March Against Unwanted, Unwarranted, Unconsented Hysterectomies
It is no secret that hysterectomy is one of the most-performed major surgeries in the country and is also one of the least necessary and most damaging. It is also no secret that there is widespread hysterectomy-related abuse by gynecologists and that the hospitals, legislators and other authorities who could rein in the maltreatment of women have failed to do so.
On March 27, 2004 in Birmingham, Alabama women who have been harmed by hysterectomies and those who care about them will take the matter into their own hands very publicly, initiating a year-long protest which will be taken up in 51 cities throughout the United States. Every Saturday the protest will begin in another state, continuing every day for a year, ending in Washington DC the week of March 12, 2005. In Birmingham on March 27 there will be a 3 p.m. showing of un becoming, a play by Rick Schweikert which deals with the issues surrounding hysterectomy. There will be a performance or showing of the play in an additional 20 states.
An estimated 76% of women who are hysterectomized are castrated at the same time. The removed uterus and ovaries, however, are commonly found to be perfectly normal. What is worse, some women have never consented to the removal of any of these organs. And according to the HERS Foundation Data Bank, 99.7% percent of women in an ongoing study were given little or no prior information about the acknowledged adverse effects of hysterectomy - information that is a legal requisite of consent.
Nora W. Coffey, HERS president makes the point that doctors often frighten women into consenting and give them false and misleading information.
“When a doctor tells a woman who manifests no sign of disease or illness that she will be protected against cancer by castration, he is using a common scare tactic. And when a doctor tells an intact woman that after a hysterectomy she will still be ‘the same as before - only better’ that is false and misleading. Demonstrably so.”
The conspiracy of silence regarding these and other offenses that place women in harm’s way will be peeled away as abusive doctors and the hospital staffs and executives who shield them meet their victims on American streets everywhere.