Transman loses baby during hysterectomy

You list your pronouns at the bottom of your email signature, don't you?

When people say there's no transphobia on MN, this is the kind of thread that proves them wrong.

In this thread, the patient in question:

• has been referred to as "it"
• has been repeatedly accused of lying
• has been accused of forcing her children to call her "he" or "him", despite that being completely irrelevant and totally omitted from the article
• has been victim-blamed beyond belief (why didn't they do their own pregnancy test)
• has been accused of just being after compo
• has had their sex life speculated over in some rather crass ways

Honestly, it's an appalling thread about a god-awful tragic situation.

@Elepunt I did.

I said it was routine to test in UK I didn't miss this was Australia or that the hospital didn't test - and my point was they should have routinely tested all women - like the UK seems to do - and that poster was wrong to put responsibility on the patient.

You have reminded me why I rarely post here though - so I shall go and do something more useful.

Hospitals should always do a pregnancy test on any female of childbearing age before this type of surgery.

I rather suspect that if this woman didn't identify as a trans man, there wouldn't be the comments of "it's all her fault, she should have taken a pregnancy test"

If the woman didn't identify as a transman, they wouldn't have been able to access an elective hysterectomy.

THIS. I think labelling this as a trans issue is being done deliberately - to stoke more "OMG trans pandering has gone insaaaaaaaaane!!" but also possibly to take the eye off the fact that "routine" health services were woefully inadequate and not fit for purpose during the pandemic.

I don't think I will ever forgive that TBH as I believe it to be quite a significant factor in my cousin's premature death.

It speaks nicely to the anti-abortion crowd as well, many of whom overlap with the "transgenderism is an ungodly abomination!!" crowd who I have absolutely no wish to sympathise with, even though I agree some of the GC arguments make sense.

Whether or not you think sex change operations should be considered routine, it's important to see how/why this is being reported in the way that it is.

I’d agree with this. I had to have a pregnancy test before they operated on a broken wrist despite me knowing I was definitely not pregnant. It’s a standard part of pre-op checks for women of child bearing age.

So he was having sex vaginally?.... However, defines himself a man but expects to be offered a pregnancy test... Except that suggestion would likely offend? I don't get it.

I agree. Which is why I kept wondering if it's because they thought she was a man.

Dystopia. Worse than fiction.

I find it heard to believe that there was no policy to give a woman (ANY woman, having a hysterectomy for ANY reason) a PG test beforehand?

You sound nice 😳

No but there are a lot of people claiming that the person in question must have known exactly when they had sex several months before

Do we really all know this off the top of our heads?

And now its womens own faults if they dont remember exactly when they last had sex

Unless the person in question lied and said that they had been having periods for the last few months then they are in a similar situation as a woman with PCOS where hormonal activity leads to them having irregular/no periods.

If thats enough to trigger a pregnancy test for a woman with pcos it should be enough to trigger a pregnancy test for a patient on (I assume) testosterone

It is extremely sad, I'm glad they have now changed their policy to say every woman is tested as standard. Without knowing the answers given to the questions I don't think it's fair to judge the nurse though.

Everything about this story is horrible.

The mother whose children are forced to call her "he" and "him".

Unnecessary, dangerous, invasive surgery performed because of a mad cult-like religion.

Hospital incompetence.

Patient being dishonest.

An unborn baby dying due to the idiocy and incompetence of adults.

Just awful from start to finish. No one involved in this should feel happy with themselves.

I do think it's rather worrying that no pregnancy test was actually done for a woman about to have a hysterectomy.

That it's dependent on a questionnaire. It's so unreliable.

i'm surprised this is the first time that something has gone wrong tbh.

Good post.

I can't believe the hospital would rely on a patient's word re pregnancy.

I wouldn't take a test before a hysterectomy, because I'd know the hospital are obliged to do one. I mean, I would if I suspected because I wouldn't want the hassle of being turned away on the day, but I'd never suspect the hospital would rely on one I had done.

This is a hospital cock up, and blaming the woman involved is very very unreasonable. Regardless of her appearance.

Read the article! It wasn't standard for the hospital to test.

This!!! I will probably word this terribly, but if you want to get rid of your vagina etc so much, why are you still using it to have sex 4 months before? Surely the very thought would be horrifying?

You'd surely answer that you have PCOS and don't have regular periods and that you can't accurately recall when you last had sex, there's nothing to indicate this wouldn't trigger the need for a test.

This individual had had previous pregnancies.
They knew how to obtain a pregnancy test.
Despite this, they appear to have given ambiguous information (at best) to the nurse checking the likelihood of pregnancy.
They were electing to have surgery to change their gender appearance in order to live their interpretation of maleness. That doesn't sound to me like someone wishing to continue with a pregnancy.

While I don't disagree with any of this it is still routine to test for pg even women who are likely too old to get pg or say they haven't been having sex - at least that happen to women I know who had hysterectomies in UK.

It sounds like a hospital cock up - with possibly covid health are and trans status playing a part in the failure - but it is a hospital system failure somewhere along the line.

Yes that’s what should have happened. But they allowed a questionnaire to dictate their decision making that was answered by someone with questionable perceptions of their body and decided upon by a nurse for unknown reasons.

This is horrible - when are institutions and the public going to stop acceding to all this made up nonsense?

No, if the woman didn’t identify as a trans man, the hospital would have done a pregnancy test.

It wasn't policy at the time to do a test as standard on any woman, so no, even a woman not claiming to be a man wouldn't have had a test if they'd answered the questions to indicate it wasn't needed. This is the part that's wrong and dangerous, but it's disingenuous to suggest it was policy and the hospital didn't give a test just as they were trans.

It's my understanding that it's nothing to do with what women think but got to do with the hospital's own method of deciding whether to do a pregnancy test.

It's as a result of the questionnaire, apparently.

Sounds very hit and miss, to me.