Constituent Action Leads to Public Hearing on Patient Protection Act!
After constituents flooded the office of Senator Norma Champion's office with phone calls demanding a hearing on the Patient Protection Act, a hearing was finally announced. The moral of the story: when pro-choice Missourians raise their collective voices, they are heard! (See the newsletter section on the left column for more on this story.)
The Patient Protection Act (SB 458) was filed by Senator Charles Wheeler (Senate District 10) and would compel pharmacists to fulfill their professional responsibility to provide the basic standard of care by filling legal and safe prescriptions as written by a woman’s physician.
The Act would ensure that doctors and health care providers, including pharmacists, satisfy their duty to ensure that patients receive accurate information and appropriate care. Failure to provide care or essential services—even for religious reasons—jeopardizes women’s health and violates bedrock principles of medical ethics, and we know that that happens all-too-frequently here in Missouri.
Despite the fact that recent national polling shows an overwhelming number of Americans do not believe that pharmacists should be able to refuse to fill lawful prescriptions, pharmacists are currently able to turn women away without filling their prescription. SB 458 would require pharmacists to alert their employer in advance if they are unwilling to fill certain prescriptions, and to make accommodations that allow patients to get their prescriptions filled in a timely manner and “without undue hardship.”
The hearing will be held on Wednesday, March 30th at 8:30 in SCR 1. To find out how you can contact the Senators on the Committee hearing this bill on Wednesday, go to the newsletter section of this web site on the left column. Or for more information about how you can help advance this important legislation, contact Melissa Kimball at 314.531.8616 or by email at melissa.kimball@prochoicemissouri.org.
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