Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), joined by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), has introduced a bill that would require military health care facilities to carry emergency contraception.
Military facilities are allowed to carry the morning-after pill, but are not required to do so.
The bill would require the medication to be stocked. Servicewomen would also not need to get prior approval to purchase it. However, the bill would not require emergency contraception to be covered by the military’s pharmacy benefits plan.
“All servicewomen should have the same access to this medication as civilians do,” Franken said in a statement. “The fact that more than 2,900 sexual assaults were reported last year in the military–a nine percent increase–only heightens the need to ensure emergency contraception is always available.”
Indeed, according to the Department of Defense’s annual report, there were 2,908 reported cases of sexual assault involving a member of the military in the 2008 fiscal year. 1,752 service members were victims in those reports.
But, in a report this December, an official DoD task force found that those statistics are flawed. The task force said many more assaults likely occurred, citing an anonymous survey in which 6.8 percent of women said they’d experienced unwanted sexual contact.
In its recommendations for victim care, however, the task force made no mention of emergency contraception.
The bill, introduced in December, was recommended to the Armed Services Committee. Other than Snowe and Franken, it has 11 other co-sponsors, all Democrats.
Franken recently received a legislative victory on a similar issue. In December, President Obama signed a defense appropriations bill which includes Franken’s language aimed at prohibiting defense contractors from keeping allegations of rape and sexual assault out of court.
