Did Your Pharmacist Take An Oath?

Below is a news bulletin from NARAL Pro Choice America.

"It's official: Americans can no longer take prescription birth control for granted. Yesterday, Monday, July 25, anti-choice representatives in the U.S. House made it clear that they support pharmacies that refuse to fill birth-control prescriptions - and that women have no right to birth control. The radical right's campaign to stop birth control The House Small Business Committee held a hearing on whether pharmacies should be allowed to refuse to fill women's prescriptions. Anti-choice Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told a witness, who had been denied birth control and emergency contraception by her pharmacist, that she had no 'right' to her prescriptions - she only believed she did. Anti-choice Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) told a witness whose prescription had also been rejected by a hostile pharmacist, that her 'minor inconvenience' - that is, risking an unintended pregnancy - was nothing compared to the 'conscience' of a pharmacist. The right's anti-birth control campaign doesn't stop in Washington, DC. Across the country, the radical right has engaged pharmacies in its campaign to block women's access to birth control. Women like Julee Lacey, a 32-year-old married mother of two and first-grade teacher from Texas, are being turned away by vigilante pharmacists who think it's their job to dispense morals instead of medicine. Now, as many as 20 states officially protect pharmacists like Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life, who says she'd lecture women customers to get off the pill. Other states are pursuing an even more aggressive strategy. Just last month Wisconsin passed a bill to block state universities from filling birth control prescriptions."