For most professionals, an acceptable excuse is required to miss

work: a swollen appendix, ailing grandmother, whiplash, at the very

least.

Pharmacists, on the other hand, may refuse to do their jobs for any

old reason – or for none at all. We’re talking about birth control, of

course. In the District, for example, pharmacists are not required to

provide such products, especially if their "personal views" won’t allow

it. According to NARAL Pro-Choice America, only six states bar

pharmacists from withholding birth control prescriptions/doing their

jobs: California, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, and Washington.

That means that D.C. is a hotbed of the ultimate bullshit defense

for denying health care to women. Pharmacists here can refuse to

provide women’s health care based on such "personal views" as latent

sexism, unsubstantiated medical opinion, or whim. Some other "personal

views" local pharmacies have offered up:

It’s private. A pharmacy’s trust factor often

relies on its adherence to privacy – its hushed consultations, the 3-foot

courtesy bubble between customers, pills wrapped in nondescript white

paper packaging. For contraception allies, these conventions help keep

birth control a personal transaction not subject to political

interference. But right across the counter, the "privacy" excuse allows

pharmacists to deny you access to contraception at any time while

shirking explanation and accountability-no questions asked. A flack for

Wellington Pharmacy defers to the privacy excuse – "it’s a relationship

between a person and their physician" – as to why the pharmacy,

affiliated with Catholic-leaning Providence Hospital, provides Viagra

but no birth control.

Sex. Abortion. Parenthood. Power. The latest news, delivered straight to your inbox. SUBSCRIBE

This pharmacy is here to deny your rights. Those

not interested in providing medications to humans can choose from a

host of careers that are not involved in providing medications to

humans. And yet, the D.C. area is home to several anti-contraception

advocates that insist upon going the pharmaceutical route. For all

these pharmacies gets wrong about women’s health – namely, their

positions on condoms, birth control, and the morning-after pill – they

often get one thing right: At the most fanatical anti-contraception

outfits, women at least know what they’re not getting. America’s latest

pro-life pharmaceutical poster child, Chantilly’s Divine Mercy Care

Pharmacy, defied the tight-lipped industry standard with its grand

opening last fall. Holy water slicked the shelves. A bishop blessed the

operation. The AP took video. But though the DMC is the only local

pharmacy affiliated with anti-contraception group Pharmacists for Life

International, it’s less dangerous than the other area pharmacies

quietly denying access to birth control.

They’ve got inventory issues. On a recent Saturday,

I contacted 10 local CVS pharmacies to see if they had the

morning-after pill in stock. Nine did. The pharmacist at the one that

didn’t informed me that his store’s Plan B shipments arrived on

Tuesdays, so I would just have to wait 72 hours to get my hands on the

pill. Never mind that the effectiveness of Plan B decreases with each

hour after unprotected sex, and that after 72 hours, its chances of

preventing pregnancy are kaput. The representative at another CVS that

did have the pill informed me they only had two pill packs left on the

shelf. They, too, received new shipments only once a week, on Tuesdays,

so my chances of getting the morning after pill depend on a guessing

game of how many condoms broke in the District of Columbia in any given

week. Here’s a tip, CVS shoppers: If you’re going to need to use the

morning-after pill, just make sure that morning falls on a Wednesday.

They’re weirdos. Though it’s not uncommon for

pharmacists to operate behind a shield of privacy, some display a

distaste for discussing women’s health that borders on good

old-fashioned sexism. When it comes to contraception, pharmacists are

often skittish about discussing the most basic aspect of their

business – which prescriptions they will fill and which they will not.

And it’s not just pharmacies with moral motivations against

contraception that aren’t talking. In a telephone interview, the

proprietor at Dupont’s Tschiffely Pharmacy refused to discuss whether

the shop dispensed the morning-after pill. But when I stopped in to try

to pick up a pill pack, Plan B was in stock and offered with a smile.

Georgetown’s Dumbarton Pharmacy, meanwhile, declined to discuss its

contraceptive options at all. Playing coy with contraceptive options is

less cute when women need to locate them instantly in order for them to

work. No other common, FDA-approved, over-the-counter medication would

receive such silent treatment from pharmacists.

Even chain stores like Rite Aid and CVS, which have national

policies that adhere to the contraception-access requirement of the six

aforementioned states, must draft elaborate plans by which to protect

their pharmacists’ idiosyncrasies. Sometimes, those quirks mean losing

business. Take Rite Aid’s policy, which outlines a three-step plan by

which a pharmacist can avoid personally filling your birth control

prescription: 1) Have another technician fill the prescription; 2) if

there is no other technician on hand, contact the closest Rite Aid to

dispense the medication, then have the prescription delivered back to

the customer’s preferred Rite Aid location; 3) if no other local Rite

Aid pharmacist will consent to dispensing birth control, locate the

nearest competitor that will fill the customer’s need, then follow

through until that need is met.

They don’t trust you – or your doctor. Cathedral

Pharmacy owner Paul Beringer, a Catholic, will not provide the

morning-after pill. "I consider it abortion," he says. Non-emergency

contraception is dispensed on a case-by-case basis – meaning that the

pharmacist can nullify the decision of your medical doctor because he

thinks a prescription might be faked, is uncomfortable dispensing

contraception to women under the age of 18, or otherwise wishes to

impose his "personal views" on your body.

They fear your vagina. Target Pharmacy provides

prescription birth control as well as the morning-after pill. Other

women’s health products, however, aren’t available even with a doctor’s

signature.

Parker, 27, who declined to give her full name, came to the pharmacy

straight from work with a prescription from her gynecologist’s office.

It was 5:30 p.m. and raining, and she needed to fill the prescription

that evening in order to prep for a procedure scheduled for the next

morning.

But Target’s pharmacist refused to fill the prescription because the

doctor instructed that the pill was to be inserted vaginally. Parker’s

doctor had prescribed her Cytotec, an FDA-approved treatment for

ulcers. The medication is also routinely prescribed off-label to dilate

the cervix to induce labor in pregnant women, or, in Parker’s case, to

aid in the insertion of an IUD. Parker – who wasn’t pregnant – learned

later that the medication can also be used to induce abortion.

The pharmacist, who did not give her name, says she rebuffed

Parker’s prescription because she disagreed with the doctor’s

insistence on vaginal insertion."That’s not how it’s supposed to be

prescribed," she says. "It’s supposed to be taken orally."

The pharmacist says she tried to call Parker’s doctor’s office but

wasn’t able to reach anyone at the late hour. Parker says the

pharmacist never picked up the phone while she was there and that she

had to beg her to consult her doctor before she got an explanation – that

the office would be closed and there was nothing she could do.

Parker left the pharmacy in tears. "I got a little hysterical," she

says. "I couldn’t believe that this pharmacist, who has less training

than my doctor, would deny me this medication that I needed, because it

was specified that it went in the vagina?"

After asking for the name of a supervisor, Parker took solace in

Columbia Heights’ other chain pharmacy. Still red-eyed, she crossed the

street to the CVS. There, "a very nice, flirtatious Latino man filled

my prescription, no questions asked."