A woman has complained to the governor and an abortion rights group about Wal-Mart workers who wouldn’t give her morning-after contraceptive pills that don’t require a prescription.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The attendant told Byrd and her boyfriend, Brian O’Neill, 37, of Columbus, that the store stocked Plan B but nobody would give it to them…. Byrd wrote Gov. Ted Strickland and contacted NARAL Pro-Choice America and Wal-Mart Watch, an activist group that seeks to change the retailer’s practices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Now, as it turns out, Byrd got the medication from another pharmacy 45 miles away, but that’s not really the point.
\n
\nThe FDA approved Plan B emergency contraception for over-the-counter sales to adults. This Wal-Mart had the medication in stock and there was a customer who wanted to buy it. What’s the argument here?<\/p>\n
Brent Beams, the pharmacist, told the Dispatch that he denied the couple’s request for the contraceptive pills because he believes “in preserving life, and I do not believe in ending life, and life begins at conception.”<\/p>\n
After the pharmacist turned them down, the couple asked for a store manager who “came over and said, ‘The pharmacist has the law on his side,'” O’Neill said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Really? An adult paying customer is denied access to a legal medication and the law is on the pharmacist’s side? I don’t think so.<\/p>\n
“There’s a duty to dispense … without delay, without any kind of harassment,” said Nancy Keenan, NARAL president. <\/p>\n
Wal-Mart is investigating. With any luck, the company will tell Brent Beams that it’s time to find a new job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For a while, it seemed as if we’d hear new reports about a pharmacist refusing to fill a prescription on religious grounds every week. It led to a flood of publicity, bills in Congress, and new laws at the state level. This week, there was a similar controversy in Ohio, but this one had a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}