Sex-Assault Treatment Guidelines Omit Pill
| December 31st, 2004This is bad, but not unsurprising news (Free registration required):
…The development of national guidelines was required under the 2000 renewal of the decade-old federal Violence Against Women Act to develop uniform, quality care for sexual-assault victims.
…One of the most inconsistent aspects of care is the morning-after pill. A 2002 analysis of national emergency-room data by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey found that only 21 percent of sexual-assault victims received it. In a 1998 survey of urban Catholic hospitals, a University of Pennsylvania study found that 12 out of 27 centers had rules against informing rape victims about the method.
This is standard care for rape victims, not a political battleground. As Rob Findlay says, anti-abortion rights groups “want the public to believe that emergency contraception — ‘the morning after pill’ — is on the same level as an early abortion.” In reality it is closer to the birth control pill, a much higher dosage of it.
Outlaw the morning-after pill and there isn’t much standing in the way to begin chipping away at our other reproductive options such as, to be alarmist, the Pill.
