A hospital trust in Liverpool said it asks ‘all patients under the age of 60, regardless of how you may identify your gender’. Men are being asked if they are pregnant before undergoing scans at a hospital in England.

Cancer patients and those undergoing X-rays and MRI scans are being asked the question, even if they are not women because the word ‘female’ has been substituted by ‘individuals’ for medical procedures.

It comes after changes to laws governing medical procedures involving radiation, which removed the term “female” and replaced it with “individuals”.

A spokesperson for the trust said, given the risks of radiation with some scans, questioning all patients was the ‘least intrusive way of ensuring it is safe to proceed’.

Asked about the hospital’s position, and whether men can have penises, Labour leader Angela Rayner told Sky News: “This upsets me because I think about a young person struggling with their identity and if we’re having a social media debate around what genitalia someone’s got, it really debases the serious issues that people face, we should be taking it off social media.”

Regulations were updated by the Department of Health in 2017, changing those who should be questioned from “females of childbearing age” to “individuals of childbearing potential.”

It states that medical professionals should “enquire whether that individual is pregnant or breastfeeding, if relevant.”

Because of the risks that radiotherapy, diagnostic imaging, and nuclear medicine bring to an unborn child, the change was made. To reduce the danger, doctors must be able to determine whether a patient is pregnant before performing the procedures.

The Society of Radiographers, which published inclusive pregnancy guidance in November last year, said it is important to ask all patients about any possibility of pregnancy.

They have advised medics to ask what gender patients were assigned at birth and then question them on their pregnancy status if they were born female.

A spokesperson from The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust said: “Our policy relating to asking patients if they are pregnant before undergoing procedures involving ionizing radiation and MRI adheres to national legislation, as certain amounts of radiation can be harmful to fetuses in utero.

“We believe asking all people who are having their abdomen imaged/scanned in this way, regardless of gender, is the least intrusive way of ensuring it is safe to proceed.”

Source: dailymail.co.uk