Performing unnecessary pelvic exams on unconscious patients without their consent is currently, as I’m writing this, legal in Ohio. In fact, it is apparently common. Medical professionals will have their, sometimes multiple, students probe around the vaginas of surgical patients unresponsive due to anesthetic. The patients are typically not asked for their consent prior to the procedure and are not informed after.

Many medical students have reported being uncomfortable with the lack of consent, but feared being blacklisted during their highly hierarchical medical training if they refused. Their teachers who are telling them to do this have a high level of control over their future careers.

Proponents of this practice claim that it provides necessary experience for students in providing pelvic exams, and requiring consent would severely decrease the chances for gaining experience, as few patients would agree. They also claim it is the same as having medical students take a patient’s blood pressure, take blood, insert a catheter, etc. However, in states which have outlawed the practice of pelvic exams without consent, enough patients consent to the procedure to have had no noticeable effect on medical training. And the other medical procedures often performed by medical students are typically necessary for the health of the patient. These pelvic exams are medically unnecessary, and provide the patient no medical benefit.

Currently, Ohio 135 HB 89 has been introduced to the house, and has been referred to a committee. This bill seeks to make unnecessary pelvic exams performed without patient consent punishable by a medical board. It was sponsored originally by Munira Abdullahi and Brett Hillyer.

Unfortunately, I have seen very little public discussion or media coverage of this bill. Please, if you’re an Ohio resident and this practice seems unethical to you, reach out to your legislators and let them know this is an issue you care about. Spread the word about this breach of consent in a professional medical setting. In my opinion, pelvic exams without need or consent are assault.

If you’re a U.S. citizen but not an Ohio resident, I suggest checking your own state laws, as currently less than half of all states have outlawed this widespread practice.

I lived in the boonies as a kid, where each house was like a couple minutes drive apart. So we didn’t get many solicitors; no vacuum salesmen, no Jehovah’s witnesses, etc. We did, however, have an ice cream truck that would show up about once a month. It wasn’t one of those big white trucks with the fancy speakers to play the jingle and compartments to hold the fresh ice cream. It was a blue minivan driving slowly with one of the doors rolled open, and photocopied pictures of ice cream were taped to the side. When I heard the jingle playing through their radio speakers, I’d run down our long gravel driveway to catch them. They always seemed kinda irritated, and would ask what you wanted. You would point at different pictures they had, but they were always out of those products. When you asked what they did have, they’d just give you one of those generic ice cream pops from the grocery store out of a cooler they had in the back seat. But the kids in my neighborhood didn’t care. This was our only ice cream truck, so we took what we got. When I was about sixteen, I realized I hadn’t seen the ice cream minivan in a long time, and asked my mom if it had gone out of business. She looked at me for a moment, and said, “Sweetheart, they were selling drugs. The ice cream was just a cheap front for driving around selling drugs to different neighborhoods. They hates when you kids actually wanted ice cream. How have you not realized by now? They got busted, that’s why they stopped.” My life is a lie.

I’m in my early twenties. Already, I’m getting the “when are you FINALLY going to have kids?”

When I reply “not until I feel I’m financially stable enough to support a child,” I usually receive a smug rebuttal of “If you wait until you have enough money you’ll never have kids.”

“Then I’ll never have kids.”

“You don’t have to be so dramatic and make threats!”

Why is me saying I won’t have a child if I can’t support it a ‘threat?’

When I first started my job, one of my coworkers said to me, in passing,

“You know, every man who works here is gay, but none of the women are.”

Little did she know…

I was here to mess with the status quo.

I went to a drag show, and between acts one of the queens was talking to the crowd, and somehow got to the talking point of “have you guys heard that most sloths have chlamydia?” And like ten people (including me) yelled out “IT’S KOALAS!”

Someone also added “SLOTHS GROW MOSS THOUGH!”

Faith in humanity : restored

Watched World War II colorized and this popped into my head