CDC staff told to remove terms like ‘non-binary,’ ‘they/them,’ ‘pregnant people’ from public health material

Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been told to remove words frequently associated with progressive gender ideology from research manuscripts that they intend to publish.

A screenshot of a leaked internal email sent out to CDC staff, obtained by the newsletter Inside Medicine, showed a list of terms and phrases that must be removed from scientific manuscripts produced by the agency’s researchers and intended for publication. 

Those terms included: “gender,” “transgender,” “pregnant person,” “pregnant people,” “LGBT,” “transsexual,” “non-binary,” “nonbinary,” “assigned male at birth,” “assigned female at birth,” “biologically male” and “biologically female.” According to the Washington Post, the list includes about 20 terms. They indicated that the directive also ordered the removal of any use of “they/them.” 

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The rule affects manuscripts under review, as well as those accepted but not yet published, no matter whether they are intended for internal circulation only or circulation outside the CDC.

A CDC spokesperson told Fox News Digital that “All changes to HHS and HHS division websites/manuscripts are in accordance with President Trump’s January 20 Executive Orders.”

After taking office last month, President Donald Trump signed a slew of Day One executive orders, including one that attempts to root out “gender ideology extremism” and restore “biological truth” to the federal government. Meanwhile, in line with that order, the Trump administration’s Office of Personnel Management issued a memo a little over a week later calling on all federal agencies to “take prompt actions to end all agency programs that use taxpayer money to promote or reflect gender ideology.”

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LGBT advocates and medical organizations sued the Trump administration over his executive order barring federal funds from going toward transgender surgeries for those under the age of 19. (Getty Images)

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In addition to the terms, CDC web pages titled “Supporting LGBTQ+ Youth | Adolescent and School Health” and “April 18 is National Transgender HIV Testing Day” have also been removed.

The removal of the terms may make it hard to read surveys and research that utilizes them as demographic identifiers, The Post reported. 

“If you are trying to optimize society, you can’t just pretend some people aren’t in it,” executive director of the National LGBTQI+ Cancer Network, Scout, who legally goes by only one name, told The Post.