Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16246

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: book

Cloutier-Steele L
Misinformed Consent: Women's Stories about Unnecessary Hysterectomy : Next Decade, Inc 2003
http://www.findings.net/misinformedconsent.html

Abstract:

By the age of sixty, about one-third of all North American women have had a hysterectomy, and they are often encouraged to surrender their ovaries at the same time. Most of these procedures are elective, agreed to by women whose doctors said that the uterus and/or the ovaries have no value beyond reproduction, and that the lost hormones can be replaced artificially. Doctors would not recommend the removal of a male patient’s testicles once his family was complete, so why do we continue to subject women to unnecessary castration?
In Misinformed Consent, by Lise Cloutier-Steele has joined other survivors to speak out about the prejudices and the traumas that accompanied their hysterectomies. In combining their moving personal stories, the women of Misinformed Consent hope to:

enlighten readers with honest accounts on the impact that surgical castration can have on a woman’s sexuality;
dispel the myth that all women feel wonderful after a hysterectomy and/or oophorectomy;
provide information on alternative treatments;
warn others against the potential dangers of hormone replacement therapy;
warn others against the potential dangers of hormone replacement therapy;
offer validation to those who suffer greatly from the after effects of hysterectomy and oophorectomy; and
empower women everywhere to demand better and more honest care.

“In order to ensure that we and our physicians become better informed, this poignant book begins with a strong demand for change and ends with a comprehensive list of resources that will help women better protect themselves.”

— Jane Pincus

Co-author of Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century,
and Co-founder of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective