(The Center Square) – Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an executive order Thursday banning what she called “nonsense terms” from state government documents, including “pregnant people,” “laboring person,” and “birth giver.”
Sanders said her office is aware of specific incidents of the terms used in documents at the state health department and reports of incidents elsewhere.
“I wish that we didn’t have to write and have executive orders like this but because of the growing trend that continues to seep into all areas of our life, we feel like it’s important,” Sanders said at a news conference Thursday where she signed the executive order.
Arkansas’ Surgeon General Dr. Kay Chandler called the order “common sense.”
“Women give birth. Today that has become controversial, but it shouldn’t be,” said Chandler. “Gov. Sanders’ executive order is smart on a number of counts. It stands up to those who try to erase women in the name of political correctness. In this administration, I know our governor won’t let political correctness get in the way of science.”
The governor said she would never apologize for defending women and standing up for the differences between men and women.
“We are all here to say, frankly, that we’ve had enough. Enough trying to erase women and girls, enough denying our biological differences from men, and enough of the craziness that is taking over our country,” said Sanders.
She said her experience of being the first mother to serve as governor of Arkansas and the first mother to serve as the White House press secretary made her aware of how vital and fundamentally different a woman’s perspective is from a man’s.
“Some on the left will accuse us of being nitpicky, that Arkansas should just lay down and accept the cultural revolution without complaint,” Sanders said. “I say it’s the exact opposite. It’s the left that decided that ‘woman’ is a dirty word. It’s the left that decided we needed to toss out basic biology and basic grammar along with it. I think they’re just mad that conservatives have started to fight back. And they better get ready because we’re just getting started.”
The governor said her executive order to ban specific gender-erasing terms was not about political correctness but rather the difference between what is accurate and what isn’t.
“It’s not that they’re offensive, it’s that they’re scientifically wrong,” Sanders said. “That’s a different thing. There’s something different about whether your feelings got hurt versus something that is just factually incorrect.”
