one in a very long line of how women have been disrespected and ignored.

If men were raped as often as women are, it would be a totally different thing.

Maybe it should be mandatory by law and decided by medical practitioners in an universal health care system that protects all?

I'm not sure what you mean about the decision to use a rape kit. It isn't administered by police. It is administered by a certified Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner or doctor with the same training in collecting evidence.

This procedure, while generally not too painful (they actually have to pull out pubic hairs), is still emotionally degrading after just having one's person violated. Absolutely no one should be forced to undergo the procedure. It would simply add trauma to a victim who is likely still in shock.

However, if a victim agrees to the procedure, I think mandatory testing, enforced by law, should be the standard. No shelving it. Test it. Get a forensic record.

"Why Police Have Ignored 80,000 Rape Kits"

That doesn't seem reasonable.
And no, I would never suggest forcible use of rape kits! That's... almost slanderous, and totally off base.

You make it sound as if the victim is necessarily going to get a hostile experience from an universal health care clinic. I'm unsure that having somebody in full dress uniform as a "Certified Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner or doctor with the same training in collecting evidence" is needed, in a well run clinic. This would all be standard procedure, and the doctors would be looking at the person as a patient, and would likely be holding the police and everybody else off while they did their job.

...there may be a small handful of nurses who have chosen to obtain SANE training. It's intense, specialized. A well run clinic could not afford to keep a SANE nurse on staff all the time.

The nurse was compassionate. But after you've just been raped you don't want a stranger touching you, especially on your labia, vagina, anus, etc. Get the picture? It's a difficult procedure to consent to.

I don't get it.
Nothing I said warrants your responses. Nothing.

You make it sound as if the victim is necessarily going to get a hostile experience from an universal health care clinic. I'm unsure that having somebody in full dress uniform as a "Certified Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner or doctor with the same training in collecting evidence" is needed, in a well run clinic.

sheee.

A defense lawyer could question its vercity. Also, there are chain of custody issues that must be documented. You can't have untrained people collecting criminal evidence without training.

and, as we have seen, what they have decided to do, in nearly HALF A MILLION CASES, is--ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, for all the reasons stated in the OP.

Consented to and performed, it should be illegal for the police to sit on it.

would be routinely processed.

The police have made a decision to ignore unprofitable crimes.

Why not "Perpetrator identification kits" ? or "Assault Evidence Collection" ?

'Rape kit' sounds like something Bill Cosby would carry. What an insensitive choice of words.