The United Kingdom's General Medical Council has updated its internal maternity policy to remove all mentions of the word "mother" for its employees, The Telegraph reported.

The GMC instead used the word "parent" to replace "mother," and "surrogate parent" to replace "surrogate mother" in its policy memo.

Separate guidance on the organization's menopause policy also was altered to remove references to women.

The Telegraph reported that one GMC employee said the word changes were "a concerted effort to ignore the existence of women."

"Well, I am a woman," the employee told The Telegraph. "It's not appropriate for a medical organization to ignore biology. They should stick to science. People are worried about putting their heads above the parapet ... they are having the organization's 'woke' ideology forced on them. It's not right."

The GMC updated its maternity and menopause guidance documents in May.

"Has the GMC not seen the growing body of evidence that sex-based language is crucial in maternity healthcare? And did it not notice that 1,400 clinicians wrote to the NHS earlier this year, demanding that the word ‘mother’ be reinstated in women’s health advice?" said Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at Sex Matters, The Telegraph reported.

"By rewriting its maternity policy to be gender neutral, the GMC is sending a hostile message to women in medicine. Sex-based language needs to be reinstated as a matter of urgency."

The GMC’s menopause policy suggests the transition doesn't only affect women.

"We are committed to ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of all staff by providing support for colleagues experiencing the menopause," the policy says, The Telegraph reported.

"We will work proactively to make adjustments where necessary to support individuals experiencing the menopause."

In April, the England's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, a taxpayer-funded semipublic administrative body providing national guidance across the country’s National Health Service, rolled out a style guide which advised that nongendered language can be used except "if talking about biology."

"The decision by the GMC to obscure the fact that only women have babies is ideologically driven, medically inaccurate and unhelpful to women and babies," said Heather Welford from the activist group With Woman, The Telegraph reported. "It moves away from the drive for plain English and makes medical literature unclear.

"It can confuse healthcare messaging, potentially harming women and babies. It is also insulting to women, for whom the identity of ‘mother’ is often very important."

It was revealed in July that the Bank of England adopted a similar policy in which the word "mother" was substituted for "birthing parent" in its family leave policy.

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