Florida Catholic | Bishops: Rape Survivor Bill Flawed

Bishops say rape-survivor bill has flaws

JACQUE HORKAN | FLORIDA CATHOLIC STAFF

Published: 02.15.08

TALLAHASSEE | The aphorism, “God is in the details,” may warn Catholics to take a close look at the Prevention First Act, a bill supporters say will help prevent pregnancies resulting from rape and, thus, abortions.

While the goal may be laudable, the means the bill would use to achieve its ends could force Catholic health care providers and institutions to reject their moral beliefs or face monetary fines and the loss of their licenses.

The bill, put forth in advance of the March start of this year’s regular session of the Florida Legislature, would require hospital emergency rooms to inform rape survivors about their contraception options and then offer them the service they choose. In some cases, those choices might force Catholic hospitals and health care providers to violate church teaching on contraception and abortion, said Michael Sheedy, associate director for health at the Florida Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the state’s bishops.

“If you look at stated intention, preventing unwanted pregnancies and abortions, we would agree with that,” Sheedy said. “But, the bill is more expansive than its sponsors’ stated intention and it leaves some vulnerability for Catholic health care providers.”

Catholic teaching allows the use of the emergency contraceptive Plan B, often called the morning-after pill, to protect rape survivors from pregnancy. Plan B works primarily by preventing ovulation, the release of an egg from a woman’s ovary. According to the “Ethical and Religious Directives” of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, “A female who has been raped should be able to defend herself against a potential conception from the sexual assault.”

In explaining the church’s teaching on sexual assault and contraception, Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a neuroscientist and staff ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, has written, “The church teaches that rape is not a unitive act that requires openness to procreation. It is, rather, an act of violence against another person, and the woman is allowed to take steps to prevent the possible fertilization of her own egg(s).”

Sheedy said in Catholic hospitals, providers typically will administer the Plan B emergency contraceptive to a rape survivor after determining whether the woman is pregnant or ovulating. If the woman is pregnant, the embryo most likely was not the result of the rape. If the woman is ovulating, the rapist’s sperm may have already fertilized the woman’s egg. In either case, Plan B would not be administered because it could act as an abortifacient, preventing implantation of the embryo and destroying an innocent third party.

Sheedy said the conference is engaged in a battle of terms with representatives of the Florida Association of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, the bill’s primary supporters.

“Planned Parenthood says there is no abortifacient effect before implantation of the fertilized egg in the woman’s womb,” he said. “We disagree. Life does not begin at implantation; it begins at conception.”

Sheedy said he is working with Planned Parenthood and the bill’s sponsors to write into the bill a so-called conscience clause, which would recognize the freedom of Catholic hospitals and providers to practice medicine in accord with church teaching.

When asked whether she would support a conscience clause in the bill, Adrienne Kimmell, executive director of Florida Associations Planned Parenthood Affiliates, answered, “All hospitals are there to serve the community, not particular constituencies, and rape survivors don’t necessarily have a choice about which emergency room they are taken to.”

In defense of the bill, Kimmell cited a 2005 study by the American Civil Liberties Union, based on telephone interviews with 113 emergency care facilities in Florida. The results showed that only 35 percent of respondents consistently provided rape victims with emergency contraception while 6 percent never informed patients about emergency contraception.

Kimmell refused to say explicitly whether Planned Parenthood would oppose or support a conscience clause, choosing instead to repeat, “All rape survivors ought to have access to emergency contraception when they go to the emergency room.”

Sheedy worries that the broad wording of the bill could, for example, force doctors in a Catholic hospital to implant an intrauterine device form of birth control, in direct violation of church teaching, if a rape survivor requested it.

The bill also requires pharmacies to dispense contraceptives, while protecting the right of individual pharmacists to refuse to do so.

Sheedy said the bishops would support a bill to ensure rape survivors get the care they need, but he doesn’t see how this bill will accomplish that.

“If there needs to be greater improvement in the industry, we would support that,” he said, “but is this bill even necessary? Our hospitals are doing a good job of taking care of these victims of heinous crimes.”

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