Protect patients from invasive exams

SB16 is a bill to prohibit unauthorized pelvic examinations on female patients who have been administered deep sedation or anesthesia or are unconscious. This is a bill intended to protect Connecticut’s women and girls from being utilized for medical training purposes without our consent. The bill is one of a number proposed around the country recently in response to the practice of attending physicians allowing medical students — sometimes several in a row — to perform pelvic examinations on unconscious women without their prior direct consent solely for training purposes. Unfortunately, the bill has stalled.

Our state’s medical community has spoken out against the bill vigorously, arguing that, without explicit evidence this practice is happening in Connecticut, there is no need for legislation to protect women and girls against it. Legislators and health care practitioners alike claim that women and girls are already protected by existing legislation — were a woman or girl subjected to a medically unnecessary pelvic examination without her consent, she would be able to make a legal claim of medical assault.

The trouble is, evidence for this practice is not easy to obtain. Unless a patient wakes up in the operating or recovery room during the exam, she cannot know whether or not she has been subjected to one. And her only evidence would be her word — evidence weakened in the eyes of the law due to her being under the influence of anesthetic or sedating drugs at the time.

I myself am a survivor of medical exploitation. As a child and adolescent, a physician at one of our state’s more prominent hospitals showcased my naked body to medical students for the purpose of teaching. He allowed those students to photograph my naked body. He allowed those students to study my naked body for the “learning experience.” None of this was medically necessary — it was strictly for training purposes. He, that hospital, and those medical students turned me from a person into an exhibit, putting their educational interests above my mental and emotional health and wellbeing.

My mother didn’t know it until after she signed them, but the consent forms the hospital required from her in order to provide me with the treatment I needed contained language that allowed all of this. Most medical consent forms contain language that is very general, allowing a wide berth regarding who participates in a patient’s treatment and what procedures or examinations are performed. That generality enables teaching practices, such as unauthorized pelvic exams, that are beneficial to trainees and their teachers but harmful and degrading to patients. Years later, I still suffer debilitating posttraumatic stress symptoms as a result of what happened at that hospital — all in the name of training the next generation of doctors. Imagine the trauma a woman or girl subjected to an unauthorized pelvic exam solely for teaching purposes experiences.

Because practices like this persist, and because Connecticut’s state government for the time being refuses to legislate against them, I do not feel safe seeking health care. And speaking from my vantage point as a social justice professional, I can say with certainty that I am not the only one. Connecticut’s women and girls deserve better. Assaults should not need to take place before our state government is willing to provide us with protection against them. There should not need to be a victim count before our representatives are willing to protect us. And we should not need to choose between ensuring our safety beyond a shadow of a doubt and receiving needed health care.

Our bodies and our dignity should be important enough to our elected legislators to take proactive action to defend them as thoroughly as possible. There should be laws in place to assure us, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we will never be subjected to a medically unnecessary pelvic exam that we have not explicitly and knowingly consented to.

To our legislators, I would say — please protect us when we can’t protect ourselves. When we are lying unconscious in an operating room, we cannot monitor what is going on. Without explicit legal mandates in place, we cannot be sure our bodies are not being used, without our consent, for teaching purposes. Don’t leave our safety to chance. We deserve better.

Livia Fry, of Stratford, is a program specialist at a human rights and social justice foundation.