How D.C. Pharmacies are Failing Patients

By Amanda Hess, RH Reality Check. Posted December 26, 2008.

For most professionals, an acceptable excuse is required to miss work: a swollen appendix, ailing grandmother, whiplash, at the very least.

Pharmacists, on the other hand, may refuse to do their jobs for any old reason -- or for none at all. We're talking about birth control, of course. In the District, for example, pharmacists are not required to provide such products, especially if their "personal views" won't allow it. According to NARAL Pro-Choice America, only six states bar pharmacists from withholding birth control prescriptions/doing their jobs: California, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, and Washington.

That means that D.C. is a hotbed of the ultimate bullshit defense for denying health care to women. Pharmacists here can refuse to provide women's health care based on such "personal views" as latent sexism, unsubstantiated medical opinion, or whim. Some other "personal views" local pharmacies have offered up:

It's private. A pharmacy's trust factor often relies on its adherence to privacy -- its hushed consultations, the 3-foot courtesy bubble between customers, pills wrapped in nondescript white paper packaging. For contraception allies, these conventions help keep birth control a personal transaction not subject to political interference. But right across the counter, the "privacy" excuse allows pharmacists to deny you access to contraception at any time while shirking explanation and accountability-no questions asked. A flack for Wellington Pharmacy defers to the privacy excuse -- "it's a relationship between a person and their physician" -- as to why the pharmacy, affiliated with Catholic-leaning Providence Hospital, provides Viagra but no birth control.

This pharmacy is here to deny your rights. Those not interested in providing medications to humans can choose from a host of careers that are not involved in providing medications to humans. And yet, the D.C. area is home to several anti-contraception advocates that insist upon going the pharmaceutical route. For all these pharmacies gets wrong about women's health -- namely, their positions on condoms, birth control, and the morning-after pill -- they often get one thing right: At the most fanatical anti-contraception outfits, women at least know what they're not getting. America's latest pro-life pharmaceutical poster child, Chantilly's Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy, defied the tight-lipped industry standard with its grand opening last fall. Holy water slicked the shelves. A bishop blessed the operation. The AP took video. But though the DMC is the only local pharmacy affiliated with anti-contraception group Pharmacists for Life International, it's less dangerous than the other area pharmacies quietly denying access to birth control.

They've got inventory issues. On a recent Saturday, I contacted 10 local CVS pharmacies to see if they had the morning-after pill in stock. Nine did. The pharmacist at the one that didn't informed me that his store's Plan B shipments arrived on Tuesdays, so I would just have to wait 72 hours to get my hands on the pill. Never mind that the effectiveness of Plan B decreases with each hour after unprotected sex, and that after 72 hours, its chances of preventing pregnancy are kaput. The representative at another CVS that did have the pill informed me they only had two pill packs left on the shelf. They, too, received new shipments only once a week, on Tuesdays, so my chances of getting the morning after pill depend on a guessing game of how many condoms broke in the District of Columbia in any given week. Here's a tip, CVS shoppers: If you're going to need to use the morning-after pill, just make sure that morning falls on a Wednesday.

They're weirdos. Though it's not uncommon for pharmacists to operate behind a shield of privacy, some display a distaste for discussing women's health that borders on good old-fashioned sexism. When it comes to contraception, pharmacists are often skittish about discussing the most basic aspect of their business -- which prescriptions they will fill and which they will not. And it's not just pharmacies with moral motivations against contraception that aren't talking. In a telephone interview, the proprietor at Dupont's Tschiffely Pharmacy refused to discuss whether the shop dispensed the morning-after pill. But when I stopped in to try to pick up a pill pack, Plan B was in stock and offered with a smile. Georgetown's Dumbarton Pharmacy, meanwhile, declined to discuss its contraceptive options at all. Playing coy with contraceptive options is less cute when women need to locate them instantly in order for them to work. No other common, FDA-approved, over-the-counter medication would receive such silent treatment from pharmacists.

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