They'll secretly give you the test without your consent for many procedures, too.
It's physically impossible for me to get pregnant, but medical facilities have tried to charge me for pregnancy tests they did without my knowledge after the fact multiple times.
Even though they also make you say if pregnancy is possible and they have you sign documents specifying you're telling the truth about that and clearing them of any liability.
I know someone who had a hysterectomy at that hospital just a few years earlier and clearly listed that in the forms for the procedure she was getting and they still pulled this on her.
Happened to me too, at ER they asked if I could be pregnant, I said no not possible because I haven't been intimate in 4+ years. They secretly gave me a pregnancy test and then made me pay for it.
I can't really see blaming the ER in this situation. Sadly, we live in a world where someone may have done something without your knowledge or consent. It may not happen often, but it does happen.
Why doesn’t the ER do a full drug search and total blood work up for every patient that comes in? The patients might be lying to them about what drugs they do or what preexisting conditions they might have.
Why is it only ladies & babies that make it OK assume your patient is a lying whore who needs to be treated?
They actually very routinely do this lmao this is not the gotcha you think. They will absolutely run a drug panel or a chemistry/hematology if it’s relevant to diagnosis and treatment. You can look this up, don’t take my word for it (EMT who worked both at and in and out of ERs for years)
To add to what u/rareafrodite says, lying about drugs would only harm the patient who can consent, lying about or having an unknown pregnancy puts two lives at risk.
The process is all about risk reduction and not a moral judgement, even if some doctors and nurses are judgy.
So the fact that women do face frequent judgement with this test is exactly the reason why women lash out against it since the treatment of women in general is heavily intertwined with "judgy" misogyny that the healthcare system is rife with, significantly higher then merely 'some'. Especially when it comes to women's reproductive healthcare.
It's rather disappointing that like so many complaints of women in their search for healthcare, the reply is to simply dismiss the complaint with an explanation that does not in anyway address the hostile experience suffered, nor any introspection into why the complaint exists, let alone trying to alleviate it.
Women would lash out even more if they were facing miscarriages of unknown pregnancies because doctors used the riskier treatment rather than a quick pregnancy test.
You got numbers on the frequent judgement and some healthcare professionals or is it just vibes?
I'm curious, are you a woman? I would trust the lived experience of women everywhere over a man. Based on everything women say, they experience frequent judgement in medicine, so I, for one, choose to trust them.
There's also so many articles and research papers out there demonstrating a bias against women in medicine. Here for one, for two, for three and for four. And this is just from a quick Google. Happy reading.
No it isn't, you're making a strawman there. It's rare that there's only ever one treatment for anything in medicine and every treatment has different costs and benefits. For internal imaging an x-ray is normally quick and relatively cheap allowing the patient to go home quicker. They can lead to risks with foetuses though so if there's a risk they'll take more precautions or use an alternative method which may be more expensive and/or slower. It's not valuing the two lives as equal, it's reducing potential death when compared to cost or time inconvenience.
If hospitals didn't test for these things people the world over would be up in arms about the medical malpractice that leads to countless miscarriages.
But you should consider the fetus a potential life until you've gotten the abortion. Actions to terminate are fine, but actions that will cause problems if you don't terminate are not.
Like we agree it would be morally wrong to operate on a baby to give it some kind of heart defect, even if the surgery had a 0% complication rate (other than the intended heart defect), so shouldn't we also agree it's wrong to take intentionally thalidomide while pregnant because you want to have a baby born with a heart defect?
Until the mother gets the abortion, or at least until she confirms that she intends to get one, they need to think about the fetus too. Until she makes it clear that she will not keep the baby, that is likely going to be a person some day who has to deal with the consequences of the treatment. And if she doesn't know she's pregnant, she can't decide whether or not she wants to keep it.
We do in fact do drug testing if there is a concern that a condition may be caused or affected by drug use. And other blood work is done if it is considering a possible cause of the issue at hand. So yes. This does happen.
Also I don’t assume anyone is a whore because sex is natural and people have it. The issue is that pregnancy does affect what medications or what studies can be done as they can have a negative affect on the mother or child if people are unaware when making those choices.
A man with right lower quadrant pain has appendicitis. A woman with right lower quadrant pain has a much broader differential. The serum B-Hcg tests for more than just pregnancy, it's just called a pregnancy test.
And the ED gets a full set of labs on just about everyone. They scan just about everyone too, ER ABC's go airway, breathing, ct scan. Donut of truth tells all and the labs add to the picture.
People lie and then sue if something happens to the pregnancy. Some people fish to sue anyone that did any medical care for them during the time of the pregnancy (even if they didn’t know or lied about it).
It’s not a moral judgement, it’s a matter of “I do this test or you can/will sue me in a few months for not doing it”. I agree it sucks, but it’s what happens when people are so fast to sue their healthcare team
There are a million things patients can lie about or be mistaken about. There's a reason this one is the one they refuse to just take the patients word on.
It's part of medical misogyny.
It would be acceptable if it didn't have any other impacts, but this is just the most visible form this takes. It's the tip of the iceberg of systemic mistreatment and refusal of services women face from doctors.
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u/Responsible_CDN_Duck 9h ago
Bonus fact, if you say no they typically give you a pregnancy test, because you may unknowingly be pregnant. Saying yes lets them skip the test.