CBS Drama ‘The Good Doctor’ Features ‘Pregnant Man’

The CBS medical drama The Good Doctor featured a “pregnant man” plot with a transgender man who suffers a dangerous tumor after becoming pregnant in its latest episode.

In the story, trans patient Rio Gutierrez (played by trans actor Emmett Preciado) enters the hospital to be treated for a pituitary tumor. During the exam, the doctor laments that the admitting computers are “messed up” because the software assigned the patient’s gender as female — which she actually is, biologically.

But the doctor insists she will change the records to make sure it is “correct going forward,” meaning that the documents will be changed to assign the gender of “male” to the patient.

But, accidentally showing how dangerous such a change would be in real life, the episode goes on to find that the character’s tumor is growing at a faster rate because the patient is pregnant. And an operation is needed to save the patient’s life.

In real life, if the records read as “male” from the beginning, a pregnancy test may never be performed, and this life-threatening condition may never be found or it might be found too late.

Watch below (via MRC): 

The trans actor, who in real-life has undergone a double mastectomy, celebrated the role in a recent Zoom interview for the episode.

“I was very grateful to get this role just because the narrative just felt so important to me,” Preciado said. “And honestly, I related to this character so much. I felt like they were honestly writing about me. And I was like, how do they know all of this stuff? So, I thought it was perfect.”

“I understand that I was born in a female body, but my brain and my soul is masculine; It is male,” Preciado added. “I loved how it was written, because it shows that just because this person is deciding to carry a baby, because they can, because their body was built for that, why does that have to be a feminine thing? Why can’t it also be a masculine thing, or why does it have to be either/or?”

Also in the episode, series star Freddie Highmore — who plays Dr. Murphy, an autistic savant who becomes a surgeon — finds the whole situation curious. The trans patient decides to keep the baby and give birth. But at one point, Dr. Murphy tells the boyfriend of the trans patient that having a baby is the “most female thing” anyone can do, so the patient’s claim of being a male makes little sense.

“It’s not female if Rio’s doing it,” the boyfriend (Johnathan Sousa) replies, insisting that his biologically female partner is really a man, and thus is a man having a baby.

Late last year, Harvard Medical Department referred to biological women as “pregnant and birthing people” in a Tweet.

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