‘Humiliating and frustrating.’ Airline makes woman take pregnancy test before flying

When Midori Nishida, a Japanese citizen, checked in for her flight on Hong Kong Express bound for Saipan, a U.S. territory, the airline required that she take a pregnancy test in order to board.

On the questionnaire she was required to fill out, Nishida wrote that she wasn’t pregnant but the airline asked her to give permission to take a “fit-to-fly” assessment, which included a pregnancy test, according to the Wall Street Journal. The permission form said that the pregnancy test was for women who “have a body size or shape resembling a pregnant woman.”

“It was very humiliating and frustrating,” Nishida told the Wall Street Journal. She took the test, which was negative, and she was allowed to board the plane.

The airline has since apologized and said that it required tests to “ensure U.S. immigration laws were not ‘undermined,’ ” according to the Associated Press.

Hong Kong Express said it was suspending the practice.

“We would like to apologize unreservedly to anyone who has been affected by this,” Hong Kong Express said in a statement.

Nishida’s family has lived in Saipan for more than 20 years and Nishida grew up there, according to the Hong Kong Free Press.

The island has seen women giving birth there to get U.S. citizenship for their children, the Hong Kong Free Press reported. Nearly 600 babies were born in 2018 to tourists in the Northern Mariana Islands — also a U.S. territory. Of that figure, 575 were Chinese tourists, according to health authorities.

This story was originally published January 17, 2020 at 10:58 AM with the headline "‘Humiliating and frustrating.’ Airline makes woman take pregnancy test before flying."