Suffering Once Was Enough

When a female is sexually assaulted or harassed, one cannot imagine the physical and emotional ordeal she goes through. Unfortunately, while the act of rape could not have been prevented, what is inexcusable, and possibly also a crime, is when hospitals do not provide rape victims with preventive reproductive medical care, particularly emergency contraceptives.

According to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, more than 330,000 women are sexually assaulted—and about 25,000 of them become pregnant as a result. About 22,000 of those pregnancies could be prevented, the study estimates, if hospitals gave rape victims the morning-after pill, a combination of birth control pills that prevents ovulation, fertilization, or implantation of a fertilized egg. Unfortunately, that is not the reality.

Many hospitals, in fact, neglect their responsibility to offer the morning-after pill to sexual assault survivors as an option for reducing the risk of pregnancy. This is particularly shocking to see in predominantly liberal, democratic states. In a survey conducted two years ago by the Mass. NARAL Foundation indicates that over 50 percent of Massachusetts’s hospitals and community health centers fail to provide this emergency contraceptive consistently to women who request it. Of those, only a quarter provide accurate referrals to another accessible health care provider.

A survey done three years ago found that over 54 percent of emergency rooms in New York did not provide the morning-after pill to women who had been raped. In Pennsylvania, only 28 percent of hospitals routinely offer and provide it to sexual assault survivors. In fact, 12 percent of Pennsylvania hospitals do not provide any emergency contraception services.

The morning-after pill is a safe and effective means of reducing the risk of pregnancy if taken within 72 hours after unprotected sex. However, many anti-choice and Catholic-sponsored health groups, whose goal it is to eliminate abortion, oppose this important means of reducing unplanned pregnancies. They falsely claim it is an “aborifacient” and confuse it with the abortion-inducing mifepristone (RU-486), which in effect works by inducing a miscarriage.

Catholic hospitals actually make up the bulk of the problem. Even though the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, which govern Catholic hospitals, states that “A female who has been raped should be able to defend herself against a potential conception from the sexual assault,” a nationwide survey found that 82 percent of their emergency rooms did not offer the morning-after pill to women who had been raped.

Catholic hospitals make the argument that providing the emergency contraceptive would go against their moral principles. They add that their denial would not prevent the victim from receiving such treatment at another hospital. While that is logically true, it is not a realistic option for almost all victims of sexual assault. A woman who would certainly be distraught, and possibly in shock, should not be forced to make an additional stop for basic care that can spare her months or even years of anguish. These victims do not have the energy, the time or the luxury to find a hospital that will give them the appropriate health care.

Not only does the morning-after pill have a limited time frame of effectiveness, but many Catholic hospitals serve as the primary source of health care in low-income areas of many cities. Sometimes a Catholic hospital is a community’s only provider—leaving sexual assault survivors with very little chance of being taken to a hospital that will provide her with the treatment she needs. These victims have nowhere else to go.

While there are no federal laws requiring doctors or hospitals to offer the morning-after pill to rape victims, it is their responsibility to provide medical services, including emergency drugs, to patients in crisis. Simply, emergency rooms should provide emergency care. For a woman to be sexually assaulted is a trauma that cannot be easily dealt with or forgotten. Many women are reluctant to report a rape or to even visit the hospital—only 15 to 30 percent of rapes are ultimately reported to the police, an estimated 95,000 per year according to the U.S. Justice Department. As a result, the right to medical care that treats all aspects of the rape should be paramount.

Washington and Illinois are the only two states that have passed laws to make it easier for rape victims to get the morning-after pill, but a national law is necessary to require all hospitals that receive federal funding to provide this treatment to rape victims. This would also apply to Catholic hospitals since they make up 10 out of the 20 largest not-for-profit hospital systems in the U.S., and 159 have merged with non-Catholic hospitals in the past decade. As most state laws stand now, each individual hospital has discretion.

A victim might walk into one hospital and go home with the small comfort that at least she’s not carrying her rapist’s child, but a women taken to another hospital could walk out not even knowing the very existence of a safe pill that prevents pregnancy.

Our country’s elected officials hesitate to enact legislation to provide proper hospital care for rape victims, while the rape victims go home filled with shame and anxiety. But withholding emergency contraceptives is more than political paralysis—it’s inhuman.

Anat Maytal ’05 is a government concentrator in Currier House. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.