Woman denied access to morning-after pill sues CVS and local pharmacy

The war on reproductive rights in the United States has many fronts: denial of abortions, the global gag rule, the shackling of incarcerated pregnant women in labor, among others. Ever increasingly, yet another battle line has come to the fore—women are being denied legal prescriptions for the morning-after pill (Plan B) and a pill for medical abortion (mifepristone) based on pharmacists’ religious beliefs. This week, one woman has chosen to fight back.

Andrea Anderson, 39, whose doctor prescribed an emergency contraceptive that needs to be taken within five days to be effective, was denied her prescription at a rural Minnesota Thrifty White Pharmacy on January 21. The pharmacist, George Badeaux, told her “he would be unable to fill her prescription,” according to The Washington Post. Badeaux told Anderson he would not give her the medication due to “personal reasons” and his “beliefs.”   

“He said, ‘I don’t feel comfortable; that goes against what I believe,’ ” Anderson told WCCO, “and all of a sudden it clicked." 

Anderson then tried to obtain her prescription at a CVS. The pharmacist there told her that neither the CVS nor a Walgreens more than 50 miles away carried the pill. To be sure, Anderson called the Walgreens herself and discovered they did, in fact, have what she needed. She then made a three-hour trip to the pharmacy in white-out snow conditions. 

A lawsuit filed Monday by a St. Paul nonprofit called Gender Justice alleges that the Thrifty White and the CVS discriminated against Anderson “based on her sex.” The suit “also contends that denying her service based on pregnancy-related health care needs violated the Minnesota Human Rights Act,” according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

While the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy “created [in 1999] a way for pharmacists to decline to fill prescriptions that violate their ethics, they must provide alternative ways for customers to obtain their prescriptions,” the Star-Tribune reported. Also, in such situations, “pharmacists must ensure that patients are able to access the medication quickly.” 

“When pharmacists refuse to fill a prescription due to their personal beliefs, refuse to follow the rules of the Pharmacy Board and have a backup referral … they’re violating those rights,” Gender Justice Executive Director Megan Peterson told the Duluth News Tribune. “They’re putting their personal beliefs ahead of someone’s health care.”

Many states across the country have “conscience” or “refusal” laws that allow pharmacists to discriminate against women and LGBTQ people. These laws permit pharmacists to raise objections to filling drugs based on religious beliefs against abortion and homosexuality. 

The Minnesota case is merely the latest such refusal to hit the news. In July 2018, a Michigan woman named Rachel Peterson, 35, was forced to drive more than three hours to get mifepristone when a Meijer pharmacy refused to dispense the drug. She’d suffered a miscarriage and needed the pill to remove the fetus from her body in order to avoid an invasive surgical procedure. The month before, a woman named Nicole Artega, 35, was denied her prescription for mifepristone at an Arizona Walgreens. She too had already had a miscarriage; she too needed the medicine to remove the fetus—who no longer had a heartbeat—from her body.

While women are fighting back for their reproductive rights, there is still one more front that requires change: Most media outlets covering Anderson’s case refer to her as a “mother of five” and a foster mother, as though she deserves the pill because she already has many children. Instead, allowing such cases to rest on the refusal alone would remove implicit judgment as to whether the mother is "worthy."