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On 19 September 2018, Bust magazine highlighted the disturbing fact that doctors and medical students regularly, and legally, give anesthetized patients non-consensual pelvic exams. The practice was described in detail in an account critical of the practice written by then-medical student Shawn Barnes and published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology in 2012: An essay published on the XOJane website recounted the unease one woman felt attempting to find out if someone had performed such an exam on her during a recent surgery: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Medical Association, and the Association of American Medical Colleges has each condemned the practice, but it remains legal in the vast majority of American states. While teaching hospitals do provide consent forms indicating that medical students may be involved with their care, these forms do not necessarily require the explicit disclosure of pelvic exams, and often times multiple students will perform the same exam on a patient or perform it in cases when is medically unnecessary: According to a 2018 review paper, several scholarly efforts have demonstrated that the practice is common: The practice is explicitly outlawed in Hawaii, California, Illinois, Virginia, and Oregon, but it is legal in the remaining 45 states. In 2019, however, multiple states introduced legislative bills aimed at requiring that women undergoing gynecological surgeries give explicit approval to pelvic exams beforehand
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