Drs. Max Cooper and Asanthi Ratnasekera pennlive.com (TNS)| Pennlive.com

As doctors, we believe forced hysterectomies, as alleged by a whistle blower at an ICE facility in Georgia, against detained migrant women is a violation of every medical value we swore to uphold as physicians. And every healthcare professional who went into medicine to heal others has a duty to speak up and support a full investigation into this horrific mutilation of women.

From the whistleblower's allegations, migrant women detained at a facility in Georgia did not give informed consent to have hysterectomies performed on them. As detainees of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, held behind bars with little to no rights or freedom, they most likely followed orders out of fear. They were coerced into hysterectomies. This procedure entails the removal of all or part of a woman's uterus, which can be indicated for a host of medical reasons but has the end effect of stopping any future pregnancy.

From a medical perspective, the that must be answered, and they revolve around whether the women were fully informed about the procedure, risks and benefits, potential complications and alternatives. This sharing of information and transparency is the foundation of the ethical practice of medicine.

The most grotesque moments in medicine occurred due to the absence of informed, non-coerced consent.

Between 1933 and its abolition in 1977, the Eugenics Board of North Carolina oversaw the sterilization of roughly 7,500 people. By law, the board could order the sterilization of "mentally diseased, feeble-minded, or epileptic patients" for the goal of preventing them from having children who may become a burden on taxpayers. The victims were overwhelmingly black, poor and disabled people.

In 1973, Minnie Lee and Mary Alice Reif were sterilized at the ages of 12 and 14 in Alabama after their mother, who couldn't read and thought she consented to her daughters getting "shots", signed the surgical consent for a tubal ligation with an "X."

In 1932, 600 men were promised free medical care if they took part in a study of "bad blood." But, they were deceived and for the roughly 400 with latent syphilis, medical care was actively withheld to observe the natural course of the disease. The men were black, poor, and many of them were sharecroppers and had never seen a doctor. The Tuskegee experiment tracked the men over decades. They were given placebos, not penicillin, which was a recommended cure by 1947. The men slowly went mad and blind, and 128 of them died from syphilis. At no time did they give their informed consent.

Today, if physicians did any of these things to a patient, even if that patient were a detainee, we would be sued, lose our medical license, or go to jail. If we encounter communication barriers, language differences or a patient is deaf or blind, we use official translators to ensure all aspects of a treatment or procedure are communicated clearly. The treating physician or performing surgeon must document this communication. A patient's request for a second opinion must be granted.

In emergency medicine, immediate intervention may be necessary to save a patient's life. Informed consent may not be possible in life-threatening situations where the patient isn't conscious. If the patient were, then we explain usually on the walk to the operating room their injuries could kill them unless we intervene with surgery.

After the surgery, we explain to patients and their families all the procedures we performed on them to save their lives, potential complications, outcomes, and next steps as needed. In non-life-threatening situations, we go through all the steps to ensure the patient provides informed consent. In all cases, we document the time we spend explaining treatment and procedures to patients. Anything less before a physician performs a medical procedure on a patient would be unethical and inhumane.

The allegations that hysterectomies were performed on detained migrant women rightfully provokes our public outrage. The U.S. House of Representatives is right to investigate whether the women gave informed, non-coerced consent.

Modern medicine should have moved well past our past barbarities. Yet if the allegations of forced hysterectomies are true allegations that the physician implicated has denied then what happened to these migrant women is an atrocity.

Under international law, "imposing measures intended to prevent births" within a group is an element in genocide. (The next item international law defines as an element in genocide is "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group," another atrocity associated with ICE and the Trump Administration.)

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Opinion: Congress must investigate reports of forced hysterectomies of migrant women - Pocono Record