ARTICLES

Assault on Conscience

State Bill Would Force Pharmacists to Dispense Emergency Contraceptives

BY MARIA KENNEDY

Saying that women are at risk of not being able to fill prescriptions for contraceptives, Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro Choice California have joined forces and have enlisted California state senator Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento) to introduce a bill in the senate to protect this woman's "right."

According to Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro Choice California, there is a trend by pro-life pharmacists to refuse to dispense emergency contraceptives or other drugs they may find morally wrong. Because of her strong pro-abortion voting record and advocacy, Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro Choice California decided that Senator Ortiz would be the best senator to sponsor legislation (SB 644).

The bill would require that at the beginning of their employment pharmacists notify their employers that they will not dispense emergency contraceptives or drugs that violate their religious and ethical beliefs. The employer is then required to make reasonable efforts to accommodate the pharmacist's concerns. The bill states that an employer is not required to make extraordinary efforts to accommodate the pharmacist.

According to Amy Everitt, state director of NARAL Pro Choice California, the bill is currently winding its way through senate committees. The list of supporters for the bill reads like a Who's Who of abortion supporters. Suprisingly, the bill itself (dated April 11) indicated that the California Catholic Conference was among its supporters, as did an April 13 Modesto Bee story. According to the Bee, "Edward Dolejsi, executive director of the Catholic group, said it 'returns the First Amendment balance to the business of medicine and prescriptions.... SB 644 allows all to act according to their consciences and within the limits of the law,' he wrote in a letter to the Senate committee."

But on April 30, the website for the California Catholic Conference indicated that it did not support the Ortiz bill. The May 4 California Aggie said, "the California Catholic Conference, an opponent to Ortiz's bill, is disturbed by the concern that if no one is available to fill the prescription and the patient does not want to go elsewhere, the very pharmacist who is morally or religiously opposed to such an action may end up having to comply anyway. 'The inconvenience of the patient seems to be more important to the legislature than violating the conscience of the pharmacist,' said Carol Hogan, communication director at the California Catholic Conference."

Did the California Catholic Conference at first support the bill and later change its mind? On May 9, Carol Hogan e-mailed this reporter, saying that the quote from Dolejsi "is from our original letter dated April 1, which was written in response to the original text of the bill." But, said Hogan, Senator Ortiz "substantially amended" the bill on April 7, upon which the California Catholic Conference "rescinded our support, and wrote two letters of opposition dated April 15 — one to the Health Committee and one to the Business & Professions Committee. The analysis prepared for the B & P Committee accurately reports our opposition. Unfortunately, the analysis for the Health Committee does not."

The text for the April 15 opposition letter concludes that under Ortiz's amendments, "conscience objections would have to yield to the need to dispense the drugs because of the 'undue hardship' on the employer or 'other entity,' thereby rendering the conscience clause inoperative upon someone's complaint." The letter finally asks the senate committees to oppose the bill "in its current form and amend it back to contain an operative conscience clause that allows both the pharmacist and the patient the freedoms they have under our constitution. We believe that reasonable people can arrive at a reasonable accommodation without forcing anyone to violate their conscience."

When asked what prompted the bill, Everitt replied, "it [the trend to deny contraceptive drugs] was brought to our attention by various means. We had 124 volunteers from NARAL and PP go out to numerous pharmacies in California. We saw first hand how some women were not able to fill their prescriptions."

On May 2, Everitt said that "the real reason behind this bill are the calls we were getting." According to Everitt, two women, one an attorney in Beverley Hills and the other a journalist in Los Angeles, had been refused prescriptions. "Both of the pharmacists yelled at the women. They had to call their doctors to get their prescriptions filled.These were white, upper middle-class women who knew their rights. If both of these women were having problems getting their prescriptions, we thought, 'what about the women who are not as educated or who may speak English as a second language?' Both the lawyer and the journalist pushed back very hard, but they still had to fight. When I asked Everitt the names of the pharmacists in question, she said she didn't know.

"That's when we thought, 'okay, we need to do something.' We went out and did this survey. The survey only included emergency contraceptives. In rural counties, we have four instances where our volunteers were refused by the pharmacist. Some women had to visit multiple pharmacies before they could have their prescription filled. In all, we [looked at] 125 pharmacies." Everitt said that NARAL Pro Choice California is confident that the bill will pass. "We have a ton of supporters, and there is very little opposition. Pharmacists for Life may be opposing the bill, but you'll have to check."

According to Everitt, "The bill creates a protocol that says you have a duty to dispense, if you stock the prescription. If you get a prescription and you carry the medicine, you have to fill it."

When asked where the bill was in the senate, Everitt replied, "the bill has passed out of the senate health committee and the business and professions committee. It'll be heard in the appropriations committee next week. We've got a ton of support for this bill."

Frank Manion of the American Center of Law and Justice has represented pharmacists who have been fired for refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraceptives. When asked about the bill, Manion said it "is dangerous to anyone who wants to follow their conscience. Pharmacists have always had the ability to decide whether or not to dispense a certain drug. Pharmacists tell me there are many times when they have to decide if they should fill the prescription. Oftentimes they have no idea where the prescription comes from. The idea that pharmacists have to hand out any drug any time to someone who shows up with a prescription they are not sure of is absurd."

To Planned Parenthood's concern that women are not being able to fill their prescriptions, Manion retorted, "Planned Parenthood is introducing these laws all over the county. They'll find a politician whom they have given tons of money to and have them introduce similar legislation. The governor of Illinois is one of them; he has been bought and paid for by Planned Parenthood. This is a dangerous attack on religious beliefs."

When asked about pharmacists endangering women by not filling prescriptions for emergency contraceptives, Katie Short, a lawyer who works with Life Legal Defense, said she "would be heartened by the thought that there were that many pharmacists with scruples in California, except that I don't believe it. If there were that many conscientious people just in the pharmacy profession, I can't believe we would be in the mess we are in in California."

Short noted that the state of California has strong anti-discrimination laws, which would protect pharmacists who have deeply held beliefs against prescribing contraceptives or emergency contraceptives. "One constitutional provision that a pharmacist might invoke to challenge the law (or use as a defense to a threatened prosecution under the law)," said Short, "is Art. I, section 8, which provides, 'a person may not be disqualified from entering or pursuing a business, profession, vocation, or employment because of sex, race, creed, color, or national or ethnic origin.' The case law on that has mostly dealt with employer/employee situations. This would be different: can the legislature impose a requirement on a profession requiring individuals to either act contrary to their religious beliefs or forego entering or pursuing that profession? I believe it would be a case of first impression [a case without much precedent] for the court.

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