Recently, Harvard Medical School hosted a panel discussion on Maternal Health. The topic was why women of color are statistically three times more likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth than white moms.

Throughout this event, talking about pregnancy and childbirth, every one of the panelists refused to use the word “woman.” On Twitter, the event was described as confronting problems faced by “pregnant and birthing people.” After wide backlash, they tweeted again: “Our panelists used this language because not all who give birth identify as women.”

The real tragedy here is that healthcare disparity for moms of color is a real problem. But if medical health experts refuse to acknowledge that the term woman refers to something that exists in reality, and that medical science itself depends on these biological realities, how can we expect them to solve an issue as complicated as ethnic health disparities?