Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters by Jessica Valenti Page B

around the use of [EC].” 4

    Teen sex cults? Sounds like a bad made-for-TV movie. I can see it now. Meredith Baxter Birney in The Morning After . “She thought her daughter was just ‘spending time with friends.’ Little did she know that Amy was just another teen dragged into the seedy world of teen sex cults.”
    But as ridiculous as this sounds, this really is the reason that women don’t have access to a safe, legal form of contraception.
    Even when the American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement in 2005 supporting over-the-counter access to EC (for adults and teens) and debunked the myth of EC causing promiscuity, the FDA continued to ignore the facts.
    The FDA has also said that its stalling for over-the-counter status of EC really is a genuine concern for the health of teen girls, who might not take the drug properly. If that’s the case, then why is it that a new diet pill—fat-blocking Orlistat—is on its way to over-the-counter approval? Experts voiced concerns over the possibility of teens abusing the drug and Orlistat’s side effects, which include “fecal incontinence, gas, and oily discharge.” Answer: They’d rather approve a diet pill that makes you shit your pants than a form of birth control. Politics are trumping science and safety. To this day, the agency refuses to admit that it won’t approve EC simply because of anti-sex politics.
    But perhaps the most distressing aspect of the EC madness is that women who need the drug most—rape victims—are being systematically denied it. Women who are sexually assaulted need easy access to EC perhaps more than anyone.
These women are in an already-vulnerable position. But again, the anti-sexers don’t have any sympathy for that kind of nonsense. (Rape? Pshaw.)
    In 2005, the U.S. Department of Justice created the first-ever federal guidelines for treating sexual assault victims—but without any mention of EC, which is a standard precautionary measure after a rape. So basically, they created a national model for treating rape victims that states and local groups will look to when creating theirs. EC was deliberately left out of the guidelines and still isn’t mentioned today—even though ninety-seven members of Congress urged the Justice Department to put it in there.
    The truth is, even if EC were mentioned in the guidelines, there’s no guarantee that rape survivors would be told about it. More and more reports are coming out that say hospitals are frequently remiss in their responsibility to tell rape victims about EC. Many Catholic hospitals even refuse to stock the drug, despite laws that tell them they must. Their excuse is that the woman can always go to another hospital if she really wants EC. Because clearly that’s so easy.
    For any of you who haven’t been in an emergency room, that shit takes forever. I used to volunteer as a rape crisis counselor, and let me tell you, victims are in the hospital for hours. Imagine you’ve just been raped and you manage to gather the courage to get to a hospital. You wait for a couple of hours to be processed. Then, when a doctor finally sees you, you’re told (if you’re lucky enough to be told at all) that if you want to prevent getting pregnant by your
rapist, you’ll have to go to a different hospital and repeat the same process. It’s beyond cruel. It’s a despicable thing to ask of someone.
    So now that I’ve depressed you sufficiently, what to do? Again, look into the policies at your local hospitals. Make sure that your friends, classmates, parents—everyone—knows about EC: that it’s not abortion, that you have the right to get it at the pharmacy, and that it won’t make you spontaneously burst into sex-crazed fits.

The Scarlet Letter
    Obviously the Big A issue—abortion—is the most controversial one in repro rights, and maybe even in women’s rights as a whole. Doctors and pro-choice volunteers have been killed over it. Women have died getting illegal