I am horrified by this, but I'm not quite certain why. As you say, the organ is coming out anyway, but still...I guess it indicates a severe lack of maturity on the part of the doctor, which undermines trust (at least to me). I think it's in extremely poor taste, and if it happened to me, I would definitely be in the market for a new doc. Having said that, however, I do have to say that the woman quoted in the article seemed to...overreact a bit? I mean, come on. How exactly does this erode your marital relationship? Unless hubby thought it was the funniest thing ever

Well actually, it's well documented that after having a historectomy that the husbands of the patients actually do stop having sex with the women. My mom had that problem with my dad after her historectomy. So there is evidence of other people suffering erosion of thier sex lives due to the procedure itself. Now unto the branding itself. Keep in mind we don't see the branding happen, and there is no statement from the doctor, so we don't know why it happened. There could have been bleeding. There could have been legitmate reasons for him to mark it before hand. I'd like to see a response from another ob to see wether they've seen this happen before and what reasons there would be to do it.