The Seattle Times: Nation & World: New rape-treatment debate By Marie McCullough, Knight Ridder Newspapers

The Justice Department has issued its first-ever medical guidelines for treating sexual-assault victims — without mention of emergency contraception, the standard precaution against pregnancy after rape. …

In the half-page on pregnancy “risk evaluation and care,” the protocol says to take victims’ pregnancy fears “seriously,” give a pregnancy test, and “discuss treatment options, including reproductive-health services.”

Advocates note that emergency contraception — nothing more than high-dose birth-control pills — reduces the chance of pregnancy 75 to 90 percent, but only if taken within 72 hours of sex. …

The development of national guidelines was required under the 2000 renewal of the decade-old federal Violence Against Women Act to develop uniform, quality care for sexual-assault victims. …

Emergency contraception is controversial because, like stem cells and cloning, it has become tangled in the politics of abortion. The method usually works by keeping an egg from being released or being fertilized. However, it sometimes may prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus — equated with murder by some conservative groups and the Catholic Church (which opposes all forms of contraception).

“I think it’s very smart not to put that in the guidelines,” said Dr. George Isajiw, a board member of Physicians for Life, a Philadelphia anti-abortion group.

By giving emergency contraception, he said, “you’re giving a dangerous drug that’s not doing any good, or else you’re causing an abortion. As a moral principle, a woman has the right to defend herself against an aggressor. But she doesn’t have the right to kill the baby.”