Pharmacies may be forced to dispense birth control

In response to a growing number of reports of women whose birth control prescriptions were denied by pharmacists on moral grounds, US Senators and House members Thursday introduced legislation to ensure that women are able to get such prescriptions filled.

The "Access to Legal Pharmaceuticals Act" would not require individual pharmacists to dispense medications to which they have religious or moral objections. But it would require the pharmacies for which they work to ensure that the prescription is either filled without delay by another pharmacist or, if the drug is not in stock, that it be promptly ordered.

Pharmacists would be barred from deterring an individual from ordering or filling a valid prescription, including refusing to transfer the prescription to another pharmacy or refusing to return the prescription to the patient.

"This is a bill I am astonished in the 21st century is even needed," said Democrat Carolyn Maloney of New York, the House sponsor of the measure.

Senate sponsor Democrat Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey said that the bill was prompted by women whose birth control prescriptions have been denied, but that the measure applies to all drugs. "If a pharmacist is allowed to pick and choose which prescriptions to fill, everyone's health could be at risk," he said.

The federal bill would override legislation being considered in nearly a dozen states to give pharmacists wider discretion to refuse to dispense medications.

Women's health groups say they have more than 200 reports of women being denied both regular birth control pills and "morning after" emergency contraceptive pills, on the grounds that both can cause an abortion by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg.

The state bills are being pushed by a group called Pharmacists for Life International, which says its mission is to "is to make pharmacy once again a life-saving profession, a mooring from which it has drifted."

Sponsors of the federal bill, however, say that it is not a pharmacists' place to deter people from using certain medications. The decision to use birth control pills, said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schwartz of Florida, "is between me and my doctor. Not between me and my doctor and my pharmacist's conscience."