angelikaJ
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quote:
ORIGINAL: tazzygirl
~FR
As you might be able to tell, it was vigorously uncomfortable — more than a typical pelvic exam, with which most women are very familiar. In part, it’s more uncomfortable because the technician has to press the wand directly against the areas she wants to get an image of — your uterus, Fallopian tubes and ovaries — so there’s more movement and more direct contact with pressure-sensitive areas of your body; you’re also not lying flat on your back to facilitate access to the upper reaches of your vagina; and you’re being penetrated with a longer, rigid object than is used in a regular pelvic exam. In my case, as the technician explained after, my uterus is “high,” or tilted toward my abdomen, so she had to tilt the wand accordingly — and because it was so uncomfortable, she halted the exam before fully exploring my Fallopian tubes or ovaries. If I had been pregnant (which I knew I was not), the exam might have lasted longer as she looked to rule out an ectopic pregnancy and locate the miniscule gestational sac.
It was not, however, like being raped, despite all the furor-generating headlines and “Doonesbury” cartoons that were printed. It was uncomfortable to the point of being painful, emotionally triggering (and undoubtedly is moreso for victims of rape or incest or any woman in the midst of an already-emotional experience) and something that no government should force its citizens to undergo to make a political point. But it wasn’t like being raped — and using language like that not only minimizes rape for its survivors but makes them and other women more frightened of the procedure, which has significant and important medical uses.
Notably, Preterm has a policy of performing ultrasounds on all patients seeking abortion, though Ohio law does not yet require it. For medical reasons, they use ultrasound to confirm pregnancies (in case of false positives), rule out ectopic pregnancies and physically locate the gestational sac in order to perform better, safer abortions. Patients that do not wish to undergo a transvaginal ultrasounds early in their pregnancies can opt to return at a slightly later date, when they are far enough along (though not too far along for a first trimester abortion) to be able to visualize something on the ultrasound.
But that, of course, is the choice of the patients and the medical professionals at Preterm. It’s not a choice to be made at a distance by elected officials with an ideological axe to grind, little medical knowledge and a belief that it’s acceptable to require doctors to put unnecessary instruments inside women’s bodies in an effort to achieve in practice what they can’t constitutionally pass into law: an end to abortion.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/17/i-had-a-transvaginal-ultrasound-my-perspective-on-the-mandate-that-touched-off-2012s-war-on-women/
A video of her procedure is available at that link
Tazzy, I would never discount another woman's experience, but I had countless numbers of those every few days in preparation for an IUI and later an IVF procedure.
I did not find it especially uncomfortable any of those times and that included having the exam done by different ultrasound techs in different venues.
I think mandating it is very intrusive and abhorrent and it violates the sanctity of privacy between health care provider and patient, but it was not uncomfortable for me.
edit to add: I have no doubts that the context may have something to do with my perception; that and the fact that it wasn't being "forced" on me...but it wasn't being forced on the woman who wrote the description either and she did find it to be "vigorously uncomfortable".
< Message edited by angelikaJ -- 8/16/2012 3:53:29 PM >
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