by Janet Kusch ¦ La Crosse Tribune ¦ 6 March 2008

On Feb. 27, I was grateful to find that the Compassionate Care for Rape Victims (Assembly Bill 377, Senate Bill 129) had passed and will move to the governor’s desk to be signed. This bill assures that in hospital emergency rooms, the hospital is required to provide sexual assault victims information about emergency contraception and, upon her request, the emergency contraception itself.

This means that assault victims in every hospital emergency room will have the information and access if they chose to prevent a potential pregnancy resulting from the assault. Currently, information and access to emergency contraception happens in only 33 percent of hospital emergency rooms in the state. Emergency contraception is simply a dose of birth control pills that prevents pregnancy up to 120 hours after an assault.
The sooner emergency contraception is taken, the greater the chance of preventing a pregnancy (75 percent success in up to 120 hours, 89 percent success if taken within 72 hours).

Thank you to the legislators in the 7 Rivers Region: Terry Musser and Jennifer Shilling as Assembly sponsors of the bill, and the aye votes of Lee Nerison and Barbara Gronemus.

I was truly saddened by the nay votes from Sen. Dan Kapanke and Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch. Nationally, more than 300,000 women are raped each year, resulting in more than 25,000 unintended pregnancies and 16,000 abortions. About 22,000 or 88 percent of these pregnancies could be prevented if all women who were raped used emergency contraception (American Journal of Preventative Medicine, 2000).

Sen. Kapanke and Speaker Huebsch, don’t you want to prevent the difficult consequences the data presents? Why shouldn’t sexual assault victims have access to information about and access to emergency contraception if they so desire?