tinpra

How would you feel if someone told you, after coming out of anesthesia for a routine surgery, that medical students had performed a pelvic exam on you, without your consent, while you were unconscious? That seems like a no-brainer - it's a pretty serious violation. Obviously, no one should be subjected to medical procedures without their consent, especially something as personal and invasive as a pelvic exam. But in fact, at least in the United States and Canada, it's fairly common practice for medical students to perform internal pelvic exams on unconscious patients who have not consented to the procedure.

Andre Picard has a column in the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail about this "dirty little secret of medicine." In it, he writes about Sara Weinberg, a Canadian doctor, who has been exposing the practice. Her story goes back to 2007, when she was a medical student and her "younger brother Daniel, also studying to be a doctor, phoned for advice: As part of his rotation in obstetrics and gynecology, he had been asked to perform a pelvic exam on a woman who was under anesthetic. He refused, saying doing so without consent would be unethical." Weinberg said that she had performed internal pelvic exams on unconscious patients before, and that it had never occurred to her that it might be unethical. After polling her fellow students, she found that 72 percent had done exams on unconscious patients.

(Read the rest at Care2.com)

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If you hadn't guessed by the general tone of my more politico posts, I'm against abortion. However tell me how I have the legal right to choose to have an abortion, a right I supposedly have because these cells are growing in my body, but I don't have the right to choose whether some med student has his/her hands up my pelvis?! All I can think about are the women in my life for whom having a pelvic exam is already a traumatic experience. I don't even know how to bring this up to them in a way that won't send them into freakout.

Serious thank you to