Rape Treatment Denied
Every year, 25,000 women become pregnant after a sexual assault. Why aren't hospitals helping them with a simple prescription?

By Barry Yeoman

Originally published as an editorial in Glamour, September 2002


ON A FROSTY WEDNESDAY EVENING two years ago, a college student in Will County, Illinois, drove to visit her best friend. After parking in the backyard, she cut through an alley that led to the front of the house, not noticing two men lurking in the dark. As she later told a state legislative committee in written testimony, one of the men grabbed her arm and hit her in the abdomen; the other shoved a gun into her side. Then they took turns raping her. Traumatized, she went home, sat in the shower and cried, then curled up in bed, not moving until morning.

At the emergency room the next day, doctors gave her a gynecological exam and antibiotics to help prevent sexually transmitted disease. But when the rape victim asked whether emergency contraception was available to prevent pregnancy, the nurse explained that since the hospital was a Catholic one, its employees did not dispense that medication. Although the woman's own doctor wrote her a prescription the following day, she'd lost too much precious time: Two weeks later, she learned she was pregnant from the assault. "If I carry this fetus to term, it will be devastating in my life," her written statement said. "If I choose to terminate this pregnancy, then I'll have to live with the fact that I took my child's life. There is no good option."

Experts estimate that every year in the United States, more than 330,000 women are sexually assaulted-and about 25,000 of them become pregnant as a result, according to a study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. About 22,000 of these pregnancies could be prevented, the study estimates, if hospitals gave victims emergency contraception (EC), a combination of birth control pills that prevents ovulation, fertilization or implantation of a fertilized egg. EC has been available for more than 25 years and was officially approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1998. It's safe and up to 89 percent effective if taken within 72 hours after unprotected sex (although it's most effective when taken within 24 hours). The so-called morning-after pill is not the same as the abortion pill RU 486; it does not terminate a pregnancy that has already taken hold.

But because there is no federal law requiring doctors or hospitals to offer EC to rape victims, many hospitals across the country still neglect, or refuse, to provide it. A new study at Johns Hopkins University found that 80 percent of rape victims are not offered EC at hospitals.

It's a hospital's job, EC advocates argue, to provide medical services, including emergency drugs, to patients in crisis. "If a patient walked into an emergency room after stepping on a rusty nail and the hospital didn't have tetanus toxoid, people would be up in arms about it," says Karen Coleman, coordinator of the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program in Westchester County, New York. "It should be malpractice if EC is not available."

Just two states, Washington and Illinois, have passed laws making it easier for rape victims to get EC, and advocates like Coleman believe we need a nationwide law requiring all hospitals that receive federal funding (most do) to provide EC to rape victims. U.S. Representative Connie Morella (R-Md.) has introduced such a bill, but it has yet to make it out of two House committees. Most Catholic-sponsored health groups oppose this type of legislation, as do pro-life extremists. Support for the bill, its backers argue, must come-now-from women and men around the country who believe that rape victims deserve compassionate, comprehensive medical treatment after their attacks. "Women in such desperate situations should have access to all options," says Congresswoman Morella. "Anything less is unjust."

Click here for a follow-up editorial written in 2005.

Return to home page