Legal and ethical challenges in case of virginity testing

Background: Virginity test is a traditional, long-standing process. Women and girls are often enforced to undergo this examination for reasons such as making sure the client did not have premarital sex, in case of rape, diagnosis sexually transmitted disease. This will perform at the request of parents, Husband’s family before the marriage, police and even employers. virginity testing has wide range of personal, family, social and cultural lasting destructive effects such as honor killing or suicide. The aim of this study was investigating the legal and ethical challenges in case of virginity testing.Method: This review article prepared through evaluating appropriate Persian and English articles between 1995 and 2018.key words used included women’s and girl’s right, ethics, medical ethics, virginity and virginity testing. Databases searched were SID ،Pub Med, Elsevier، Springer, Google Scholar, SAGE Publishing, WHO website.Results: lost rights fallowing virginity test include: gender based discrimination, privacy, physical integrity, human dignity, the right to gain the highest level of standard health services, respect to individual independence, informed consent, confidentiality and, efficiency of the test and avoidance of harm.Conclusion: Although there is no evidence of medical utility, invalidity and potential physical and psychological harms, the virginity testing is still ongoing in different settings. So there is necessity to provide scientific, exact information to physicians and midwives and update medical reference books in this matter.

Legal and ethical challenges in case of virginity testing Keywords:

Right , Medical Ethics , Virginity Resting.