Pharmacists' Refusal To Fill Birth Control, EC Prescriptions, Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report Summarizes Editorials

Main Category: Pharmacy / Pharmacist
Article Date: 12 Apr 2005 - 4:00 PDT

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USA - A growing trend among some pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control or emergency contraception has opened a new front in the USA's battle over reproductive rights, sparking an intense debate over the competing rights of pharmacists who refuse to dispense medication to which they are morally opposed and a woman's right to get medications her doctor has prescribed. Although the trend first began with doctors and other health care workers who oppose abortion rights refusing to participate in abortion procedures, an increasing number of patients are reporting that their pharmacists are refusing to fill or transfer their prescriptions for hormonal contraceptives, including EC (Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, 3/29). Two newspapers recently published editorials on the issue. They are summarized below.

• New York Times: A pharmacist's refusal to fill a prescription for birth control or EC has the "pernicious effect of delaying, and sometimes even denying, a woman's access to medications that may be urgently needed," a New York Times editorial says. Although allowing pharmacists to refer women to another pharmacist or pharmacy to fill a birth control or EC prescription "may seem at first blush like a reasonable compromise, ... it is a prescription for disaster in the real world" because many of the pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions "berate, belittle or lecture their customers," according to the editorial. A pharmacist's refusal to fill a prescription is an "intolerable abuse of power," and pharmacists have "no business forcing their own moral or ethical views onto customers who may not share them," the editorial says (New York Times, 4/3).
  
  
• St. Petersburg Times: The "sad irony" of pharmacists refusing to fill birth control or EC prescriptions is that it will "likely increase the number of abortions" in the United States, a St. Petersburg Times editorial says. Pharmacists refusing to fill birth control or EC prescriptions could have "serious consequences" in rural communities, where few other options exist, according to the editorial. The pharmaceutical industry should require pharmacies to "offer a timely, practical alternative, clearly post circumstances under which they make moral refusals and, at larger outlets, ensure at least one nonrefusing pharmacist is on duty during all shifts," the editorial says, concluding that "licensed pharmacists should not be allowed to summarily deny customers access to legally prescribed medication solely on moral grounds" (St. Petersburg Times, 4/2).
  

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