The Religious Consultation
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Chicago Tribune, May 11, 2005 Hospitals ignore rape victim law Contraception
and counseling not given. A large number of Illinois hospitals do not routinely provide emergency contraception to rape victims who want to avoid becoming pregnant, according to a study released at a major medical meeting Tuesday. Dr. Ashleta Patel, director of family planning services at Stroger Hospital, said her research is the first statewide review of Illinois hospitals' practices regarding contraception for victims of sexual assault. Only 60 percent of 156 hospitals surveyed "always" provide emergency contraception to women who want to terminate possible pregnancies after a sexual assault, the study found. Another 31 percent of hospitals "sometimes" supply the contraception. And although Illinois law requires hospitals to educate rape victims about emergency contraception, more than 25 percent of the hospitals said they "never" or only "sometimes" offered counseling or didn't know what hospital practices were. "Some of the time isn't good enough for a woman who wants to protect herself after this profound trauma," said Patel, who presented her findings in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. "We can do better." The data for Patel's study were collected last summer through telephone interviews with head nurses in hospital emergency rooms. A breakdown of the findings by religious affiliation wasn't available, but about 25 percent of Illinois hospitals are Catholic. Often, Catholic hospitals have policies against providing contraception, even for rape victims--though state law requires them to provide information and a referral to another provider if desired. The Illinois study arrives amid an intensifying national debate over the availability of emergency contraception, also known as the morning-after pill. Supporters say the pill, a high dose of ordinary birth control medication, is an important way of preventing undesired pregnancies. Opponents say it is a form of abortion when it prevents a fertilized egg from being implanted in a woman's uterus. Prominent medical organizations, including the American Academy of Emergency Physicians and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, recommend that all sexual assault victims get counseling about pregnancy prevention options and receive emergency contraception if they want it. But earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Justice excluded information about emergency contraception from extensive new guidelines for treating sexual assault victims. Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called the omission "outrageous," a sentiment echoed by numerous advocacy groups. An estimated 300,000 women are raped every year in the U.S.; of those, as many as 25,000 become pregnant. The Justice Department has said it is reviewing the guidelines. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration has declined to act on a proposal to sell the morning-after pill on drugstore shelves without a prescription, provoking two U.S. senators to hold up the administration's pick for a new FDA director. And increasingly there are reports of pharmacists refusing on moral grounds to fill prescriptions for the morning-after pill in Illinois and other states. In this volatile environment, 14 state legislatures this year are considering bills that would require hospitals to offer emergency contraception counseling and treatment to rape victims. New Jersey's law passed; Colorado's bill fell to a veto from the governor; and 13 bills, including a separate proposal in New Jersey, are pending. Variation among the states is enormous. In Louisiana, 6 percent of emergency care facilities always hand out contraceptives to rape victims; in New York the figure is 85 percent, according to a December report from the American Civil Liberties Union Reproductive Freedom Project. Illinois hospitals often offer the morning-after pill, but "we certainly are not where we need to be," said Patel, one of the leading researchers studying rape victims and emergency contraception in the U.S. In 2002, Illinois passed a law requiring that all hospitals counsel rape victims about ways they could prevent pregnancy. According to Patel's survey, nearly 75 percent of hospitals said they "always" provided the counseling, but 15 percent reported doing so only "sometimes." About 5 percent of emergency rooms said they "never" did, while another 5 percent said they "didn't know." A separate national survey of 1,202 hospitals released last week found that, according to staffers answering emergency room phones, 42 percent of non-Catholic hospitals and 55 percent of Catholic hospitals never supply the morning-after pill, even to women who have been assaulted. That study was conducted by Ibis Reproductive Health, an advocacy organization based in Massachusetts. Hospitals might have policies suggesting that contraceptives be offered to rape victims, but "they're not communicating them to staff in the emergency room where women come in for help," said Ibis researcher Teresa Harrison. jegraham@tribune.com << Chicago Tribune -- 5/11/05 >>
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