A transgender Internet celebrity on Saturday apologized for faking a pregnancy, after weeks of controversy surrounding a photograph she posted on Instagram showing her with a protruding stomach.
“I wish to express my deepest apologies to anyone who was misled by my actions,” Wang Yao (罔腰) wrote on Facebook, adding that she would be more careful in what she posts online.
On Feb. 18, she posted the photo of herself with a protruding stomach, as well as a fetal ultrasound image, which appeared to have been performed at Kaohsiung Medical University Chung-Ho Memorial Hospital.
Photo: Huang Hsu-lei, Taipei Times
Wang Yao’s boyfriend said that she had undergone an experimental treatment that allowed her to conceive, which had cost them a “fortune.”
Many have questioned how someone without a uterus could conceive.
The Kaohsiung Department of Health launched an investigation to determine whether any hospital had breached the nation’s Regulations on Human Trials (人體試驗管理辦法) by carrying out an illegal uterine transplant.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare on Thursday said that there was no evidence that such a procedure had been performed in Taiwan.
During the investigation last week, Wang Yao admitted that she was not pregnant and that the ultrasound image she had posted on social media was not hers, the department said.
In her statement on Saturday, she said she had gotten carried away after being informed that a family member was pregnant, and wondered what it would be like if it had happened to her.
“So I posed with my boyfriend for a picture with his hands on my belly to imagine what it would be like to be a mother,” she said.
Despite the apology, the couple is being investigated for possible breaches of the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法), the department said.
If found guilty of spreading rumors in a way that undermined public order and peace, they could either be subject to three days in jail or fined up to NT$30,000, the department said.
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