Plan B Should Be Accessible at All Pharmacies
- Women, and all patients, depend on their pharmacy to provide access to the full range of medications they might need to stay healthy. Isn’t it good business and good community partnering to put customers’ health first? Every other pharmacy in our area does.
- The World Health Organization includes the emergency contraceptive pill (Plan B) on their list of essential medicines under “oral hormonal contraceptives.”
- Emergency contraception pills contain hormones that reduce the risk of pregnancy when started within 120 hours of unprotected intercourse. However, Plan B does lose effectiveness after 24 hours so timely access to this medication is critical to Ralph’s customers.
- Contraceptive use is a private and personal matter. Women may already be feeling apprehensive, scared, and intimidated when they ask a pharmacist for emergency contraception. A woman asking for emergency contraception may have been sexually assaulted. Being turned away can further traumatize an already vulnerable customer.
- Emergency contraception is not abortion - it is birth control, acting just like regular birth control pills. The FDA states that EC (emergency contraception) is not effective if a woman is already pregnant. Emergency contraception prevents a pregnancy, it does not terminate a pregnancy. It acts principally by delaying or inhibiting ovulation and fertilization.
- *Experts estimate that wider access to emergency contraception could prevent up to 1.7 million unintended pregnancies - and 800,000 abortions - a year. For those opposed to abortion, isn’t Plan B a big help? Or is it not just abortion but a woman’s ability to contol her own body that is really in question?
- *This issue is much broader than Ralph’s decision to single out emergency contraception as something they refuse to carry. What will be next–anti-retroviral drugs for HIV positive customers because they might not be heterosexual?
Ralph’s decision not to carry Plan B emergency contraception means that they don’t support their women customers. Will their women (and caring men) customers keep supporting them?
[Download a copy of this fact sheet.]
Dennis Jones wrote:
OK…. So some people have made a decision not to carry an item in THEIR store that, according to their conscience, they can’t sell. What’s the big deal? If you want the stuff, just go somewhere else to buy it. I don’t know, but it seems to me that most of the folks writing on this blog are just bit “intolerant”, although I am certain they might disagree.
Let me pose a question; if this market was owned by Muslims instead of Christians, would there also be a protest planned about this? I think not. Muslims also oppose abortion and might conceivably make the same decision. However, it would be rather politically incorrect to go after them in the same way, wouldn’t it?
Yes, people have the right to wave protest signs and come up with creative chants, but please try to remember that others in this country still have the right to think differently. Just because they do doesn’t make them less of a good neighbor, less of a good citizen, or even less of a human. They just think differently. Why not let them walk their journey in peace?
Posted on 28-Jun-06 at 5:26 pm | Permalink
epersonae wrote:
It’s not whether they’re Christian, Muslim, or any other religion; they’ve chosen to run a pharmacy, and that gives them the responsibility to carry the medications that have been prescribed by their customers.
As a customer, I want to ask them to live up to that responsibility. If they don’t want to, then maybe they shouldn’t run a pharmacy.
Posted on 29-Jun-06 at 4:54 pm | Permalink