A number of states across this nation are introducing and passing Refusla Clauses, including Tennessee (Senate Bill 76 and House Bill 1383), where a pharmacists may refuse to fill a perscription for contraceptives, including emergency contraceptives, based on their religious beliefs. In short, these pharmacists' religious beliefs supercede the doctor-patient relationship.
An increasing number of clashes are occurring in drugstores across the country. Pharmacists often risk dismissal or other disciplinary action to stand up for their beliefs, while shaken teenage girls and women desperately call their doctors, frequently late at night, after being turned away by sometimes-lecturing men and women in white coats.
"There are pharmacists who will only give birth control pills to a woman if she's married. There are pharmacists who mistakenly believe contraception is a form of abortion and refuse to prescribe it to anyone," said Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, which tracks reproductive issues. "There are even cases of pharmacists holding prescriptions hostage, where they won't even transfer it to another pharmacy when time is of the essence."
Interestingly, while this article points out that there is no known statistic for how often refusals by pharmacists are happening, the complaints are coming from women that have been subjected to these refusals.
Advocates on both sides say the refusals appear to be spreading, often surfacing only in the rare instances when women file complaints.
As this conflict heats up, some like Karen Brauer, a pharmacist that was fired for refusing to fill bc, and who is also the president for the group Pharmacists for Life, feel that pharmacists can and should go further than just refusing to fill perscriptions.
Brauer, of Pharmacists for Life, defends the right of pharmacists not only to decline to fill prescriptions themselves but also to refuse to refer customers elsewhere or transfer prescriptions.
We need to look at this pragmatically. Emergency contraceptives, is just that, it is for an emergency. No woman should have to be lectured, or refused, in the hospital, by emergency workers or by the pharmacists in the case of an emergency. She should not have to justify her need for EC, whether it was from a failed condom or from rape. In the case of general contraceptives, you have women that have made a conscious and responsible decision that NO ONE can supercede. Who do they think they are making life decisions for someone they do not know, nor do they have any idea of their circumstances.
As this debate has moved forward with those that support pharmacists that will not fill perscriptions for contraceptives, I wonder if the pharmacists that refuse bc/ec would change their mind if they became personally responsible for child support for any resulting child?
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