SACRAMENTO — With drugstores now a battleground in the war over reproductive rights, California lawmakers today will consider whether to create the nation's first law requiring pharmacists to fill emergency contraception prescriptions and other medications even if they find them immoral.
Two Democratic bills pending in the Legislature would require druggists to dispense all lawful drugs. Both proposals would allow California's 25,000 pharmacists to demur only if the store could ensure that the prescription would be filled by another without excessive inconvenience to the patient.
The push in Sacramento comes after four more states -- Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Dakota -- gave pharmacists the right to refuse to fill orders about which they have moral qualms.
Reproductive-rights groups are pressing lawmakers elsewhere, including Missouri, New Jersey and West Virginia, to establish professional-duty laws for pharmacists. On Friday, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued a 150-day emergency order that would require pharmacists to fill contraceptive prescriptions, after a Chicago druggist refused to dispense birth-control pills.
"These bills, no one's ever tried anything like them before," said Elizabeth Nash, who follows state legislation for the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., that does research on sexual and reproductive health. "By their very nature, they are untested. We don't know how the implementation would work."
Pharmacies were pulled into the fight over reproductive rights after the approval of the morning-after pill, which blocks a fertilized egg from implantation in the uterus. In 2002, California became the first state to allow pharmacists to write and fill prescriptions for emergency contraception pills. Objectors consider the medication a type of abortion.
"The Legislature has spoken on the right for women to have access to emergency contraception," said Sen. Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento), author of SB 644. Under her bill, violators could face discipline by the state licensing board. It is backed by a coalition of women's groups, including NARAL Pro-Choice California and Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California.
"We're simply trying to ensure that consumers -- women -- are not abandoned and that they'll have timely access to the medication," Ortiz said.
