Informed Consent to Gynecologic Surgery

Every individual has a well established right to be free from nonconsensual touching. Violation of that right constitutes the common law tort of battery.1 The application of this principle of tort law to the practice of medicine is certainly not of recent origin. In a 1914 decision, the respected jurist Benjamin Cardozo wrote the following often-quoted language: Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body, and a surgeon who performs an operation without his patient’s consent commits an assault for which he is liable in damages.2