Many Native American Women Lack Access to Emergency Contraception, New York Times Letter to the Editor States

March 4, 2013 — "A lack of adequate legal protection is not the only way our government fails Native women who have been sexually assaulted," Charon Asetoyer -- CEO of the Native American Community Board -- writes in a letter to the editor of the New York Times in response to a recent opinion piece.

Asetoyer writes that more than 50% of clinics run by the Indian Health Service do not provide emergency contraception, "[d]espite devastatingly high rates of sexual assault." Many IHS clinics that do provide EC require women to have a prescription, even though FDA allows EC to be sold without a prescription to individuals ages 17 and older. "[F]or some Native women, the next pharmacy is hundreds of miles away, and transportation costs are insurmountable," Asetoyer writes.

NACB and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a Freedom of Information Act request to determine what actions the federal government has taken to make EC available to more Native American women.

IHS "cannot continue to flout its own internal policies, legal obligations and F.D.A. guidelines by depriving Native women of the health care they deserve," Asetoyer concludes (Asetoyer, New York Times, 2/28).