02a U.S. Politics – Conservative

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (LifeSiteNews) — Pennsylvania Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro is moving to update the state’s health code by replacing terms denoting females with gender-neutral language, underscoring the woke reality beneath the moderate image sometimes attributed to the governor.

The Daily Wire reports that the governor’s proposed updates, which span more than 500 pages, replace instances of “woman” with “individual” and refer to new mothers as “postpartum individuals,” ostensibly to leave room to recognize the ultimately-fictional concept of “pregnant men” – as explained by a notorious 2021 opinion from the left-wing American College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians that “Some postpartum [so-called] transgender individuals may not identify as ‘mothers;’ thus, obstetrician–gynecologists and other health care professionals should be mindful of the language they use.”

“Somehow, in the midst of hundreds of pages of new government mandates, the department also found it necessary to erase words like ‘pregnant woman’ and ‘mother’ in the regulations and replace them with terms like ‘pregnant individual,’” responded Republican state Sen. Michele Brooks.

“The changing of language in the regulations represents the triumph of ideology over biology,” said Independence Law Center chief counsel Randall Wenger. “This change of language doesn’t reflect reality; it obscures it. It erases female identity as a stable category in favor of a fluid concept of gender. The Shapiro administration is so concerned with affirming transgender identity that it can no longer recognize the realities of biological sex. The department cannot pretend to fight dangerous diseases with its delusions about gender.”

The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to consider the legality of its policy effectively barring trans-identifying individuals from serving in the military.

In its petition, the Department of Justice (DOJ) requested the high court to determine whether the War Department’s rule that “generally disqualifies” those who have “gender dysphoria, a history of the condition, or a history of related interventions” violates the “equal-protection component” of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause. The filing was made by U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer, who often represents the administration in oral arguments before the court.

At issue is a February 2025 Pentagon memo establishing guidance implementing such a policy. The directive came as part of the agency’s compliance with President Trump’s January 2025 executive order ordering War Secretary Pete Hegseth to revise the military’s policy on gender dysphoric individuals serving within 60 days the order’s implementation.

Upon request from trans-identifying individuals, D.C. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee with a laundry list of left-wing activism, issued a preliminary injunction in March 2025 blocking the policy from taking effect. A three-judge panel for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals later temporarily paused that order in December 2025.

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court pausing a similar injunction by a different district court on the policy in May 2025, a different D.C. Circuit panel upheld a portion of Reyes’ injunction in June. In a 2-1 ruling, the Democrat-appointed majority held “that the government could not enforce the ban against the challengers who were already in the military,” as described by SCOTUSblog.