From Chicago Tribune authored by Robin Fretwell Wilson and Anthony Michael Kreis:
“When a young woman was admitted to an Arizona hospital for stomach surgery two years ago, she never imagined the scars she’d leave with would be emotional ones. After the anesthesia wore off a resident informed her that physicians and medical students performed a nonconsensual pelvic exam on her. A survivor of sexual assault, the patient said she was “in shock” and felt betrayed by her physician.
Teaching medical students to identify abnormalities by probing a woman’s vagina and cervix — without express consent — can be stopped easily. Yet, the practice persists because the controversy it periodically sparks dies out eventually. And, like clockwork, attending physicians and medical educators resume using women like test dummies — stripping them of the right to decide who touches their bodies.
The practice is again under scrutiny from researchers and journalists. We should not take another decade to stop treating women’s bodies like cadavers donated to science.”
