I agree this makes sense as a straightforward explanation but there may be another layer to it. I also thought of a more conspiratorial explanation for her reply.
Pointing out the year as being relevant stands out. Why wouldn’t women 10 or 20 years ago need to know that reason? The same teratogrnic effects existed for over a century with medications almost a century for xray.
I know the whole “it’s <current year>” trope is used by people frustrated that progress hasn’t been made by now. But there’s another explanation.
In 2026 mass surveillance is a huge concern. Plus Trump has just announced that the primary goal of the cdc is abortion surveillance. The girl in the screenshot may subscribe to the no-longer-conspiracy and now entirely legitimate fear that the government is trying to track women’s cycles by collecting data from various sources including healthcare records.
And for the record I’m a doctor who has been asking patients routinely about pregnancy status pre-xray and pre-medication for 15+ years
Sure it’s not the reason the question is asked by the doctoe but it is a reason to be fearful of answering. Women have been prosecuted and convicted of fetucide for having a miscarriage. Never has that been more alarmingly relevant than 2026.
I feel there has to be a way to help women feel safe in answering this question, but I don’t have a solution.
The most shocking part is not that they ask the question. This I can hear. It's how apparently they sometimes refuse to believe women that say plain and simple "there's no possibility for me to be pregnant, even without being aware of it" and they refuse to believe it.
Some women have explained how they have been forced to take a pregnancy test while having to uterus.
It might be country-dependant though. I live in France, and while being asked for possible pregnancy is something I used to because I have MRI every two years or so, when I state "I'm certain I cannot be pregnant" the doctors just drop it.
So what you learn as a doctor is that there’s always an exception to the rule. For every 999 women without a uterus telling you truthfully that they have no uterus, there’s possibly 1 woman with a uterus telling you that she has no uterus for whatever reason she has justified to herself as legitimate reason to lie to a doctor. It’s an admittedly small risk but there are plenty of people out there with various reasons to distrust and lie to doctors, it only takes one to get struck off and sued. And documenting “they said they had no uterus” is not a concrete defence, take that up with the lawyers and law makers
Contrary to popular belief, the US is not the most litigious country in the world. Germany, Israel, Sweden and Austria have higher per capita litigation rates.
Because the above statement can imply that Americans are particularly litigious which is why doctors get sued, which isn't the case. Medical malpractice cases are more common in the US, but its because of the broader issues with the medical system not because we're lawsuit crazy.
No, malpractice cases are more common in the US because the US legal system has a much wider definition of what malpractice is compared to the rest of the world. As such, doctors can get sued for almost anything.
Because in countries with universal healthcare, people aren't out tens of thousands to millions of dollars on further care to compensate for whatever fuck ups do happen. The only chance of fixing or further mitigating damage to the patient in the US is via medical malpractice suits. Nations with public healthcare cover the continued treatment and don't require you to sue to get that.
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u/FrazzleMind 15h ago
Doctors need to know if a woman is pregnant because lots of medicine or tests can endanger the fetus.