Washington Gov. Gary Locke (D) last week signed a law that requires hospitals in the state to offer emergency contraception to women who have been raped, the Spokane Spokesman-Review reports. EC advocates say that Catholic hospitals have not consistently offered the pills to rape survivors, but they anticipate that the new law will change this. "What I would hope is the anecdotal evidence I hear is wrong and that the new law will reinforce what is already happening," C.J. Gribble, CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Inland Northwest, said. Marilyn Thordarson, a spokesperson for Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, said that Sacred Heart, along with several other Catholic-affiliated Washington hospitals owned by Providence Services, has been offering EC to women who have been sexually assaulted "for years." However, because Catholic doctrine holds that the destruction of a fertilized egg is tantamount to abortion, the Catholic Health Association, a national organization of Catholic-affiliated health care providers, issued a statement on March 21 saying that Catholic hospitals should offer EC only "for the prevention of fertilization" and not for the prevention of implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine wall. The problem with such a distinction, the Spokesman-Review reports, is that EC can function in either of these two capacities, and because it is impossible to tell whether fertilization has already occurred in the 72 hours following the assault -- the time period during which EC is effective at preventing pregnancy -- providers at Catholic institutions cannot be sure whether a woman's use of EC will prevent fertilization or implantation. Dr. Jim Shaw, chair of Providence Services' ethics committee, said that under the new guidelines, the question of whether a hospital can dispense EC "becomes one of the woman's and the caregiver's intent," adding, "If the woman's intent and the medical personnel's intent is to prevent conception, our policy would agree (with the new law)," he said (Johnson, Spokane Spokesman-Review, 4/1).