University of Michigan teaches future doctors gender ‘assigned’ at birth
Breccan F. Thies
Students at the University of Michigan Medical School are taught basic anatomy is “assigned” by doctors at birth, according to teaching materials reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
Slides reviewing the “foundational anatomy” of the pelvic region, which were created for first-year medical students, separate male and female body parts into the categories of “assigned male at birth (AMAB)” and “assigned female at birth (AFAB).”
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According to the slides, which were created by Director of Anatomical Sciences Dr. B. Kathleen Alsup, the reproductive systems of those who fall under the “AFAB” category feature body parts such as the vagina, ovaries, uterus, and fallopian tubes, whereas the “AMAB” reproductive system is comprised of the penis, testes, prostate, and vas deferens.
Jay W. Richards, the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Life, Religion, and Family, told the Washington Examiner such a categorization is a result of “gender ideology” that “seeks to blur this basic reality in characteristically postmodern fashion.”
“Its adherents seek to replace these biological facts with an unverifiable ‘internal sense of gender’ called a gender identity, and to reduce the fact of sex to a mere stereotype, called sex assigned at birth,” Richards said. “If the University of Michigan Medical School is now using the lexicon of gender ideology, rather than the well-established categories anatomy and biology, then it is opting for a fashionable and incoherent ideology over sound science and sound medicine.”
While the categories are functionally male and female, physicians’ concerns for medical students are that new doctors will learn to view young patients as genderless, as the ideology behind using such “assigned” terminology requires that they consider children to not have “decided” what their gender is until they state it.
“Since medical students will be future pediatricians, learning anatomy in this fashion is highly problematic,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, the former associate dean for curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, told the Washington Examiner. “Using the language of gender ideology to convey to children and adolescents that biologic sex is a mere construct before they can adequately process the nature of sexuality and its implication for their reproductive lives is wrong and potentially dangerous.”
The use of the “assigned” terminology comes as a result of wins from transgender activists who insist the term “biological sex” is a “troublesome term” that should be removed from use in medicine, law, and reporting, per the Associated Press’s style guidance on using the phrase.
“The idea that male and female anatomy is ‘assigned’ by anyone is facially absurd and this designation is only used to kowtow to gender ideologues who wish to undermine the biologic reality of sexuality,” Goldfarb, who leads the medical advocacy group Do No Harm, said.
Activist language appears throughout the web pages of the medical school and hospital.
Alsup, along with Director of Anatomical Donations Dr. Glenn Fox, also maintains a resource website for medical students called BlueLink, which uses the “assigned” terminology throughout.
For its activism work, the medical school earned a perfect score from the country’s largest LGBT lobby, the Human Rights Campaign.
According to Dr. Halley Crissman, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the school’s women’s hospital, part of transgender health is about “recognition and rectification of cisgender assumptions in the medical system.”
The “physician leader” is the new standard the university expects of its doctors, according to its Diversity & Health Equity page, telling students: “It is incumbent upon you to uncover and learn about your biases, broaden your cultural humility, and understand your values and how all of these shape the care you give.”
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“To the extent that the University of Michigan Medical School curriculum is in thrall to gender ideologues so that even a basic anatomy course undermines biologic reality should be a source of concern to the citizens of Michigan and to the medical community,” Goldfarb said.
The University of Michigan Medical School, Alsup, and Fox did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.