Spanish doctor apologizes after diagnosing a woman with 'homosexuality'

• A 19-year-old woman in Spain went to a gynecologist seeking answers for her irregular and painful periods.
• The Spanish hospital report listed the "current illness" as "homosexuality."
• The doctor claimed it was a "slip-up," and the hospital has since apologized for the error.

A 19-year-old woman went to a hospital in Murcia, Spain, seeking answers for her irregular and painful periods.

But when she received the report for her visit, the "current illness" listed was "homosexuality," The Washington Post reported.

Earlier this month, Alba Aragón, 19, went to the Hospital General Universitario Reina Sofía in Murcia, located in southeast Spain, for her first ever gynecological consultation with Dr. Eugenio López.

"I told him that I was gay because I thought it would be an important fact at the time of prescribing any treatment or determining the diagnosis," Aragón told The Post.

"I thought it was incredible that up until this day, in the 21st century, these types of beliefs continue to exist," she added.

López told Spanish online newspaper El Español that he made a mistake transcribing the information from Aragón's visit into her record.

"What can I do?" López said. "It was a huge slip-up. I'm a human being. I clicked the wrong button."

"The computer system offers a series of fields to fill out the report and, as the specialist has said, he made a mistake when selecting the field where he put the word 'homosexuality,'" a spokeswoman for the hospital told The Post.

The incident sparked national outrage and was denounced by local LGBTQ organizations and political figures in the country citing homophobia. Aragón submitted a complaint against the doctor for "considering her sexual orientation an illness" and demanded that López apologize for the incident.

A hospital spokesperson told The Post that its executives reached out to Aragón and her family with an apology and that the error on the report was fixed the next day following her appointment on October 4. Aragón and her family accepted the apology.

Aragón told The Post she wasn't upset by the incident, though if it had happened to her five years when she was struggling with coming out, she would have felt differently. She said she submitted the complaint on behalf of people who are grappling with accepting their sexuality, so they wouldn't think that homosexuality is an "illness."

"In the end, we wanted to tell this experience and publicize it so it doesn't happen to other people," Aragón told The Post.