Plan B: The Morning After Pill

Your blog gives excellent information overall, however it's important to use the word "rape" instead of the euphemism "unwanted sexual encounter" in the context of the morning after pill.  An "unwanted sexual encounter" can consisted of a myriad of sexual acts that are unwanted, but don't result in pregnancy.

Coming from someone who has worked with victims of sexual violence for many years, it's very important to give rape its proper name when providing reproductive health, and sex education information.  If a woman who has been raped cannot use that word for herself, that's her choice.  But educators must not deemphasize it by using softer language.  It's the same as saying someone "passed away" instead of "died."  In some cases, it may be appropriate to soften the language to spare emotions, but sexual health educators in the U.S., calling rape an "unwanted sexual encounter" ranges from confusing to minimizing.  Your reader might be a 13 year old with little or a lot of sexual experience, and correspondingly a little or a lot of sexual knowledge, or a 50 year old women with the same.

Women need to know about the morning after pill, so that if they are ever raped, they know it's available. They also need to feel comfortable with the correct term for what happened to them.  For most, it's going to be hard enough to say after it happens.  For all of its strides, law enforcement can still be difficult to deal with in the same ways that intimidated women from reporting rape 25 to 30 years ago before things started to change

In addition to the information in your article, women need to know that some doctors and pharmacists will refuse to give them the morning after pill based on religous or other reasons that they may not disclose, but this doesn't mean that she can't go somewhere else -- the next corner pharmacy, etc.  It's a hideous situation to be in when she is already in the aftermath of rape.  If she lives in a very small, rural town with one pharmacist, this is a very bad situation for her, but the debate isn't over yet as to whether the doctor's and/or pharmacist's ideologies trump her reproductive rights.  Also, many Catholic hospitals will not administer it in their emergency rooms because they consider it contraception.  If she wants it, and has control, i.e. is going to the E.R. under her own power or can redirect the ambulance, right now it's best to avoid Catholic hospitals.  The Catholic faith's ban on contraceptives has made them eratic -- mostly not willing -- as to whether or not they will give the morning after pill.