Two separate bills in New York and California would bar "virginity testing,' a practice considered abusive and unscientific by health professionals
Lawmakers on opposite sides of the country are considering new legislation that would be the first in the nation to ban "virginity testing."
“So-called ‘virginity testing’ is a form of violence and harassment against young girls and women,” Gonzalez said in a statement. “There is no medical reason for this examination. It’s time for California to listen to calls from the international community and ban this traumatizing, sexist and unnecessary practice.”
“The hymen is nothing like a piece of plastic you can wrap around your food or a seal,” Norwegian doctors Nina Dølvik Brochmann said from the TED stage in Oslo. She and Ellen Støkken Dahl, who together wrote the book “The Wonder Down Under: The Insider’s Guide to the Anatomy, Biology, and Reality of the Vagina,” are working to dispel virginity myths. “You simply cannot look a woman between her legs and read her sexual story.
"Our review found that virginity testing is not good at detecting who has not had sexual intercourse and that it can hurt the person being tested – physically, mentally, and socially," the researchers said. "Our hope is to make more people and countries aware of this to prevent harm to women and girls."
Despite scientific evidence, the tests enduredIt’s difficult to know how prevalent virginity tests are, especially in the United States, where privacy laws limit disclosure of whether they have been performed. But a study published in 2017, researchers surveyed close to 300 gynecologists in the U.S. Roughly 10% responded that they'd been asked to conduct a virginity test, and 3.5% said they had actually performed one.
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