Leslie Sinclair has been donating blood regularly for 50 years without anyone asking him if he’s pregnant
Donating blood is creepy and weird anyway.
But that isn’t really the point here.
A man who refused to state whether or not he was pregnant has been barred from donating blood.
Leslie Sinclair, who has donated around 125 pints of the red stuff across 50 years, grew irate when asked to state on a form if he was with child.
He claimed that, as he was a man in his 60s, the question did not apply to him.
This emoji says otherwise. Checkmate, bigot.
But as a result, he was told he could not donate blood.
According to the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, all potential donors will be asked if they are pregnant.
They claim that this is done to “promote inclusiveness”, and that pregnancy is “not always visually clear”,
But Mr Sinclair slammed the policy as “nonsensical”, and told the Daily Mail that he was “angry about it”.
The dad-of-two – to clarify, he did not give birth to the children – with wife Margaret said: “I am angry because I have been giving blood since I was 18 and have regularly gone along.
“I’m very happy to do so without any problem.
“There is always a form to fill in and that’s fine – they tend to ask about medical conditions or diseases – and clearly that’s because the blood needs to be safe.
“This time around, there was a question I hadn’t seen before: ‘Are you pregnant, or have you been in the last six months?’ which required a yes or no answer.
“I pointed out to the staff that it was impossible for me to be in that position but I was told that I would need to answer, otherwise I couldn’t give blood.
“I told them that was stupid and that if I had to leave, I wouldn’t be back, and that was it, I got on my bike and cycled away.
“It is nonsensical and it makes me angry because there are vulnerable people waiting for blood, including children, and in desperate need of help, but they’ve been denied my blood because of the obligation to answer a question that can’t possibly be answered.”
Actually, I understand why this man was donating blood – the ancient practice of “blood-letting” has been confirmed as healthy. It’s the same thing that happened with leeches. They told us this stuff was voodoo, then people were like “wait, if it didn’t work, why were people doing it for hundreds of years? Were they just really stupid?”
It does work. It’s just that the idea of your blood being injected into someone else is gross and sick. They should allow blood-letting clinics where they show you that the blood just gets flushed down into the sewers, so that people can experience the benefits of blood-letting without being involved in something creepy.
As far as the male pregnancy thing – I don’t really have any comment on that. Everything is just being made weird for the sake of weirdness.