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The U.S. Department of Justice has issued its first-ever medical guidelines for treating sexual-assault victims - without any mention of emergency contraception, the standard precaution against pregnancy after rape.
The omission of the so-called morning-after pill has frustrated and angered victims' advocates and medical professionals who have long worked to improve victims' care.
Gail Burns-Smith, one of several dozen experts who vetted the protocol during its three-year development by Justice's Office on Violence Against Women, said emergency contraception was included in an early draft, and she does not know of anyone who opposed it.
"But in the climate in which we are currently operating, politically it's a hot potato," said Burns-Smith, retired director of Connecticut Sexual Assault Crisis Services.
The "morning after" pill if taken soon enough will prevent conception from even occurring, or failing that it will prevent implantation. Whatever moral qualms one has about abortion generally, the morning after pill is far less "icky" than IVF treatments frequently undergone by our happy natalists. The consequence of keeping raping victims from the pill will inevitably be more actual abortions.
But, they don't really care...