No one likes to think about it or even admit it sometimes, but rape happens.

Because there is often no kind of protection used during a rape, there is the chance that a woman who is raped could become pregnant by her attacker.

Therefore, the morning-after pill is a great thing to have available at everyone's disposal. But this is not the case, yet.

The morning-after pill will be available over the counter starting January 2007.

Currently women need to get a prescription from their doctor.

Not all doctors are willing to prescribe the pill, though.

A Lebanon County woman who was raped in July was denied the pill by an emergency room doctor at Lebanon's Good Samaritan Hospital because he said it was against his Mennonite beliefs. Did this doctor ever think of the traumatizing situation this woman had been in?

The woman did eventually obtain the pill, but she underwent considerable stress to finally achieve the outcome.

Doctors should give patients all the options available and let them choose what they want and is in their best interest.

This woman's best interest was to make sure she would not become pregnant. If anything, she was making a good moral decision -- preventing a pregnancy, not terminating it.

The morning-after pill is not an abortion.

A bill is currently pending in the state Senate that would require all hospitals licensed by the state Department of Health to provide emergency contraception, such as the morning-after pill, to any rape victim who is in need of it.

If this bill is passed, women such as the victim would not have to drive for miles after being raped to find a place that would give them the morning-after pill.

Hopefully, the bill will be passed soon that way women do not have to wait until January for the over-the-counter version.

And even if it takes a while, the bill should be passed at some point because not everyone feels comfortable walking into a CVS or Walgreens and just grabbing a morning-after pill. Some might want to just go to the hospital, get checked and treated there.

After all rape is a serious and horrible thing for anyone to go through. The morning-after pill is the least a hospital can do to improve the situation for a rape victim.