|
Heather went out one Saturday night with friends. She decided to go home early because she wasn’t feeling well. The day before, she had visited her doctor for chronic pain and had been given pain medication. When Heather went home that night, she took the pain medication prescribed by her doctor and went to sleep. She woke up to her dog barking and the doorbell ringing. Her neighbor was outside the door. It was pouring rain so she allowed him to come inside and dry off. When he came into her house he sexually assaulted her.
After he left, she called her friends who came over immediately to help and they called the police. The police quickly arrested the man and took Heather to the hospital emergency room. At the hospital emergency room, the nurse examined her and gathered evidence using a rape kit. One of the last things the nurse did was talk to Heather about emergency contraception. At the time, Heather was trying to get pregnant with her partner. She was concerned about what EC would do to an existing pregnancy, but also worried that if she were to become pregnant she wouldn’t know whether it was her partner’s or her attacker’s. Heather explained to the nurse that she did not want to lose a pregnancy if she and her partner and had been successful earlier that week. The nurse explained that EC would not harm an existing pregnancy and could not cause an abortion. Once the nurse went though the literature and made that very clear, Heather was more at ease and was able to make the choice to take EC and prevent a pregnancy that could result from the attack.
Heather now speaks out about the importance of increasing access to EC. If the nurse or hospital hadn’t been willing to share information about EC with her, she would not have been able to handle the possibility of becoming pregnant by her attacker and not her partner.
--Florida
|
