Originally published February 2 2006
Reports surface of rape victims being denied emergency contraception
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Women's eNews covers the plight of rape victims who are denied access to emergency contraception at Catholic Hospitals, in spite of laws requiring hospital staff to administer the drug.
Even though many state laws require hospitals to offer emergency contraception after sexual assault, rape survivors who go to Catholic hospitals may find that it is not, in fact, offered to them.
Directives approved by the Vatican for all Catholic hospitals permit Plan B after sexual assault, but advocates say the hospitals sometimes withhold it when a woman's chances of becoming pregnant are greatest, during ovulation.
"Many Catholic hospitals test the rape victim to see if she is ovulating, and if she is, refuse to give her emergency contraception," says Jill Morrison, a senior counsel at the Washington-based National Women's Law Center.
The Washington-based American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Bethesda, Md.-based National Institutes of Health define pregnancy as beginning at implantation.
Amid access difficulties such as this, some health advocates are growing increasingly impatient with the Food and Drug Administration, which for two and a half years has refused to approve over-the-counter sales of Plan B, an emergency contraception drug that is 89 percent effective at preventing unintended pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse.
"For rape victims, the possibility of becoming pregnant is terrifying and overwhelming," says Lois Uttley, director of the New York-based MergerWatch.
Some give rape survivors prescriptions but--if the hospitals don't have the drugs on site--require survivors to find pharmacists to fill prescriptions.
Less than 40 percent of hospitals in 11 states surveyed provided Plan B on site to rape survivors, a 2005 report by the New York-based American Civil Liberties Union found.
Many abortion funds report that high levels of women seeking abortion (up to 11 percent) are pregnant as a result of rape or incest, according to the Boston-based National Network of Abortion Funds.
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