Missouri Enforcing Mandatory Pelvic Exams for Abortions, Critics Decry ‘State-Sanctioned Sexual Assault’
In an exclusive, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reports that a new Missouri state government ruling will force all women who are seeking an abortion to undergo a mandatory pelvic exam before the procedure, a move that Maddow likened to “state-sanctioned sexual assault.”
“As of last week, every woman seeking a legal abortion in Missouri is being told by the state that she must have a mandatory medically unnecessary vaginal examination by order of the state of Missouri,” Maddow said on MSNBC.
“Now, doctors at this Missouri clinic, they do perform pelvic exams right before they do an abortion, which is standard medical practice which is fine. But now, as of this week, what the state has started doing, what the state government is now doing, is that they’ve told the doctors at that one remaining clinic that they must do a second medically unnecessary invasive pelvic exam on every woman before she was, before she is allowed to start the punitive three-day waiting period that is required of all women who need an abortion in Missouri.”
Maddow spoke of anger within the medical community at the state’s move and cited one Missouri doctor’s public outrage at having to comply with a rule that she deemed “unnecessary” as well as “invasive” and “uncomfortable.”
Today I was forced by the state of Missouri to perform an unnecessary pelvic exam on a patient terminating her pregnancy for a fetal anomaly. She is heartbroken over her situation and I was forced to do an invasive, uncomfortable exam. It broke me as a physician to do this to her
— DrAmyA (@AmyAddante) June 3, 2019
Missouri is not the first state to try to enact medically invasive steps before allowing an abortion. In 2012, Republicans in Virginia passed a law that mandated women undergo transvaginal ultrasounds before an abortion could be done. (After public outcry, that law was subsequently changed to only require an external ultrasound.) Similarly, in March of this year, a federal appeals court upheld a 2017 Kentucky law that mandates transvaginal ultrasounds for any abortions of pregnancies that are of less than nine weeks.
“We either have to ask patients to subject themselves to a state-sanctioned, essentially, sexual assault, or they can’t have an abortion here in Missouri,” said Dr. Colleen McNicholas, an obstetrician from the St. Louis chapter of Planned Parenthood. “For patients who’ve had a history of trauma, for example, I mean, it’s just retraumatizing them all over again. The state continues to put us into a position where we are really choosing between what we know is medically and ethically appropriate, and I would put avoiding unnecessary pelvic exams squarely in that box.”
“A doctor calling it state-sanctioned, essentially, sexual assault,” Maddow said. “State-sanctioned sexual assault is the new price that the state of Missouri is extracting from Missouri women if they try to get an abortion. Now, why would the state government do that? What is the benefit to the state of doing that?”
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.
