{"id":315918,"date":"2020-01-20T06:00:42","date_gmt":"2020-01-19T20:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=315918"},"modified":"2020-01-20T06:00:42","modified_gmt":"2020-01-19T20:00:42","slug":"hk-express-stops-pregnancy-screening-for-saipan-travelers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/hk-express-stops-pregnancy-screening-for-saipan-travelers\/","title":{"rendered":"HK Express stops pregnancy screening for Saipan travelers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>HONG KONG<\/strong> (AP)\u2014The airline Hong Kong Express has apologized for having required some female passengers bound for the U.S. territory of Saipan to take pregnancy tests. <\/p>\n<p>The low-cost carrier said in a statement Friday that it began requiring such tests in February 2019, after concerns were raised by Saipan authorities, to ensure U.S. immigration laws were not \u201cundermined.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe would like to apologize unreservedly to anyone who has been affected by this,\u201d it said. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnder our new management, we recognize the significant concerns this practice has caused. We have immediately suspended the practice while we review it,\u201d it said. <\/p>\n<p>The U.S. has been seeking to prevent travelers, especially from China, from heading to Saipan and other American territories to give birth and potentially gain U.S. citizenship for their babies. <\/p>\n<p>The issue surfaced after a Japanese passenger complained late last year that she felt \u201chumiliated\u201d when she was required to undergo such a test while traveling to the island. <\/p>\n<p>Midori Nishida, who lives in Tokyo but grew up in Saipan, said that while preparing to board her flight she was taken to a public restroom and handed a pregnancy test, which came out negative. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cSatisfied that I had no baby in me, the airline staff finally issued me a boarding pass,\u201d Nishida said in comments published by the Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am truly appalled by the entire situation,\u201d she said, saying she usually looked forward to visiting Saipan and seeing family and friends. \u201cBut after this incident, I can only think of how I will be suspected, investigated, and humiliated before I can return to a place I consider home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HONG KONG (AP)\u2014The airline Hong Kong Express has apologized for having required some female passengers&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":309809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}