Pharmacists and Emergency Contraception

From Savage Love:
STRAIGHT RIGHTS UPDATE: There were two disturbing developments in the battle over straight rights last week. First, we know that Target fills its ads with dancing, multi-culti hipsters giving off a tolerant, urbanist vibe, and runs hipster-heavy ad campaigns positioning Target as a slightly more expensive, more progressive alternative to Wal-Mart. Well, as John Aravosis revealed on americablog.org last week, Target's politics are as red as their bulls-eye logo. The chain allows its pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control and emergency contraception to female customers if the pharmacist objects on religious grounds. What's worse, the company claims that any of its employees have a right to discriminate against any of its customers provided the discrimination is motivated by an employee's religious beliefs. Read all about it at americablog.org and plannedparenthood.org.

Second, more troubling news from Tucson, Arizona, where a 20-year-old rape victim called dozens of pharmacies in town before she found one that stocked emergency contraception (EC). "When she finally did find a pharmacy with it, she said she was told the pharmacist on duty would not dispense it because of religious and moral objections," reported the Arizona Daily Star. Emergency contraception, the story continued, "prevents pregnancy by stopping ovulation, fertilization, or implantation of a fertilized egg. The sooner the emergency contraception is taken after intercourse, the more effective it is."

Don't just sit there, heteros. Defend your rights! Don't shop at Target, and write 'em and tell them why you're going elsewhere. (Go to target.com and click on "contact us," then "Target Corporation.") As for Fry's Pharmacy in Tucson, the shop that wouldn't dispense EC to a freakin' rape victim, the fundamentalist pharmacist claims it's her "right" to not do her fucking job. Well, you have a right to free speech. Call Fry's at 520-323-2695 and ask them why the fuck a pharmacy that won't dispense EC keeps the drug in stock. Do they do it just to torment rape victims? ("Oh yeah, we've got EC—but you can't have any. Don't you know that Jesus wants you to bear your rapist's child?") Rise up, straight people, and demand your rights!

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Begin rant:

I never thought I would become more conservative with age. In fact, I swore that I wouldn't. But as I get older, I realize that life is fraught with difficult conundrums. Just like the abortion debate isn't that easy, neither is EC and the pharmacist problem. So here we go:

1.) The Bill of Rights protects freedom of religion. This would be freedom to practice as one sees fit, which would include refusing to participate in actions that one's religious sensibilities deem inappropriate. (See Conscientious Objection and the Quakers.) It seems that the pharmacists who refuse to dispense EC are doing so based on religious/moral convictions.

If we stand up and say that it's okay for someone to protest prayer at a graduation ceremony because it offends their beliefs, we need to stand up and say that it's okay for someone to refuse to dispense a prescription based on their beliefs.

(As a side note, I would also say that it's okay for a pharmacist to refuse to dispense Viagra to a male patient without the express permission of his partner and evidence of couples counseling. Also, using this logic would allow for an ascetic to deny a person his or her pain medications, because life is pain and one should learn to deal with it.)

2.) Pharmacists are hired to do a job. (Un)fortunately, their job holds them to a high legal standard, including the fact that they must verify and sign off on all prescriptions.  If there's not a pharmacist there to do it, the prescriptions don't get filled. Likewise, if the pharmacist on duty refuses to fill a prescription, there's no way it's getting done on that pharmacist's shift. This makes things incredibly difficult for patients, especially patients receiving time-sensitive medication like EC.

So I propose a solution. If you have a pharmacist on staff who you know will not fill a certain type of prescription, you must have someone available at any time who can fill that prescription for them. Alternately, medication laws should be revised to permit any trained personell (pharmacy technicians, registered and practical nurses) to dispense emergency contraception or any other medication a pharmacist refuses to fill, while making the pharmacist legally liable for any harm that comes from his/her refusal to fill the prescription.

End rant.