Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has no patience for references to “chestfeeding” and “pregnant people.”
The Republican governor signed an executive order Thursday eliminating “woke, anti-women words from state government,” saying that state agencies should “celebrate gender distinctions between men and women — not erase them.”
“The Left is using nonsense words like ‘pregnant people’ to erase women and girls — and more importantly, our voices and our experiences,” Mrs. Sanders, who signed the order surrounded by female lawmakers, posted on the social media site X.
About 800 miles away in Michigan, though, the opposite was happening.
The state Senate voted to remove the terms “woman” and “she” from Senate Bill 351, an update of the 2014 Breastfeeding Antidiscrimination Act, and replace them with “individual.”
The Democrat-controlled Senate also rejected Wednesday on a party-line vote a proposed amendment from Republican state Sen. Michele Hoitenga to reinsert “woman” and “she.”
“As far as I’m aware, women — specifically mothers — are the only people who can breastfeed or pump milk,” she said in the Midwesterner. “Yet, for some reason, this bill removes the words ‘woman’ and ‘she’ and changes these proper terms to ‘individual.’ My amendment will simply specify that this bill related to producing breast milk respectfully applies to women.”
Democrat state Sen. Jeff Irwin, the bill’s sponsor, opposed the amendment.
“I want to ask my colleagues to oppose this amendment because this legislation is about supporting moms and babies, not about some twisted culture war,” he said in a video posted online.
The Biden administration has also moved to replace sex-specific terms by, for example, using “birthing people” instead of “mothers” in a 2021 maternal-health guidance, an apparent nod to transgender men, who are biological women and thus can give birth and lactate.
The Left is using nonsense words like “pregnant people” to erase women and girls - and more importantly, our voices and our experiences.
— Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) October 19, 2023
We just banned those words from Arkansas state government.
Biology is real. Chromosomes are real. Only women can give birth. pic.twitter.com/OwqgcmtmDm
The order by Mrs. Sanders, the former Trump White House press secretary, also requires the state to use “breastfeeding” instead of “chestfeeding,” “breast fed” instead of “body fed,” and “woman” instead of “birth giver.”
The governor further nixed “womxn” and “womyn,” which are sometimes used by leftists instead of “woman.”
“We just banned those words from Arkansas state government,” she posted on X. “Biology is real. Chromosomes are real. Only women can give birth.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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