End of 2-finger test is near

IN a significant development of medico-legal import as well as one designed to secure the dignity of women, the MBBS syllabus will now have a lesson explaining to the medical students that the invasive two-finger test on women’s genitalia to examine them for their virginity is unscientific. Doctors have been routinely conducting this test on women embroiled in matrimonial disputes or sexual abuse cases. The inclusion of this chapter in their books would enable them to not undertake this course of action and confidently explain to the judges how this test fails to establish anything. The Supreme Court had in 2013 declared the test illegal as it violated the privacy, physical and mental integrity and dignity of women. In 2018, the WHO said virginity testing is unscientific and that no known examination can prove whether a woman has had vaginal sex. Yet, the inhuman test has shockingly remained rampant, betraying a callous society in which the woman finds herself fighting an arduous and lonely battle for justice.

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The National Medical Commission’s decision to amend the syllabus should put an end to the old-school myth as also the two-finger invasive procedure that subjects the already suffering woman to further humiliation as her hymen is probed for its opening size or tears and vaginal elasticity. Such reports have long-term ramifications for the girls’ mental well-being as the innuendo-laden tag tends to stick, leading to her character assassination.

Dispelling the societal myth, scientists have long held that the hymen can get torn from not just having intercourse but also exercising, using tampons, playing sports or riding horses. Also, that some girls may be born without a hymen and be perfectly normal. But certain practices, triggered by culturally discriminatory norms woven around the general misunderstanding, are still prevalent in many societies. It is time that girls break free of the need to have their hymen ‘intact’ or get it reconstructed surgically to project themselves as ‘virgin’. Just as men feel no such compulsion.