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Priya is a Direct Services Supervisor for a sexual assault services center. In the summer of 2002, she supervised a case involving a 14-year old girl who had been sexually assaulted by an acquaintance.
The girl’s mother took her daughter to the local emergency room where a physician in the children’s medical department interviewed and examined her. After the examination, the doctor wrote a prescription for emergency contraception (EC) and instructed the mother to have it filled immediately.
About 10 days later, the girl came in for a follow-up appointment with the doctor. It was at this time that Priya learned of the difficulties that the mother and girl had faced in getting the prescription filled.
The girl told Priya that after leaving the hospital between 3 and 4 a.m., they immediately went to a 24-hour pharmacy. The mother spoke very little English and the girl had to do most of the talking and translate for her mother. When presented with the prescription, the pharmacist refused to fill it, stating EC was “too strong for her age” [this is medically inaccurate] and did not offer to help them by calling the doctor or referring them elsewhere. The following morning, the mother and daughter went to a privately owned pharmacy. Again, the pharmacist refused to fill the prescription or offer them any help. In the end, they were unable to obtain EC.
Priya found the saddest part about the entire situation was that the girl had to go through the added trauma of asking multiple pharmacists to fill the prescription and being denied at a time of extreme crisis. Priya believes there needs to be a system that is more compassionate to young victims of sexual assault. If the girl had received EC in the hospital she would have been spared a lot of unnecessary trauma.
--Pennsylvania
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