This is an editorial in Wednesday’s paper, talking about Thursday’s vice presidential debate:

ONE QUESTION that Sarah Palin should answer during tomorrow’s debate is why, during her tenure as mayor of Wasilla, the town started charging rape victims or their insurers for hospital emergency-room rape kits and examinations….

But Palin has never explained why, under her leadership, the town stopped picking up the cost of the swabs, specimen containers, and tests.

A spokeswoman for Palin wrote to USA Today that Palin “does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test.” But that was the practice in Wasilla while she was mayor….

But the policy on rape kits may have had less to do with easing the burden on taxpayers and more to do with Palin’s position on abortion. She has said she opposes it even in cases of rape or incest.

Generally, victims of sexual assault have the option of an emergency contraception pill, which some opponents of abortion consider tantamount to abortion itself. Does Palin support the decision two years ago of the US Food and Drug Administration to allow over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception pills?

Whether the fee-for-kits policy reflected Palin’s budgetary zeal or her extreme view on abortion, voters deserve to know. As Alaska’s governor in 2000, Tony Knowles, put it: “We would never bill the victim of a burglary for finger-printing and photographing the crime scene, or for the cost of gathering other evidence.”

But in Wasilla they would, if the crime was rape.