27 Oct Postcoital Contraception or Abortion: Moral Choices Following Rape Twenty-seven-year-old Daniela Sackler and her husband of four years were attempting to conceive their second child

Postcoital Contraception or Abortion: Moral Choices Following Rape Twenty-seven-year-old Daniela Sackler and her husband of four years were attempting to conceive their second child. Both were graduate students doing research on doctoral dissertations. They had even arranged their schedules so that they could share in the child care and household respon sibilities while they both went to school. Daniela was studying sociology and conducting interview research that required one-on-one two-hour in- terviews of young adults. She usually offered to conduct the interviews in the homes of her research subjects. She had an interview schedule that had been approved by her university’s institutional review board. On a Tuesday evening she called on one of her subjects and initiated the interview. After about an hour, the subject, who indicated his wife was away for the evening, offered her coffee, which she gratefully accepted. Ms. Sackler noticed the subject became increasingly friendly. By the end of the interview, the subject turned on a CD and asked her to dance, an invitation she quickly refused, indicating she had to leave. At that point he blocked her exit and raped her. Upon returning home, she told her husband what had happened and called the police. She was taken to the hospital emergency room (ER). She told the ER staff that she and her husband were trying to conceive a child so she was not taking her birth control pills. She was almost exactly at the time of month at which conception would occur. In fact, if she had become pregnant this month, she would have no way of knowing whether her hus- band or the research subject-turned-rapist was the father of the child. After examination by the ER personnel, she was offered a "morning-after" pill in case a conception had occurred.