Health and Reproductive Justice
Health Care Refusals
Refusal to Provide Health Care Based on Personal Beliefs Harms Women
Throughout the country, legislatures are increasingly considering—and sometimes giving—health care providers sweeping rights to refuse to help people because of the health care providers' personal beliefs. While federal laws have long exempted healthcare providers from having to provide abortions in most circumstances, the last several years have seen an unprecedented effort to expand the ability of healthcare providers to refuse to treat, refer, or inform patients about any and all healthcare needs. (Read our letters opposing proposed laws in Montana and Idaho that, if passed, would allow healthcare providers to refuse to help patients.) A recent example includes the Bush Administration's last-minute rule that went into effect the day before President Obama's inauguration. Health care refusals hurt all patients, but they fall most heavily on women, who suffer denials of abortion care, contraception, and other reproductive health services. Most troubling, these denials often come with refusals to refer patients to helpful providers, refusals to provide medically accurate information about a patient's options, and providers have lectured, moralized, or insulted patients for their healthcare needs.
The current battleground of this issue is the pharmacy. Women across the United States have found themselves turned away from their local drugstores when presenting their pharmacists with prescriptions for birth control pills, particularly emergency contraception, also known as the morning-after pill. It's not just birth control, however: patients have been refused antibiotics and insulin needles, as well as other drugs. Legal Voice believes that patients' rights to health care can be balanced with the individual beliefs of pharmacists or other health care providers, by laws and policies that require the pharmacy to make sure a patient gets his or her lawfully prescribed medication without discrimination and in a timely manner.
That's why we're fighting to defend Washington rules requiring pharmacies to fill patients' prescriptions. That's why we urged the Oregon Board of Pharmacy to change its policy allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill any prescription. And that's why we need your help. If you've been refused at the pharmacy counter, we'd like to hear about it — please contact us.
Legal Voice Defends Washington Regulations Requiring Pharmacies to Fill Your Prescriptions
On April 12, 2007, after two years of advocacy by Legal Voice and other groups and citizens throughout the state, the Washington State Pharmacy Board adopted rules requiring pharmacies to ensure that patients get their prescriptions filled on site and in a timely manner. The rules require pharmacies to dispense all lawfully prescribed drugs and devices, including over-the-counter drugs like Plan B (emergency contraception) and clarify that a pharmacist's personal and/or moral judgments have no place at the pharmacy counter. These rules are critical to ensuring that women – and all people in Washington State – can get their needed prescriptions for birth control, HIV/AIDS medications, insulin needles, and all other medications in a timely manner.
Soon after the rules went into effect, two individual pharmacists and a pharmacy owner challenged these rules in court. Legal Voice joined the lawsuit, Stormans, et al., v. Selecky, et al., as co-counsel for seven individuals who intervened in the suit to protect their, and others', rights to timely access to medication. In November 2007, a federal judge in Tacoma issued a preliminary injunction temporarily suspending the rules with respect to emergency contraception only – thus treating women's reproductive health differently from (and worse than) all other health issues. We have appealed this decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals –and won. (Read the Court’s opinion)
But, although the rules are now in effect, the case is not over. It’s back to the trial court for trial proceedings. We will continue to advocate for women's legal rights to receive needed and lawful medication – and will remain vigilant against new efforts to undermine women’s reproductive freedom.
Women's rights. Nothing less.
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