SENATOR WHEELER FILES CONSCIENTIOUS PHARMACIST ACT IN MISSOURI SENATE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 1, 2006
SENATOR WHEELER FILES CONSCIENTIOUS PHARMACIST ACT IN MISSOURI SENATE
(Jefferson City, MO) The Conscientious Pharmacist Act, SB1192, drafted by NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri to ensure that Missouri pharmacists fill legal prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraception has been filed in the Missouri Senate by Senator Charles Wheeler (D-Kansas City). The Act provides that a pharmacy has a duty to dispense properly prescribed birth control and that if the contraceptive is not stocked by the pharmacy (as is the case with emergency contraception in nine out of 10 rural pharmacies), the pharmacy will order it or refer the patient to another local pharmacy, as the patient prefers.
Pamela Sumners, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, said that the law is necessary because Governor Blunt has confused contraceptives with abortion in current bills that he backs, and because the House and Senate leadership have introduced bills that give pharmacists, insurers, HMOs, and others a right to refuse to fill contraceptive prescriptions based on their personal religious and moral views. “Pharmacists have a duty to fill prescriptions. It is wrong to discriminate against a whole class of people in filling them, and Missouri law should not codify that. Nor should it elevate a pharmacist’s wishes over those of a patient,” said Sumners.
Senator Wheeler, who is a physician, stressed the importance of respecting the doctor-patient relationship and of not contravening medical judgments. “A physician knows his or her patient’s entire medical history and confers with the patient. A pharmacist may not have any such relationship with the patient, and even if he did, a woman has a legal right to have her contraceptive prescription filled. Beyond the legal right to contraception, there is also the fact that birth control is dispensed based on the physician’s judgment for serious health conditions such as endometriosis—a pharmacist should not be in a position to contravene the doctor’s judgment about a serious health need based on his own preferences.”
Senator Wheeler’s bill is the only pending bill that places an affirmative duty to dispense on pharmacists. A competing Senate bill, S.B. 609, would allow any pharmacy employee, including cashiers and persons with no medical or pharmaceutical training, to refuse to fill prescriptions based on their own beliefs about contraception and when life begins. “We should not be having theological debates about what is essentially a matter of science and medicine. We certainly can’t regulate public health professionals based on their ‘beliefs,’ but instead we must demand quality of care, and we must demand that the patient comes first in any health care relationship,” said Wheeler.
The bill is co-sponsored by Senators Bray, Coleman, Days, Graham and Wilson.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Pamela L. Sumners, Esq., NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, 314.531.8616
Rick Murray, Office of Senator Charles Wheeler, 573-751-2788
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