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I spend every day of my life embroiled in the debate around reproductive rights as the director of NARAL Pro-Choice Montana. Most of you reading this probably think my job is about protecting women's access to abortion care. That's true, but what you might not realize is that more and more, my job entails defending women's right to access birth control, reproductive healthcare, and our young people's right to receive medically accurate information about sexuality in Montana schools.
Many people may not know the next line of attack for the anti-choice movement is birth control. That's right--birth control. It doesn't take much looking to uncover the anti-choice movement's disdain for birth control and family planning. Recently, a Missoula crisis pregnancy center tabled on U of M's campus suggesting that being on birth control makes you more susceptible to HIV/AIDS! Watch this interaction between Mary Alice Carr of NARAL Pro-Choice New York and anti-choice, abstinence-only activist Leslie Unruh of South Dakota (part of the crew behind the South Dakota abortion ban), who calls birth control a "pesticide," among other things.
At the 2007 Legislative Session, anti-choice hardliners successfully fought off an attempt to get funding for comprehensive sex education programs. They also attempted over and over and over to strip money for family planning services in Montana from the budget, which finally resulted in an angry floor debate where anti-choice leaders tried to confuse abortion with birth control.
98% of women will use some form of birth control at some point in their lives. Despite the fact that birth control is basic health care for women, renegade pharmacists across the country have been routinely denying to fill women's prescriptions for birth control and Emergency Contraception (the morning-after pill). Some pharmacists even go so far as to lecture women, humiliate them in public, or refuse to hand back the prescription after they refuse to fill it.
In Great Falls, Snyder Drug has new ownership. With that new ownership came a new policy: they will no longer be filling women's prescriptions for birth control. The new owners have ties to the anti-choice community and now own two pharmacies in Great Falls. My organization is in the process of working with local activists in Great Falls to do more research into their policy and what they are telling consumers about birth control, what other drugs they dispense (Viagra anyone?), see what other pharmacies in Great Falls are refusing to fill birth control or EC prescriptions, and come up with an action plan.
NARAL Pro-Choice Montana believes pharmacies have an ethical obligation to honor valid, legal prescriptions and avoid jeopardizing their patients' health. In Montana's rural communities, there may only be one pharmacy in town. What if that one pharmacy was refusing to fill birth control prescriptions? Since when does a pharmacist have the right to decide whether or not to fill your prescription and interfere in the doctor-patient relationship?
If you're interested in getting involved with NARAL Pro-Choice Montana or want to know what you can do in your community to protect reproductive rights, go to: www.prochoicemontana.org or contact me at prochoice@mt.net.
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