stuckey with an "L O L."
Biden is erasing women. https://t.co/uUyqLdgOvb
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) June 7, 2021
The Biden administration has stripped the word “mother” from the budget and replaced it with “birthing people” in reference to maternal health programs.
— Lyndsey Fifield (@lyndseyfifield) June 7, 2021
Wait til they find out what mater means in Latin. https://t.co/jWy6Du9Rah
"Maternal mortality rate... among birthing people." L O L https://t.co/QScwb7kyxv
— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) June 7, 2021
It's laughable, yet profoundly unfunny, what is happening under the sleepy eyes of President Biden. If this administration truly wants to work on reducing maternal mortality and helping women and their children live healthy lives, they should start by accepting the previously obvious fact that mothers—not fathers or whoever else is encapsulated in the definition of a birthing person—are where their attention should be focused.