Newswire

Most West Virginia pharmacies do not stock Plan B abortifacient

By Morgan Kelly / Charleston Gazette

The majority of pharmacies in West Virginia do not stock the emergency contraceptive known as the “morning-after pill,” many of them on religious and personal grounds, according to a survey conducted by a coalition of reproductive rights and civil liberties groups.

The survey provides actual numbers to the recently popularized issue of pharmacists refusing to carry or dispense the drug because, they claim, it constitutes a form of abortion.

Plan B, as the drug is called, is used after unprotected sex, usually when other contraceptives fail or following a sexual assault. It works by stopping ovulation or blocking a fertilized egg’s path to the uterus.

To conduct the survey, a pollster called a pharmacist claiming to have a prescription for Plan B and asked to have it filled that day. The survey included pharmacists from every county in the state except Calhoun, Doddridge and Ohio. Twenty-five pharmacists from Kanawha County were involved.

Out of 214 West Virginia pharmacists surveyed, 81 percent did not keep emergency contraceptives in stock, and 85 pharmacists said they did not provide Plan B at all. Of those pharmacies, 7 percent said dispensing the drug violated their personal beliefs.

Some pharmacists said the store had or could get the drug, but getting the prescription filled depended on the pharmacist on duty, said Nicky Smith, of West Virginia FREE, a coalition promoting family planning and women’s reproductive rights. Smith called the pharmacists.

WV FREE plans to file complaints against pharmacists refusing to fill Plan B prescriptions with the state Pharmacy Board, said Director Margaret Chapman.

In the meantime, the survey provides a barometer for educating medical professionals and civilians about Plan B, she said.

“Now that we understand the landscape and how [un]available emergency contraception is to West Virginia women, we can move forward with increasing access,” she said. “It is not the pharmacists’ role to pass judgment. It is their duty to fulfill the health-care needs of that patient.”

Another survey WV FREE did in part with political polling company National Telecommunications Services Inc. returned a 3-to-1 preference among West Virginians that pharmacists do their jobs without imposing their personal beliefs, Chapman said.

The survey covered 1,600 people in Southern West Virginia, the Eastern Panhandle and the Harrison County area, she said.

The survey asked only if pharmacists should be allowed to turn down any kind of prescription. It did not specifically ask about Plan B.

“It’s more than about Plan B really,” Chapman said. “It’s about a pharmacist’s duty to dispense medicine without judgment. Where does it stop? Who’s to say these pharmacists could not refuse to give [gay men] AIDS drug cocktails or medicine to drug addicts because they disapprove of their lifestyle. When you start injecting religious doctrine into medicine, it’s a big problem. We didn’t want to limit it to Plan B.

“West Virginians want their medicines filled without judgment. Our goal is to improve the situation.”

Judgment certainly came Smith’s way when she called about getting Plan B. She wrote down notable quotes, including: “There are people out there who would love to adopt babies. I adopted three.”

Another person said: “I won’t fill a prescription for birth control pills knowing that they are going to be used after the fact.”

“It made me feel like I was doing something radical and it’s nothing radical at all,” she said. “It’s a normal part of healthy women’s health care. They made me feel like I was doing something wrong.”

Smith also suspected a general lack of understanding of Plan B. “I got the impression that women weren’t asking for it and a lot of pharmacists weren’t educated,” she said.

Some of the pharmacists who did not have the drug in stock said they did not get enough demand to warrant keeping it around. About 7 percent said they did not know what Plan B or emergency contraception was.

Another 27 percent of pharmacists said they could get Plan B, but it would take more than two days. The pill only works within five days of unprotected sex, and each passing day decreases the chance that it will work.

“It just illustrates a total misunderstanding of this as a preventive measure,” Chapman said. “Accidents happen all the time and you certainly don’t want to wait days to get a prescription.”


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Posted by Editor at May 9, 2006 03:20 PM