Forced to Take a Pregnancy Test Before Boarding

The Northern Mariana Islands have a unique relationship with Chinese visitors. It’s a U.S. commonwealth that doesn’t require Chinese citizens to have a visa to visit. However, it does require special medical forms and, on occasion, additional screening.

In November, twenty-five-year-old Midori Nishida from Hong Kong was forced to undergo additional screening that she says was discriminatory. She was traveling to the islands to visit her family but, before she was allowed to board, the airline–Hong Kong Express, which was recently acquired by Cathay Pacific–told her that she was chosen for a random “fit-to-fly” assessment.

The assessment included a medical authorization form and a pregnancy test. Information filled out on the form by airline representatives indicated that they thought that she looked pregnant. The test would confirm it.

So, an employee took her to the bathroom, gave her the test strip and told her to go into the stall and use it.

“I wanted to make sure that this was really mandatory, so I asked them, ‘Do I really have to take this test, is this necessary?’ ” said Nishida, a Japanese citizen, in an interview with the Washington Post. “They said, ‘You can opt out for the test,’ but that means they would deny me boarding the flight. I felt like my hands were tied, so I had no choice.”

Hong Kong Express said in a statement that it had suspended the practice and apologized “for the distress caused.”

Cathay Pacific later released a statement that said, among other things, they were under new management:

In response to concerns raised by authorities in Saipan, we took actions on flights to Saipan from February 2019 to help ensure U.S. immigration laws were not being undermined.

Under our new management, we recognize the significant concerns this practice has caused.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said that it has not asked airlines that fly to the Northern Mariana Islands to ask passengers for pregnancy tests. However, officials in Saipan have “raised the issue” with “local and international tourism partners, stakeholders, and airline partners as a recommendation to protect the health of passengers and our overall tourism industry from potential overstayers,” Kevin Bautista, press secretary for the office of the commonwealth’s governor, said in a statement.

He went on to say that Nishida’s experience with Hong Kong Express “very unfortunate. We do hope that any airline’s policy, regardless of what it is, prioritizes the privacy and safety of the passenger,” Bautista said.

Nishida says she eventually got an apology from the airline but only after the Wall Street Journal started asking questions for a report published last week.