Limited availability

Last week, an Arizona pharmacist refused to fill a prescription for Plan B for a rape victim, denying the woman her last resort for protection from pregnancy following sexual assault.

And it was perfectly legal.

According to the Arizona Daily Star, the woman was raped and spent three days trying to find a pharmacy that carried the drug, finding most did not stock the drug. The one pharmacy that did stock it was staffed by a pharmacist whose personal beliefs trumped not only sound scientific evidence, but also the sympathetic, common sense beliefs that even anti-choice advocates espouse: that a rape victim should be able to choose whether or not they carry a pregnancy.

Because this happened in Arizona, a "red" state, this situation could never happen in the bluest of blues, New York, right?

Actually, a pharmacist in New York would required to fill the prescription, but the same difficulty in finding a pharmacy with the drug in stock is not unique.

For a drug that depends on timeliness of its administration for it to work - both Plan B and Preven work best in the three to five days following unprotected sex - it is remarkably difficult to find a pharmacy that has ready supplies of emergency contraception.

A 2002 report showed that fewer than half of all New York City pharmacies carried emergency contraception in stock, a number that is sure to have been improved upon, but hardly remedied. While a pharmacist in New York might be required to fill the prescription, it may be difficult for a woman to easily find a pharmacy that can fill it within the 72 best hours to take the contraception.

Prescription refusal has become a more prevalent issue nationwide, as four states have bills working through their legislatures that allow a pharmacist to refuse to fill prescriptions based on their moral beliefs.

This type of moralizing is simply wrong. Not only does it inject political and personal values into a field that should be devoid of such proselytizing, but it actually jeopardizes safe treatment women can receive. Taking away preventative measures like emergency contraception will lead to more abortions.

The problem the Arizona pharmacist had with prescribing emergency contraception was that he or she said it violated personal religious and moral beliefs. The only objections occur when someone believes emergency contraception is an abortion. That is simply not the case.

Emergency contraception by definition prevents pregnancy; it does not terminate one. The effect of all three major forms is to either prevent an egg from being released, prevent the sperm from joining with an egg, or the joined sperm and egg from attaching to the uterine wall. Of the three effects, only preventing implantation has any debate on whether or not it is considered abortion, as some believe the cells created when the sperm and egg meet is conception. The precise point of contraception is a fuzzy area, however, as many anti-abortionists allow that conception occurs when the egg and sperm attach to the wall.

In opposing emergency contraception, this pharmacist might as well be against all contraception, from condoms to diaphragms to birth control pills.

The instance of the Arizona pharmacist refusing to fill the prescription, however, is a microcosm of the larger effect of personal beliefs and politics trumping science and the greater good.

In early September, Lester Crawford resigned his position as head of the Food and Drug Administration following flak he took for delaying the agency's decision whether or not to allow Plan B to be sold over-the-counter, despite the near-unanimous 2004 approval of his own panel.

Crawford has more recently refused to participate in the Government Accountability Office's investigation into Plan B's rejection, another clue for politics trumping scientists in a report full of them, with minority council reports that cancel out larger studies and a decision that several officials refused to sign.

Studies abound that Plan B and its brethren can help prevent abortion by preventing a pregnancy from happening at all. Plan B also has been established as safe. By making Plan B available over-the-counter, both pro-choice and anti-abortion advocates can reach an acceptable compromise.