San Jose, CA – California will be the first state in the nation to legally protect women from unauthorized and unnecessary pelvic exams in a new law going into effect on January 1rst. The new law requires explicit patient consent before medical students can practice pelvic examinations on unconscious women, a common practice in many training hospitals.

The State Assembly and Senate unanimously passed Assembly Bill 663 in the last weeks of the 2003 legislative session. Governor Davis signed the bill into law on October 1st. Assemblywoman Sally Lieber (D-San Jose), author of the strict new law, proposed AB 663 after learning about the common medical training technique from media reports. “It is outrageous that groups of medical students have been lining up and practicing unnecessary pelvic exams on unwilling and unconscious women,” Lieber stated. “This new state law stops this abusive practice,” she said.

Reports of the training technique started surfacing in media reports after a handful of training hospitals started requiring more explicit discussion of the invasive procedure. Many in the medical community have defended the use of unconscious female patients for the training of medical students. Assemblywoman Lieber argues that the training institutions have plenty of volunteers, paid and unpaid, for medical school needs. “There is no excuse for not getting a woman’s consent,” Lieber says, “this law will allow women to undergo anesthesia without fear of being used as a human guinea pig – without their knowledge or consent.”

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