Tough bill to swallow
June 6, 2005
A suburban Columbus man wants the right to tell you what legally prescribed medicine you can and can't have. You may have talked it over at length with your doctor or your partner, even read materials before choosing the right method of birth control, but when you slide that white slip across the counter, Bo Kuhar wants the ability to say no.
It's a battle of rights. You have a right to that legal prescription, but Kuhar wants the right, based on his religion, not only to refuse to give it to you, but to prevent you from getting it filled elsewhere.
He's a co-founder of Pharmacists for Life International, a Powell, Ohio-based group arguing that their members' rights trump yours.
As social conservatives everywhere amass troops on many fronts, this 20-year-old group is suddenly getting more press than ever, much to the chagrin of the ACLU and NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) Pro-Choice Ohio. More column inches and more airtime mean a vocal minority starts to sound like a movement.
Since November, CNN, USA Today and The Washington Post have reported instances of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions and often have quoted members of the amorphous Pharmacists for Life. It's a rising cacophony from the right, and the message isn't hidden.
"Need for pharmacists to give their voice in the abortion holocaust," is Kuhar's e-mailed answer to why he and three others created Pharmacists for Life.
He says the group's goal is to "protect all life and use the gift of medications wisely to promote life, not destroy it."
And then he notes another goal: "Oh yeah, and help misinformed liberals and secular haters of anyone who disagrees with them see the light of truth. We are a 'weapon of mass instruction.' "
Pharmacists for Life, as Kuhar states it, objects to any medication it believes can cause abortions. They lump traditional oral contraceptives, IUDs and Norplant in with emergency birth control or the "morning-after pill."
The concept has NARAL Pro-choice Ohio Executive Director Kellie Copeland fuming.
"It's completely and totally inappropriate. The bottom line is, this group thinks that contraception is the same thing as abortion, and it's just not. It's a misinformed view. It's not medically accurate," Copeland says.
Curiously, Kuhar is not the primary public face of Pharmacists for Life. That job falls to Karen Brauer, a pharmacist who was fired from a Hamilton, Ohio, Kmart in 1996 for refusing to dispense a birth-control prescription. Brauer lied to the customer that the store was out of stock of the drug. The customer found out, raised hell and Kmart demanded that Brauer sign an agreement that she would fill any legal prescription brought to her by a customer. Brauer refused, and Kmart terminated her.
Now she's suing. She asserts that her actions are protected under an Ohio law granting medical professionals the right not to participate in abortions. But her suit also claims that Kmart violated her First Amendment right to religious expression by ordering that she fill every legal prescription.
Most people across the political spectrum could agree that a pharmacist should not be forced to dispense a drug that is contrary to sincere moral beliefs. But even the American Pharmacists Association draws the line at allowing a pharmacist to impede the distribution of a legal drug. The APA advises pharmacies to establish a system that can accommodate pharmacists' objections and still provide seamless service to the client.
"We do not support the right of the pharmacist to step in the way," says Anne Burns, group director of development and research for the APA. "We do not support pharmacists lecturing, discussing moral or religious beliefs, and the APA does not support holding prescriptions from patients."
But that is exactly what Kuhar wants.
"We believe in total protection and the sanctity of all life," Kuhar writes in an e-mail (the only way he would be interviewed). "We also hold that as thinking, caring health professionals, pharmacists can think for themselves. This comes as a shock to liberals like those in your magazine."
Kuhar would not answer follow-up questions about whether the patient and doctor who chose a certain medication could "think for themselves."
But even within the Pharmacists for Life organization there are shades of gray. Brauer's affidavit in her suit against Kmart noted that she specifically objected to a certain progestin-only birth control pill, which, according to the maker's package insert, failed to prevent ovulation in 50 percent of the women taking the drug and then achieved birth control by not allowing a possibly fertilized egg to implant on the uterine wall. That, to Brauer, constitutes abortion. Brauer had no problem, however, dispensing birth control that relied on multiple hormones and which prevented ovulation and fertilization.
There have been a few reported cases of pharmacist interference in recent years. A Madison, Wisc., pharmacist is facing disciplinary action for refusing to transfer a woman's birth-control prescription or give the slip back to her. And in Texas, a pharmacist refused to give a rape victim emergency birth control.
After a similar case in Illinois, Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued an emergency ruling that ordered pharmacists to fill birth-control prescriptions with "No delays, no hassles, no lectures." This riled the Pharmacists for Life, whose Web site refers to Blagojevich as "Slobodan," a reference to ousted Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, currently on trial for war crimes approaching the level of genocide.
But even with few real incidents, there has been a flurry of proposed legislation. The National Law Journal reports that 37 so-called "conscience-clause" bills were introduced in 14 states last year.
The Ohio bill would have expanded the law dictating that no person is required to perform or participate in an abortion, to include dispensing medication that may result in an abortion. The bill did not specify which medications fell into that category.
The measure died in the Senate after conflicts over procedural matters. Pharmacists for Life, however, plans a second try at the legislation later this year.
Despite all the attention, representatives of the American Pharmacists Association, the American Civil Liberties Union and NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio are skeptical about the actual strength of Pharmacists for Life International.
Asked about the organization's size, Kuhar would say only that its pharmacist members number in the "thousands," with non-pharmacists numbering "thousands more." The Washington Post and USA Today estimate 1,500 members.
Burns of the APA simply notes that 9 million prescriptions are dispensed every day, compared to very limited reports of problems.
Chris Link, executive director of the ACLU of Ohio, is a bit more blunt. "Everywhere I go, somebody raises this issue. Frankly, I find it difficult to take these people seriously. There may be a handful of pharmacists out there tha
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