Keep anti-woman "morals"out of our pharmacies

Keep anti-woman "morals" out of our pharmacies
Campus NOW
September 2008

Friday, August 29, Campus National Organization for Women (NOW) and supporters rallied on the corner of University and 13th Street with signs proclaiming "HHS is Sexist" and "Women Decide NOT Pharmacists." The group was protesting a new Health and Human Services, HHS, anti-birth control regulation that is currently being considered.

This regulation is referred to as the "conscience clause." The "conscience clause" will allow pharmacists to refuse care to women if they feel it is against their moral or religious beliefs. Some companies refuse to hire such pharmacists, but under this new enforcement companies would no longer have that choice. Which makes it that much harder for women to get what we need, when we need it.

The regulation quotes a poll that says 49% of Americans believe that life begins at conception (despite the American Medical Association's definition of pregnancy as occurring at implantation of the fertilized egg in the uterus), and therefore people with that belief should not be forced to take part in something that they don't agree with. It should be noted that there is no way to tell whether fertilization has happened -- like there is with pregnancy. Birth control pills could be effective in preventing a pregnancy even though the egg has been fertilized -- and therefore, according to some, could be considered little mini "abortions" happening without our ever knowing it.

Other than that, the regulation says that any health institution receiving federal funding - even Medicaid - can claim conscientious objector status and refuse services to women trying to get birth control. What's scary is that any health insurance companies that provide coverage for birth control (the few that do) could now drop that coverage.

Campus NOW says -- women need to have full access to all forms of birth control in order to control the direction of our lives. Birth control may or may not prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in a uterus -- Campus NOW says it doesn't matter! Whatever you want to call it, birth control and the morning after pill are ways women take responsibility and control of their lives. No pharmacist, secretary of the HHS, lawyer, doctor, man, or politician can take that away from us.

Call Mike Leavitt, the secretary of the HHS, at 1-877-696-6775, or leave him a note on his blog, http://secretarysblog.hhs.gov/. Tell him that you support women's reproductive rights. Tell him pharmacists should not be the ones to decide whether a woman takes birth control pills or the morning after pill. Women are the experts on our bodies and our lives -- Let US decide!

To contact Campus National Organization for Women (NOW) -- email us at or call 321 427 0006