Human Rights For All: Legislative Action
States Banning Unauthorized Pelvic Examinations
A map of states banning unauthorized pelvic exams before January 2019.
A map of states banning unauthorized pelvic exams as of December 18, 2023.
Regulation in States
For nearly two decades, Professor Wilson has engaged in the initiative to require express consent for intimate exams when the exams are for the student’s, rather than the patient’s benefit (see “Hastings Center Report”, “Autonomy Suspended”, “Unauthorized Practice”, and “Using Tort Law to Secure Patient Dignity” for articles addressing this issue).
Teaching medical students to identify abnormalities by conducting intimate exams— without prior express consent — can be regulated. Thirty two states have now made the practice illegal, including New York, Maryland, Utah, Washington and Delaware in 2019. In 2020, Louisiana, Maine, Florida and New Hampshire followed suit. Arkansas, Arizona and, most recently, Texas, Rhode Island, and Nevada have also joined in 2021, along with New Jersey and Connecticut in 2022, and Missouri, Montana, Colorado, and Pennsylvania in 2023. Others are:
Yet, the practice persists because the controversy it periodically sparks dies out eventually. And, like clockwork, attending physicians and medical educators resume teaching their trainees through the bodies of unconscious/anesthetized patients. This, in turn, strips the rights of patients to decide who touches their bodies.
Since January 1, 2019, Professor Wilson and a team of students have been supporting legislative efforts across the country where twenty-six bills have been introduced in eighteen states. Twenty have become law in fifty nine months.