Lawmaker wants Plan B protected

State Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Allegheny, recently introduced legislation to the Pennsylvania House… State Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Allegheny, recently introduced legislation to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives that would guarantee all Pennsylvanians access to birth control.

There have been instances nationally in which women were denied the emergency contraceptive known as Plan B because the pharmacist on duty had a moral or ethical dilemma with filling the prescription.

According to Patrick Hopkins of Planned Parenthood, the first case of this occurred in Texas. None have occurred in Pennsylvania.

Frankel said that his goal is to guarantee that no woman in the state would ever have to go without emergency contraception if she needed it.

“It will be difficult to get [the legislation] passed into law, but getting the issue talked about is still achieving something,” Frankel said.

For the regular pharmacy patron, the chance that a pharmacist might refuse to fill a prescription may have appeared to be non-existent. But the associate dean of Pitt’s School of Pharmacy pointed out that this is not the case.

“There is nothing legally that binds a professional person to act on a prescription,” Associate Dean Gary Stoehr said. “In cases of drug interactions this is not a bad thing.”

Stoehr is critical of the legislation proposed by Frankel because he believes that, if passed into law, the bill could fix the problem of women getting Plan B prescriptions filled, but it might create other problems.

“This is a moral and ethical issue,” Stoehr said. “It’s hard to write laws to cover morality. How far can you act on your beliefs? How far can you impose your beliefs on another person?”

Frankel drafted the legislation in response to surveys conducted by Planned Parenthood.

Hopkins said the organization ran two surveys.

In the first, known as the official Planned Parenthood survey, a volunteer would call different pharmacies throughout Pennsylvania and identify himself or herself as a representative of Planned Parenthood.

He or she would then ask if the pharmacy stocked emergency contraceptives, how much it costs and if it was not in stock, how long it would take to order the contraceptive.

In the second survey, a female secret shopper would call pharmacies claiming to have a prescription for Plan B. The woman asked if the prescription could be filled at the pharmacy and if not, whether or not the contraceptive could be ordered.

According to Hopkins, there were some discrepancies between the results of the surveys.

In the official Planned Parenthood calls, representatives of the national chains that run the pharmacies outlined goals that are in line with those of the legislation proposed by Frankel.

In the secret shopper calls, there were a number of pharmacists who said that the pharmacy doesn’t stock Plan B, even though, according to results of the official survey, they should.

Twenty-one pharmacists also told the secret shopper that they would not stock Plan B because of personal opposition.

“It’s great to have good national policy, but it needs to trickle down,” Hopkins said.

A representative from the group Pharmacists for Life International could not be reached for comment, but the organization’s Web site outlines several opinions on why pharmacists should not be forced to fill prescriptions for Plan B.

Included on the Web site is information about a “Conscience Clause” that can be invoked by pharmacists who do not wish to fill prescriptions that go against their moral beliefs.

The Web site states that there is a need for a conscience clause because “pharmacists are increasingly under demands and pressures in our contracepting/aborting society to ‘go along’ in dispensing chemicals and devices which they know will be used to destroying a nascent human life at its earliest stages.”

Plan B does not, in fact, affect a fertilized egg that is already attached to the uterus, according to Plan B’s Web site. It prevents pregnancy by stopping the release of an egg from the ovary or by stopping a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus. Its intended use is within three days of unprotected sex.

The Pharmacists for Life International’s Web site goes on to defend the right of pharmacists to refuse to refer a woman who is looking to fill a prescription to another pharmacist.

“A pharmacist by virtue of properly understood conscience cannot be licitly compelled to cooperate in such a fashion with what he knows will result in a chemical abortion and, hence, a dead baby. Such activity is called material cooperation. Further, it is not an inconvenience to refuse to refer such a client since the pharmacist is doing the woman and her pre-born child a favor in terms of physical and spiritual health.”