You may have read that Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest (PPGN) recently filed a complaint with the Idaho Board of Pharmacy against a Walgreens pharmacist in Nampa, Idaho. According to the complaint, a nurse practitioner at Planned Parenthood telephoned the Walgreens to order a prescription for one of her patients. The prescription was for a medication called Methergine, which is used to “prevent or control bleeding of the uterus following childbirth or an abortion.” Again, according to the complaint, the pharmacist asked whether or not the patient needed the prescription for post-abortion care. The nurse practitioner refused to discuss the nature of the procedure performed or the patient’s condition, so the pharmacist said she could not fill it. According to the nurse practitioner, when the pharmacist was asked for a referral to another pharmacy, she hung up.
PPGN officials were flabbergasted and immediately contacted Walgreens’ corporate office to demand “corrective action” and filed the complaint with the Board of Pharmacy. PPGN issued a press release claiming “Nampa Pharmacist Denies Patient Life-Saving Drug” and worked the media into quite a little frenzy about how the incident represented “a more systemic attack on a woman’s right to access health care.” PPGN couldn’t have been happier to find a reason to deride the Idaho Pharmacy Act passed by the Idaho legislature in 2010 and insist on its review.
And the media took the bait. Every article written about the complaint (that we’ve seen) made note of the fact that the legislation gave “pharmacists and other health care providers the right to refuse to provide any health care service or dispense any drugs that violates their conscience.”
PPGN was “disappointed” and “disheartened” when the Board of Pharmacy cleared the pharmacist of any wrongdoing! The Board concluded that it had no basis to start proceedings, that “the pharmacist didn’t violate patient confidentiality laws by inquiring if the woman had an abortion,” “there was no requirement in the Idaho Pharmacy Act for a pharmacist to fill a prescription” and “that the abortion-rights group’s contention that the health of the patient could have been jeopardized by the pharmacist’s refusal was inaccurate.” A PPGN spokesperson stated that the decision was “disheartening but motivational for seeking legislative changes or an outright repeal of the law.”
But, has anyone bothered to examine this case from the pharmacist’s perspective? Of course not! While the pharmacist has given no comments (and is likely prohibited from doing so by Walgreens), Karen Brauer, MS, RPh, president of ALL’s Associate group Pharmacists for Life International, responded with these points:
Planned Parenthood has been stinging pharmacists, who object to abortion, in the United States for years.
Planned Parenthood clinics of Idaho dispense medications and even have mail-order for this. It is extremely dangerous for Planned Parenthood to be doing abortions without the required hemostatic drugs in stock.
That regulatory body found that the pharmacist had broken no Idaho laws. In some states, including the one in which I practice, the pharmacist is not obligated to dispense any particular product to a particular patient.
There were numerous other possible legal reasons for the Idaho pharmacist to refuse a phone order from Planned Parenthood which may have no specific relationship to the state’s new conscience protections.
It is now known no legal prescription existed for the “methergine” setup in question, so no doctor-patient relationship existed at the time of the PP setup call to the pharmacist, something required under most state laws for a valid prescription to exist.
The Idaho Board of Pharmacy found that the pharmacist had broken no state laws. In many states pharmacists are not obligated to dispense any particular product to a particular patient. This freedom helps pharmacists avoid complicity in activities that may be improper or illegal when there is little time available to establish proof of such. It also allows the pharmacist to avoid doing harm.
Take home lesson: Don’t rely on Planned Parenthood, or the mainstream media, for accurate medical information!