When I was pregnant, I cried three times. The first time it was with gasping sobs, the night after I took an at-home pregnancy test in the restroom at my office and saw that dreaded "YES +". The second time was a week later when, driving through downtown Los Angeles after work, I finally confessed my pregnancy to my mom. The third time I cried it was more desperate, more hopeless than the first two — I was reacting to a pharmacist at one of the largest retail pharmacy chains in the United States. She had just told me, without meeting my eye, that she wouldn't be filling my prescription for the second part of my medical abortion because she couldn't also reach my doctor by phone.

I thought I might be pregnant when my boobs started to swell and almost any food drove me to severe nausea and vomiting. I won't lie and say there wasn't a pause where I considered keeping the baby — I love my boyfriend very much and he will make an amazing father one day — but we are both young, broke, and focused intensely on our careers. The decision was more difficult to come to than I'd expected in the abstract, but it was the right one. My doctor supported my decision. I was just under six weeks pregnant when my boyfriend and I visited her office.

By the time I pulled into the drive-through at a CVS pharmacy on Thursday morning, my abortion was halfway complete. Monday of that same week I had gone to my gynecologist and gotten the first step out of the way: a Methotrexate injection to block folic acid from reaching fetal cells, which would prevent them from dividing and prepare my body for miscarriage. Exactly five days after that, I was to self-administer Misoprostol to induce uterine contractions and complete the process. To do this, I would take four pills: one dissolved on either side of my mouth between cheeks and gums, two more in a saline solution that I would draw into a syringe and empty into my vagina. (These were my doctor's instructions. Many medical abortions are completed in the doctor's office with a dose of Mifepristone instead of Methotrexate, and then followed by Misoprostol, and would not require a trip to the pharmacy like mine did. Methods of administering Misoprostol also vary.) If I waited too long to do the Misoprostol step, my doctor warned me, there could be complications and I may even need to have a surgical abortion. (A 1999 study showed that Methotrexate alone is about 20 percent less effective than a combination of the two drugs.)

When I dropped off two prescriptions that morning, one for Misoprostol and one for Vicodin (to help with cramping), the assistant pharmacist gave me a knowing, supportive glance. It wasn't until I arrived back at the drive-through window later that afternoon that she told me there was a problem. "The pharmacist says we can't give this to you without talking to your doctor," the assistant told me. I answered that my doctor normally takes 24 hours to reply to calls, and as it was a Thursday afternoon, it might take until Monday. "I waited a few days to fill the prescription because I couldn't get away from my job — I need to take these pills tomorrow," I said. She left the window to talk to the pharmacist again. This time she told me there was no way to leave a voicemail for my doctor. I persisted that this wasn't the case, having left my doctor multiple voicemails that week alone, and she left the window to speak with the pharmacist a third time. Finally she told me, "It's going to be OK. Come into the store and we will sort this out."

I parked my car in the strip mall and entered the store, something I was specifically avoiding when I chose a pharmacy with a drive-through. I walked to the counter and waited. The assistant apologized to me. The pharmacist was standing right in front of me, ignoring me and typing on a computer. Finally, she spoke. "We aren't going to be able to fill this without talking to your doctor." I protested again: "My doctor has already administered folic-acid blocker shots. She told me I am only supposed to wait five days to induce a miscarriage. She probably won't be able to call you back before the weekend, and I don't want to get sick."

She kept staring at her computer screen, avoiding my eyes. "There's nothing I can do," she said coldly. I started demanding my prescription back, which took a minute and eventually ended in tears. She finally tossed the slip of paper onto the counter and walked away without a word. I was afraid that because of all the new writing on my prescription (my date of birth, pickup time, phone number, and a bunch of white stickers) it wouldn't be valid elsewhere. Still crying, I was rung up for my Vicodin prescription by the assistant pharmacist, who was now apologizing profusely. "What do I even need Vicodin for then?" I stammered, swiping my card.

I walked back to my car, terrified. What if there was something wrong with my prescription? What if I screwed this up and got sick? What was going to happen to me? I tried to think positive thoughts, driving to yet another CVS location, this time closer to my home than to work.

By the time I pulled into the next pharmacy, I had stopped crying but was still visibly shaken and puffy around the eyes. I turned in my prescription and asked to speak directly to the pharmacist, who only had one question about my prescription. He asked, "Were you provided with instructions by your doctor?" I said that I was. "OK then, it will be ready in 30 minutes."

So there it was, exactly as I had feared: the first pharmacist simply didn't feel like giving me the medication to complete my abortion, despite my doctor's prescription and warning that failing to take it in time would be risky. (Her words were actually more daunting than that: I was warned there would be "no going back" after the injection, that even if the fetus survived it could have serious birth defects, both mental and physical.) After obtaining the Misoprostol from the second pharmacy, I immediately began searching the web for information on my rights. I was shocked to find that under U.S. law, I don't really have any.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), "A pharmacy's or pharmacist's refusal to sell birth control does not violate a woman's federal constitutional rights. The U.S. Constitution imposes no limitations on nongovernmental institutions like privately owned pharmacies. Even if the refusal takes place in a state-owned pharmacy, a woman has no federal constitutional right to receive contraception. Although the Constitution protects a woman's right to contraception, it does not ensure that women can access reproductive health services."

As it turns out, individual states have different policies regarding a pharmacists' ability to deny contraception on religious or moral grounds. But even in liberal states where not as many restrictions are in place, major retail chains can still set their own policies that impede women's access to certain drugs. There are approximately 67,000 pharmacies in the United States, of which 15,096 — roughly 22 percent — are either Walgreens or CVS. If you add in the next four (Walmart, Rite Aid, Kroger, Target), you've got 41 percent of the pharmacies in America.

Like many young people made to feel powerless by a corporation, I got CVS Pharmacy's attention with a series of tweets regarding the incident, which eventually resulted in a private message. (I have since deleted those tweets.) I gave @CVS_Extra my phone number and asked to hear from a representative. But because that course of action was moving so slowly, I also began reaching out to the media departments at each major pharmacy to request statements about their individual policies regarding Misoprostol and contraceptives. Unfortunately, but somewhat predictably, the impression I got from having these conversations is that major drugstores, as a rule, are more concerned with accommodating their pharmacists' possible religious and moral sensitivities than they are ensuring their customers have access to the medications their doctors prescribe them.

A publicist from Walmart's "Health and Wellness" department, for example, told me over the phone, "It's our policy to stand behind our pharmacists and support their decisions, so there is no policy that overrides that in any way." She then added, "Just like you're able to go to different doctors, or go get a second opinion or something like that, I would hope that Cosmo readers would realize that if they get denied by one Walmart pharmacist, that's not the very end. In every area there are multiple Walmarts and multiple pharmacists, so … I wouldn't want it to be pegged that if they got a 'no' from one pharmacist, that would be the end of it."

Hear that, ladies? Just go from Walmart to Walmart until you finally get your prescription filled. There are 3,646 Walmart pharmacies in America. What a wonderful excuse for a road trip!

CVS Pharmacy, which came under fire just last year for illegally charging women for birth control despite an Affordable Care Act provision that forces insurers to cover generic contraceptives at no cost, provided me with the following written statement: "We comply with all applicable laws concerning religious/moral accommodations or conscience statutes relating to pharmacists. If a CVS pharmacist has a sincere conviction that would prevent them from filling a certain prescription, they are required to notify the company in advance so that we can ensure the pharmacy is appropriately staffed and that the prescription can be promptly filled by another pharmacist." A nice sentiment, though it does not appear to always be the case in practice.

I also spoke over the phone with a media relations representative at Walgreens Co., who was also quite candid about the possibility of having to go to a second location to fill a prescription for birth control or other contraceptive. "We do allow pharmacists to step away from completing a transaction to which they have a moral objection — but it requires them to refer to another pharmacist," She said. "If there is no other pharmacist on duty, the pharmacist will refer them to another location with a pharmacist who will be able to fill the prescription."

Brigitte Amiri, a senior staff attorney from the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, works directly with major chain drugstores to come up with corporate policies relating to women's reproductive rights. Amiri's goal is to make sure prescriptions for birth control, emergency contraception, drugs used for miscarriage management, etc. are handled as efficiently as other prescriptions without imposing any burden on the customer. When I spoke with her, she was cautiously optimistic about these stores' willingness to ensure that their customers are provided with timely and seamless care, saying, "The good news is, when we've gone to the headquarters of Walmart, Target, Walgreens, or CVS and said, 'This has been a problem for your consumers,' they've taken it very seriously." When confronted, these chain stores have been quick to recognize problems, express desire to fix them, and even launch investigations or submit formal written apologies to consumers who have been denied prescriptions (or over-the-counter contraception, like Plan B.)

About two weeks after I reached out, and one week after my abortion was complete, I finally heard back from CVS Customer Care. The representative told me over a terse phone call that the company had conducted an internal investigation and believed that the pharmacist withheld my medication not because of any religious or moral beliefs, but because she didn't understand my doctor's instructions for taking the pills. She said, "Unfortunately that was not communicated to you appropriately because you obviously walked away not understanding that that was the case, and I do apologize for that. We certainly want to make sure that our pharmacy teams are giving information appropriately and conveying that message to our customers so that they can understand what's going on." It was an apology, but a half-hearted one meant to make me feel foolish, to feel like I was overreacting. And a glaring fact remained that my informal instructions — scribbled on a piece of paper by an assistant at my doctor's office — were more than enough for the pharmacist at the second CVS location.

While it's impossible to prove malicious intent on the part of the first pharmacist, the point is that she was given the latitude by her employer (and the Constitution) to withhold my prescription regardless. At the end of the day, I was a pregnant woman sobbing in a CVS drugstore to a female pharmacist who looked in my general direction with disdain. It certainly was a lack of understanding that led me here, but not in the way my Customer Care representative meant it.

(Target declined to comment for this article; Krogers and Rite Aid did not respond to emails for comment.)

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