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Saturday, April 27, 2002" 'Certifying that a woman has an intact or ruptured hymen isn’t a doctor’s work and has nothing to do with medical practice, both in public and private sectors," Dr Padrós said. He added that the college’s ethical commission would soon release an "official position report" so that Catalan doctors were aware of how to act. He said that the college had been asked twice recently by Catalan gynaecologists what they should do when faced with a request for a virginity certificate. These cases, which involved Muslim parents who wanted a certificate so that their daughters could get married without problems, prompted the college to draft its guidelines. Although the phenomenon may be new in Spain, it is a common practice in Muslim countries such as Turkey and Morocco. A study published three years ago in JAMA (1999;282:485-90) on virginity examinations in Turkey showed that, although the Turkish Medical Association condemned the practice except in cases of alleged sexual assault, nearly half of Turkish forensic doctors conducted "virginity examinations for social reasons despite beliefs that such examinations are inappropriate, traumatic to the patient, and often performed against the patient’s will.' " (italics are mine) Even subjugated women can be enterprising enough to find ways around this, though, as Dutch gynecologists have found: " 'Many immigrant groups hold strongly with the tradition that girls must be virgins when they marry. If the bride cannot show her bloody sheet after the wedding night, her family are shamed. Her new husband's family may exact revenge in the form of violent reprisals and banishment of the bride. Because of these far reaching consequences, many gynaecologists in the Netherlands are willing to reconstruct the hymens of adolescent girls who are no longer virgins but wish to appear so.' " In the Netherlands they can do this without parental consent. The women can also have all references to the procedure removed from their medical records and away from the prying eyes of their owners, er, I mean families. posted by Sydney on 4/27/2002 07:19:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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