10 signatures reached
To: Govenor Roy Cooper of North Carolina
No More Pelvic Exams On Anesthetized Women Without Consent
Doctors-in-training and medical students at teaching hospitals are performing pelvic exams on anesthetized women without their consent. I would like the legislature in North Carolina to enact a law that makes it illegal to perform pelvic exams on unconscious patients without consent. This should also apply to all states that don't currently have laws in place making this practice illegal.
Why is this important?
Most medical school faculty and students don’t talk about it publicly, and affected patients are unaware this is happening, because they are under anesthesia. It is disturbing to know that by consenting to surgery, women risk having someone literally in their vagina without consent for purposes that benefit only the providers, and not them. A survey at the University of Oklahoma in 2005 found that a large majority of medical students had given pelvic exams to gynecologic surgery patients who were under anesthesia, and that in nearly three quarters of these cases the women had not consented to the exam. As bioethicist Arthur Caplan describes, “Sometimes, more than one student will practice the exam, with many sets of gloved fingers in the patient’s vagina without their knowledge.”