BBC newsreader Martine Croxall appeared to roll her eyes as she switched ‘pregnant people’ for ‘women’ during a news report.
The 56-year-old news host was presenting a segment on new research about the number of heat-related deaths expected amid Britain’s current heatwave when the moment occured.
Initially quoting the phrasing used in the research, Croxall said: ‘Malcolm Mistry, who was involved in the research, said the aged, pregnant people… women… and those with pre-existing health conditions need to take precautions.’
‘I have a new favourite BBC presenter,’ Harry Potter author J.K Rowling, who has faced backlash for her views on the transgender community and trans-inclusive langage, posted on X.
Rowling has previously taken issue with phrases such as ‘people who mensturate’.
After one commenter on X said they ‘hope you don’t get hauled before the BBC News beak,’ the Celebrity mastermind winner said she was ‘braced’.
The national broadcaster currently has no specific policy of saying pregnant people.
Last year, Croxall notably returned to the BBC after taking legal action against the broadcaster.
She claimed that she was one of a group of BBC employees kept off-air during a rebrand and returned to her place behind the newsdesk after an employment tribunal.
The use of gender-neutral language within maternity care has been a topic of fierce debate in recent years. In 2021 a Brighton hospital faced backlash for rolling out a ‘gender-includive language policy’.
Elsewhere a maternity bill in the UK changed the word ‘person’ to ‘mothers and ‘expecting mothers’ after complaints.
The trans rights movement has faced intense scrutiny with figures like Rowling stoking debate such as her support of the superme court ruling around the definition of a woman.
Sir Stephen Fry, who has previously defended the writer, appeared to change his stance in recent comments saying she has been ‘radicalised’.
‘She has been radicalised, I fear, and it may be she has been radicalised by TERFs, but also by the vitriol that is thrown at her.
‘It is unhelpful and only hardens her and will only continue to harden her, I am afraid.’
He added that she is a ‘lost cause for us’.
‘I am not saying that she should not be called out when she says things that are really cruel, wrong and mocking,’ he said at a live event.
Metro has reached out to BBC for comment.
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