A 17 year old girl in a small town is walking to her car. It’s late at night and she has just closed up her dad’s bait shop; he’s been in St. Mary’s, the only hospital in town, for a few days and she’s helping keep the business running. As she’s leaving, three men appear out of nowhere, she never even heard their footsteps. They brutally attack and rape her but they don’t kill her. Instead they walk away laughing as if she’d told them a funny joke. She’s scared and unsure but somehow able to get to a hospital where she receives treatment and files a police report. She’s badly shaken but even in her frightened state she knows one thing for sure; she could be pregnant. The nurse comes in her room and the girl asks her what can be done, “What if I’m pregnant? Aren’t you going to give me that Plan B stuff?” Sadly, the nurse only has two options; to refuse her the emergency contraceptives, which is what she’s supposed to do because the hospital is sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church, or to give her the medication and risk losing her job. Hospitals, schools, and pharmacies are made to serve the public. They’re meant to act in the best interests of those they serve. Not in the interest of the government official who decides what to teach in sex education without thinking of the repercussions, or the Pope who decides what the rules on birth control are for the Catholic Church, or the pharmacist who doesn’t want to write a prescription for birth control. Birth control of all forms should be an option, especially for rape victims, and knowledge and resources should be denied to no one. To my knowledge, the short story about the girl in the first paragraph isn’t true, but it could easily be. More and more hospitals across the United States are merging with and adopting the Church’s policies regarding birth control. Some women truly don’t have the