What's Plan B?

I read a recent blog on Emergency Contraception being denied to the Florida woman arrested on old warrants and it reminded me of a recent Dayton story about the Wal-Mart pharmacist who refused to dispense “Plan B” to a married couple.

According to the story, “Tashina Byrd, 23, of Springfield, said the pharmacist ‘shook his head and laughed’ when a pharmacy attendant asked this month about giving the woman and her boyfriend Plan B. The hormone pills can help prevent pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.”

“Brent Beams, the pharmacist, told The [Columbus] Dispatch that he denied the couple's request for the contraceptive pills because ‘I do not believe in ending life, and life begins at conception.’ After the pharmacist turned them down, O'Neill and Byrd asked for a store manager who "came over and said, 'The pharmacist has the law on his side,' " O'Neill said.”

Here's my RANT: I just about have had it with other people dictating to women their health decisions and making judgments on their presumed lack of moral clarity. The FDA approved the over the counter (non-prescriptive) use of Plan B last August (2006). Under the guidelines, the drug is required only to be offered by licensed drug wholesalers or retail pharmacy operations in order to keep it from the use of minors without a prescription.

So all I should have to do is show my ID to prove I am over 18, and then be given the darn drug. How is it that the pharmacist has “law on his side” when handing it over does NOT require the professional judgment of a licensed pharmacist? Shoot, when I was young, my Catholic education teacher preached that condoms and birth control is a sin. Under the pharmacist’s rationale, these items can be kept from me as well.

It_is_time for pharmacists to be held to licensure standards that prohibit them from supplanting their own moral beliefs for the professional judgment of a licensed physician or the personal beliefs of a women or married couples.