This amendment becomes a serious problem in the first
72 hours of a rape crisis, especially in rural areas with small medical
clinics, if one or more of the healthcare providers have religious
convictions against informing a victim of rape that she has an option
that will safely and effectively prevent her from becoming pregnant
with her assailant’s child. One-third of reproductive age women remain
unaware of emergency contraception.
The Wisconsin compassionate
care law has nothing to do with freedom of speech or freedom of
religion and everything to do with appropriate, responsible, legal
health care . . . not to mention basic humanity.
“After he raped
me, he said he didn't know what to do with me. He said that he could
kill me and I thought he would. There were shotgun shells strewn across
the dashboard and he said he had a shotgun.”
“In the days and weeks following the rape Idid not sleep,I could not
eat,and I was afraid to beout after dark. Myentire life changed. There
simply are no words to describe theshame and guilt that became so much
a part of my life. I remember soaking in the tub for what seemed like
hours, night after night, attempting to cleanse myself of the filth of
the rape.”
In 2004 there were 1,134 forcible rapes—one every 7 hours and 43
minutes—reported in Wisconsin. One in four of those victims said they
feared death or serious injury.
Nationally, over 300,000 forcible rapes are reported each year.
Twenty-five thousand of these women will become pregnant. If these
victims have timely access to Plan B emergency contraception, an
estimated 22,000 pregnancies—almost 90 percent—could be prevented.
A 1996 study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and
Gynecology revealed that 50 percent of rape-related pregnancies end in
abortion. Plan B would prevent these abortions.
“I was so young and so naïve that it didn't immediately occur to me I
could be pregnant. I was a virgin the morning I was raped. I was not
using birth control. Plan B emergency contraception was not an option
33 years ago.The only options at the time were to have had an abortion
or to carry to term and give birth to the child of the man who had
kidnapped and raped and threatened to kill me.I became possessed by this
decision, wondering if Iwould see this man's face in the child. And if I
chose to have his child, could I love it the way a child needs to be
loved . . . unconditionally. Would I ever heal? In the end, I decided I
could not have an abortion. I would have chosen Plan B, however.”
There
is federal legislation, the “Compassionate Assistance for Rape
Emergencies Act,” in both houses of Congress that will require
hospitals receiving federal funds through the Medicare and Medicaid
programs to provide Plan B emergency contraception to rape victims.
One
can safely assume that right-wing Christian organizations such as
“Focus on the Family” and “Concerned Women of America” will be putting
their considerable political clout into melting the spine of any
politician with the slightest inclination to support the federal CARE
Act. Like Wisconsin’s compassionate care law, it will no doubt get
locked up in committee, eviscerated and forgotten about. This is, after
all, not the first attempt at passing such federal legislation.
Only
nine states have statutes providing victims of rape with timely access
to Plan B emergency contraception. Considering the current fragile
state of Roe v. Wade, strong state and federal compassionate care laws
may be a rape victim’s only hope of having her right to choose the rest
of her life supercede the rapist’s “right” to impregnate her. If the
likes of Rep. Gundrum or Pro-Life Wisconsin or Focus on the Family
prevail, the man who chooses to rape will win hands down.
“Though
many years have passed and I consider myself healed from therape, there
are still times I look at my four children and thank God I’ve never had
to explain to one of them that their father was a rapist. I also thank
God I am not reminded of that man and of that cold New Year’s morning
whenever I look at them but, instead, know that each one of my children
was conceived by choice, and in love, and were fathered by a most
wonderful man.”
Biography: Robert Weitzel is a freelance writer whose essays appear in
The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He has been published in the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Skeptic Magazine, Freethought Today and on
popular liberal websites. He can be contacted at:
rweitz@tds.net
Writings 
In the cold, early morning hours of January 1, 1974, a good friend, then a 19-year-old college student, was driving home alone from a New Year’s Eve party. Her Volkswagen was forced off the road. She was dragged kicking and screaming into the van of a man who had decided to kidnap and rape her. My friend spent the hours immediately after her brutal violation convincing the man not to kill her.
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