tinyurl.com/4tamp -> story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&ncid=676&e=15&u=/usatoday/20041109/ts_usatoday/druggistsrefusetogiveoutpill
com By Charisse Jones, USA TODAY For a year, Julee Lacey stopped in a CVS pharmacy near her home in a Fort Worth suburb to get refills of her birth-control pills. Then one day la st March, the pharmacist refused to fill Lacey's prescription because sh e did not believe in birth control.
More USA TODAY Snapshots "I was shocked," says Lacey, 33, who was not able to get her prescription until the next day and missed taking one of her pills. It's just to fill the prescription that was ordered by my physician." Some pharmacists, however, disagree and refuse on moral grounds to fill p rescriptions for contraceptives. And states from Rhode Island to Washing ton have proposed laws that would protect such decisions. Mississippi enacted a sweeping statute that went into effect in July that allows health care providers, including pharmacists, to not participate in procedures that go against their conscience. South Dakota and Arkans as already had laws that protect a pharmacist's right to refuse to dispe nse medicines. The American Pharmacists Association, with 50,000 members, has a policy t hat says druggists can refuse to fill prescriptions if they object on mo ral grounds, but they must make arrangements so a patient can still get the pills. Yet some pharmacists have refused to hand the prescription to another druggist to fill. Some advocates for women's reproductive rights are worried that such acti ons by pharmacists and legislatures are gaining momentum. The US House of Representatives passed a provision in September that wo uld block federal funds from local, state and federal authorities if the y make health care workers perform, pay for or make referrals for aborti ons.
"The explosion in the number of legislative initiatives and the number of individuals who are just saying, 'We're not going to fill that prescrip tion for you because we don't believe in it' is astonishing," she said. Pharmacists have moved to the front of the debate because of such drugs a s the "morning-after" pill, which is emergency contraception that can pr event fertilization if taken within 120 hours of unprotected intercourse . While some pharmacists cite religious reasons for opposing birth control, others believe life begins with fertilization and see hormonal contrace ptives, and the morning-after pill in particular, as capable of causing an abortion. "I refuse to dispense a drug with a significant mechanism to stop human l ife," says Karen Brauer, president of the 1,500-member Pharmacists for L ife International. Brauer was fired in 1996 after she refused to refill a prescription for birth-control pills at a Kmart in the Cincinnati subu rb of Delhi Township. Lacey, of North Richland Hills, Texas, filed a complaint with the Texas B oard of Pharmacy after her prescription was refused in March. In Februar y, another Texas pharmacist at an Eckerd drug store in Denton wouldn't g ive contraceptives to a woman who was said to be a rape victim. In the Madison case, pharmacist Neil Noesen, 30, after refusing to refill a birth-control prescription, did not transfer it to another pharmacist or return it to the woman. She was able to get her prescription refille d two days later at the same pharmacy, but she missed a pill because of the delay. She filed a complaint after the incident occurred in the summer of 2002 i n Menomonie, Wis. Christopher Klein, spokesman for Wisconsin's Departmen t of Regulation and Licensing, says the issue is that Noesen didn't tran sfer or return the prescription. The most severe punishment would be revoking Noesen's pharmacist license, but Kl ein says that is unlikely. Susan Winckler, spokeswoman and staff counsel for the American Pharmacist s Association, says it is rare that pharmacists refuse to fill a prescri ption for moral reasons. She says it is even less common for a pharmacis t to refuse to provide a referral. "The reality is every one of those instances is one too many," Winckler s ays. "Our policy supports stepping away but not obstructing." In the 1970s, because of abortion and sterilization, some states adopted refusal clauses to allow certain health care professionals to opt out of providing those services. The issue re-emerged in the 1990s, says Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive issues. Sonfield says medical workers, insurers and employers increasingly want t he right to refuse certain services because of medical developments, suc h as the "morning-after" pill, embryonic stem-cell research and assisted suicide. "The more health care items you have that people feel are controversial, some people are going to object and want to opt out of being a part of t hat," he says. In Wisconsin, a petition drive is underway to revive a proposed law that would protect pharmacists who refuse to prescribe drugs they believe cou ld cause an abortion or be used for assisted suicide. "It just recognizes that pharmacists should not be forced to choose betwe en their consciences and their livelihoods," says Matt Sande of Pro-Life Wisconsin. "They should not be compelled to become parties to abortion.
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