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 These pelvic exams are done in many parts of the world to determine
suitability for marriage. But doctors shouldn’t agree to these exams
because they violate three core ethics of the profession –
protecting patient welfare, respecting women’s autonomy, and
promoting justice - a group of ethicists wrote recently in an essay
the Lancet.
“Virginity testing does not protect and promote the health of female
patients; virginity testing is therefore completely incompatible
with each of these three principles of professional ethics in
obstetrics and gynecology,” said Laurence McCullough, an ethics and
health policy researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston
and a co-author of the essay.
The exam can be painful or make women feel humiliated or degraded,
McCullough added by email.
“There is no net clinical benefit and (a) preventable risk of
biopsychosocial harm,” McCullough said.
In the test, which is often called a “two-finger” test, the doctor
does an internal vaginal exam to feel the hymen, a thin membrane
that some cultures believe remains intact until women have sexual
intercourse.
Some women, however, may be born without a hymen, and the membrane
can also rupture or stretch from activities like sports or using a
tampon.
Many human rights organizations have condemned virginity testing as
inhumane and unethical. The World Health Organization has said
“there is no place for virginity (or `two-finger’) testing; it has
no scientific validity.”
Still, the practice persists in many parts of the world, including
India, Turkey, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Indonesia and
South Africa. It may be done out of a cultural or religious belief
that the test can ensure women are virgins until marriage.
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Virginity tests have also been done in other situations to ensure,
for example, that women are virgins when they enter the military.
Tests have also been performed when women are accused of moral
crimes or have run away from home.
In South Africa, the tests fell out of use but then became more
common again with the rise of the AIDS epidemic, said Louise
Vincent, a researcher in virginity testing and other women’s
reproductive health issues at Rhodes University in South Africa who
wasn’t involved in the study.
In the context of AIDS, in a country where many very young women
report that their first sexual experiences aren’t consensual, the
specter of virginity tests can potentially serve as a deterrent
against unwanted sexual advances, Vincent, who wasn’t involved in
the study, said by email.
“It is all very well for high-minded westerners to preach justice
and autonomy of the person, but these ethical principles have no
efficacy in the context I describe,” Vincent added. “Here for a
young girl to say to an insistent man `I can’t, I have to get tested
next week by the elder women’ can act as a rare instrument to resist
in a context in which such means are often absent.”
Even in these circumstances, though, the tests are unethical for
doctors to perform, McCullough said.
“There are no situations in which the female patient can be
considered better off by having virginity testing performed,”
McCullough said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1RKPrhc The Lancet, online December 22, 2015.
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