So! A lot of folks have been picking up on the possibility that the city of Wasilla, Alaska might have charging rape victims for “rape kits.”
I say that’s not just wrong it’s wrong in a way that inadvertently help former Wasilla mayors and police chiefs save a little face. The rest of this post explains what’s actually in a “rape kit,” where the actual expense comes in, why emergency contraception isn’t part of the process, and why ‘wingnuts would prefer that story to what’s probably the real reason, and, finally, what the real reason probably is.
What are rape kits? Rape kits, a.k.a. SAE kits (sexual assault evidence kits), RA kits (for rape-assault kits), or Vitullo Kits,” named after the Chicago forensic investigator Louis R. Vitullo who developed the standard kit for gathering, processing, and storing evidence of rape and sexual assault…in the 1970s.
Like many other evidence-gathering “kits,” rape kits aren’t commercial products. Instead they’re a collection of (as Wikipedia’s entry puts it) “commonly available examination tools” such as swabs, glass slides, wooden sticks for fingernail scrapings, bags for clothes, forms for documentation, and detailed instructions for correctly collecting the evidence.
They don’t contain emergency contraception.
So! If it’s just swabs, slides, vials, and bags, how can one cost $600-$1200? And why wouldn’t they contain emergency contraception?
Well, guess what? “Rape kits” are nearly always processed in hospitals. (ka-ching!) By doctors or other medical personnel (ka-ching!) or (at least on CSI where I haven’t gotten most of my information) by trained forensic specialists. The evidence is processed in labs (ka-ching), either in glamorously lit and gorgeously designed CSI labs in larger cities with television programs, or, for smaller municipalities, in the same sort of medical pathology labs that process throat cultures, blood draws, and other medical samples. (Ka-ching!)
Which part do you think takes up most of the $1200.00, the q-tips and evidence envelopes or the gathering and processing fees?
Right in one!
So why does it make sense that the kit itself wouldn’t contain EC? Well, because none of the standardized lists of kits suggest they do (direct evidence) and because they’re used in hospitals. (Note: this would be consistent with ‘winger protests that really they only wanted the hospitals to bill the victim’s insurance for the kits, not the victims themselves. But s’yeah, see below.)
Anyway, we could drill down through evidence and counter-evidence but the bottom line is still going to be that the nominally “principled” (by ‘winger standards anyway) that “virtuous” (again by ‘winger standards only) municipal authorities won’t pay for rape kits because they contain emergency contraception is bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Bullshit! No, stop, don’t start, bullshit. That’s not why. It has nothing to do with why.
In fact, to perpetuate the story that that’s why is doing them a favor! So don’!
How’s it doing them a favo? Because, again, if it was on “pro-life” principles they’d have some kind of a moral, non-knuckle-dragging-women-hating leg to stand on. Which is why they may end up begging you to say it’s about EC.
Because if it’s not about EC then it’s about the much more plausible, fundamental belief on their part that all rape accusations (where the victim survives, anyway, and is therefore a slut) are false accusations. So, principled wingnut stand? No, unprincipled wingnut stand.
They want to charge for rape kits because they think it’ll discourage women from “changing their minds and crying rape.”
If it really was about emergency contraception (which, remember, it isn’t anyway) then you’d expect them not to stock the kits at all. But instead of refusing to use the kits — as might be expected of a really principled “pro-life” person if the kits really did contain EC — they merely required that the victim to pay for it herself. And when I say “pay for it” I don’t mean the actual material kit (low cost, remember) but paying to have the evidence processed.
So once again, their refusal to pay for rape kits was never about red herrings like emergency contraception. Instead it was about an entrenched, traditional, philosophical sympathy and/or admiration for the accused in rape cases, and an equally abiding suspicion that if the victim wasn’t just lying outright she was almost certainly asking for it.
Submitted by 2397 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-09-19 10:38.
Hmm. I'm genuinely puzzled as to whether EC might *sometimes* be included in a standard rape kit. My understanding has been that it's just a forensic evidence gathering kit, period. That's buttressed by the fact that Catholic hospitals often don't offer EC *at all* to rape victims - and a NARAL study that I wrote about last spring found that 17% of Ohio hospitals didn't guarantee access to EC.
However, Shannyn Moore, The Alaskan columnist quoted at MyDD, stated that the kits included EC. I don't know if she just concluded that because her friend who'd been raped was offered EC, or if she knew that for a fact. Some enterprising journalist needs to make some calls and clarify this.
As for the money, I'm blown away by the casual assumption that patients will have insurance! Maybe the kit "costs" $1200 when charged to insurance, but I've spent a lot of time dealing with medical bills, and insurers typically have negotiated rates that are far lower than the sticker price that the uninsured patient would be charged. At the same time, precisely because insurers have these negotiated agreements in place, I can't imagine that any insurer would be prepared to pay for the collection and analysis of police evidence!
But you know, figleaf, while I agree with you that the Wasilla rape-kit controversy is a *real* issue (contrary to some earlier comments you got on it), the bigger issue is what Palin did for the issue of sexual assault as governor. Which was *worse* than nothing. Moore's column states that Alaska has the country's highest per capita incidence of sexual violence - and that as governor, Palin seems to have actually blocked efforts to reduce it. Her firing of Walt Monegan, the official who lost his job in Troopergate, may have been due to his attempts to get federal funding for sexual assault. At least, that's what the McCain campaign actually is claiming.
So let's take the campaign at its word on this one; maybe for once they're telling the truth. And if so, it totally confirms your interpretation. Why else would Palin, a law-and-order governor who never met an earmark she didn't like, oppose Monegan's lobbying for anti-rape funds - unless she believes women deserve what they get?
If Wasilla actually was paying for EC with city funds, that wouldn't invalidate your point at all. Because pregnancy is only the just reward - and a baby a fitting punishment - for the victim being so slutty in the first place.
[Hey Sungold! For the record my deeply, deeply Catholic late father-in-law was a doctor. I remember back in the early 1990s that he was lobbying for his (Catholic) hospital to offer some kind of emergency contraception for rape victims who came to the emergency room. (I think the protocol back then was to take a month's worth of standard birth-control pills. I know there wasn't yet anything specifically EC like Plan B.) But anyway, the point is that while his hospital didn't provide EC they *still* processed evidence. And unless come can come up with smoking-gun-style documentation that police departments are buying $400,000-toilet-seat-style commercial kits I'm sticking by my claim that processing is *still* the biggest part of the quoted price spread. And just to be clear, yes, in addition to the protocol for processing evidence most "rape kit" protocols include a *offer* to test the victim for HIV and other STDs, but it doesn't make any sense why police departments would be billed for that any more than they'd be billed for the funeral of murder victim by whoever drew the chalk lines around the victim's body. So there! And thanks, by the way, for getting that there's no evidence that their attitude had *anything* to do with pro-life "principles," and everything to do with straight-up, unprincipled victim blaming. *That's* what people need to hit them with. --fl]
Submitted by 2397 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-09-19 12:09.
Yeah, I think *most* American Catholics are pragmatic about EC - as about contraception in general. Good for your father-in-law that he pushed to do the right thing. The protocol was to give two or three standard BC pills - not a month's supply - man, just the thought of that makes me queasy. The only thing new about Plan B is the packaging and marketing; it's still just a megadosed birth contorl pill.
I'm positive you're right about the processing fees. At our local hospital, an ER visit often triggers two bills - one for the actual hospital services, where the professionals' fees might well be greater than the fees for materials (and this could be true for rape kits, I don't know) - and a second bill for lab work, since they outsource a lot of it. The lab fees can easily be the bigger chunk. I'd imagine the hospital serving Wasilla would be similar. In cases of assault, they would *definitely* have to send it out, and DNA testing is probably the biggest expense, I'm guessing. But I've never watched CSI so what do I know? :-)
All this does make me curious about who pays for HIV testing and EC in most cases of sexual assault.