Ugh:

In November, a Planned Parenthood nurse called this Nampa Walgreen's for a methergine prescription. According to Planned Parenthood, the Walgreen's pharmacist asked if their patient had an abortion. The nurse says she cited federal patient privacy laws and refused to answer. "The pharmacist said, 'Well, if you're not going to tell me that and she had an abortion, I'm not going to fill this prescription.' And then our practitioner said, 'Why don't you tell me another pharmacy that I can call or another pharmacist that can dispense this medication for my patient?' And the pharmacist hung up on her," said Kristen Glundberg-Prosser of the Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest.

Clearly, the pharmacist believed she was within her rights to refuse, thanks to the Freedom of Conscience for Health Care Professionals law, enacted last year by Idaho's legislature, which states, in pertinent part:

No health care professional shall be required to provide any health care service that violates his or her conscience.

The law protects health care providers, including pharmacists, from dispensing abortifacients -- medications to induce abortion. There's only one problem: methergine (also known as Methylergonovine) isn't an abortifacient.

Methylergonovine belongs to a class of drugs called ergot alkaloids. Methylergonovine is used to prevent or treat bleeding from the uterus that can happen after childbirth or an abortion.

In other words, this medication is prescribed to women following a variety of medical procedures that involve the uterus, to prevent them from bleeding to death.

"In this situation our patient needed that medication and it could have been a life threatening thing had she not acquired it and for someone just to decide that they don't want to dispense it because they don't believe in that medication or they don't approve of a patient, it's just wrong," said Kristen Glundberg-Prosser of the Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest.

Under the new law, the pharmacist was required to provide an alternative to the nurse practitioner so that the patient's prescription could be filled. But the pharmacist didn't do that either. Apparently, treating a woman who may have had an abortion is a matter of conscience, but letting the woman bleed to death isn't.

Sadly, Idaho's new law isn't the only one of its kind. In fact, 46 states have some sort of conscience clause on the books, allowing medical professionals to put their own politics "conscience" before the health care of their patients.

Planned Parenthood has filed a complaint with the Idaho Board of Pharmacy, which is investigating the incident.