For those who’ve never seen Fox’s execrable game show, Moment of Truth, it goes like this: the contestant, who’s hooked up to a polygraph machine, is asked a series of embarrassing questions. The more honest the answers, the more money the contestant wins.

Check out this abridged version of an episode featuring Aaron Dunbar, an Emergency Medical Technician. Two of the questions — asked by an actual fat person, presumably to increase Aaron’s discomfort in answering — are “Do you think fat people are simply weak?” and “Are you repulsed by fat people?” Aaron’s answer to both is “Yes,” followed by the robotic female voice representing the polygraph: “True.”

This might be the man who shows up to save your life in an emergency — a man who is repulsed by fat people and believes they are weak. And he’s not alone. I’ve personally had a conversation with an EMT who expressed similar sentiments — having to help very fat people was disgusting to him, and he found himself feeling anger toward them for “letting themselves get that way.” A 2001 study by Kelly Brownell and Rebecca Puhl found that 24% of nurses admit to being “repulsed” by fat patients. Last summer, paramedics in Gloucester, England, joked as a 245-pound woman died in her home, because they couldn’t figure out how to move her to the hospital.

For all the empty talk about being concerned for our health, there sure are a lot of medical professionals out there who simply don’t want to do their jobs when it comes to fat patients.

(Via Shakesville.)

The Well-Rounded Mama has a post up today recounting stories she’s heard of fat women being told that if they get pregnant, they’ll die in delivery or shortly thereafter, that they have no business having children at their size, and if they don’t die in childbirth, their babies will. All because of their weight.

To me, this is one of the most monstrous kinds of fat bias. I wonder how many fat women have been scared out of having a baby at all because of treatment like this. I know that many fat women have been scared into Weight Loss Surgery with arguments like these, and that many others simply decided long ago not to even consider having children.

I also think that this has to do with doctors trying to become the gatekeepers of who they think should procreate and who should not. If they don’t think you “deserve” to have a baby or if they don’t want to see your fat genes passed along to future generations, they subtly or overtly discourage you from children.

Check out the rest of the post. It’ll make your blood boil.