Before abortion pills, Walgreens customers said they were denied birth control
Walgreens' history of refusing abortion pills, birth control to customers - The Washington Post
Since Walgreens announced it would not distribute pills that induce abortion in 20 Republican-led states, including some where abortion medication is legal, the drugstore and pharmacy chain has faced backlash from abortion rights activists and Democrats who say the company bowed to pressure from GOP politicians. The announcement affects states such as Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Montana, where abortion and medication for the procedure are legal. On Monday, Walgreens said in a news release that once it is certified by the Food and Drug Administration to sell mifepristone, “we will dispense this medication consistent with federal and state laws.” Since the announcement, there have been widespread calls from activists and critics to boycott Walgreens and its roughly 9,000 retail stores across the United States. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said on Monday that the state will not do business with Walgreens or any company that “cowers to the extremists and puts women’s lives at risk.” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), who leads the state where Walgreens is based, met with company chief executive Roz Brewer and “expressed his deep concern about their position and urged them to rethink their stance,” according to the Chicago Sun Times. Before the company’s decision not to distribute mifepristone pills in 20 states, there’ve been a series of headlines in recent years about Walgreens employees refusing to sell birth control to female and male customers based on their own individual beliefs. A longtime Walgreens company policy states that an employee can decline to complete a customer’s transaction if they have religious or moral objections to the sale but that it must be handed off to a co-worker or manager so they can finish the transaction, the Associated Press reported.
Our policy allows pharmacists to step away from filling a prescription for which they have a moral objection. At the same time, they are also required to refer the prescription to another pharmacist or manager on duty to meet the patient's needs in a timely manner.— Walgreens (@Walgreens)
June 25, 2018 Walgreens spokesman Jim Cohn told The Washington Post in a statement Tuesday that the policy of allowing pharmacists and other employees “to step away from completing a transaction to which they have a moral objection” is still in place. “Our policy also requires the employee to refer the transaction to another employee or manager on duty who will complete the customer’s request,” Cohn said. As drug chains like Walgreens continue to be the latest battleground for abortion rights in the United States in the months after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, here are some examples of headlines involving Walgreens and its employees refusing to sell birth control:
The boyfriend and Plan B
In 2010, a 17-year-old customer went to a Walgreens store in Houston to buy Plan B, an emergency contraception commonly known as the “morning-after” pill, for his girlfriend. Months earlier, Walgreens had sent a notice to its employees to remind them that the emergency contraception should be sold to both women and men. However, there was an issue for the customer, who was identified in a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas as Adam Drake. The pharmacist refused to let him purchase Plan B, even after he showed him his ID showing he was of age to purchase it. The pharmacist claimed that his girlfriend had to be present so her ID could be verified. After Drake was able to pick up the morning-after pill from CVS, a Walgreens store manager suggested to him that he was going to use the emergency contraception to spike a woman’s drink, according to the ACLU. “We should support, rather than discourage, men and women who take shared responsibility for making healthy and responsible decisions about their birth control methods,” the group wrote to the company.
The 13-year-old and the IUD
When a 13-year-old girl was prescribed an intrauterine device (IUD) in August 2016 to help her address menstrual issues after other forms of birth control didn’t work, the girl’s mother headed to a Walgreens location in Albuquerque in hope of a solution. But when the mother arrived at the pharmacy to fill three prescriptions related to the IUD, she was surprised that the pharmacist told her that he could not give her daughter misoprostol because of his “personal beliefs,” according to complaints filed by the ACLU of New Mexico and the Southwest Women’s Law Center in 2017. As part of the IUD medication process, the teen’s doctor had prescribed her anxiety medication, a pain reliever and misoprostol, a hormone that softens the cervix to allow for easier insertion of an IUD, according to the Albuquerque Journal. While misoprostol is commonly prescribed to treat stomach ulcers, it can also be used to induce abortion. The girl’s mother, who was listed as M.S. in the complaints, alleged that she was told by the pharmacist to pick up the prescription at another Walgreens store, even though it was available at the pharmacy. She said in the complaints that she told him that “he was discriminating against me, that he should be ashamed for judging us, that he didn’t know my daughter’s medical history or her complications or conversation with her doctor. That he didn’t know what the medication was for.” “And he just looks at me and says, ‘Oh, I have a pretty good idea,’” she said, according to the complaints. The case came years after another Walgreens pharmacist in Albuquerque refused to refill Susanne Koestner’s birth control prescription in 2012 due to the employee’s religious beliefs. Following Koestner’s complaint, Walgreens pledged that it would fill birth control medications “as efficiently as other prescriptions without imposing any burden on the customer.”
The miscarriage and the pill
Nicole Arteaga was devastated when her doctor told her that she had a miscarriage in June 2018. In hope of moving on as quickly as possible, the Arizona woman was prescribed misoprostol to induce the process. Yet when Arteaga arrived at a Walgreens store in Peoria, Ariz., she was told by pharmacist Brian Hreniuc that he could not sell her misoprostol due to his personal ethics, she told The Washington Post in 2018. Instead, she said, the pharmacist told her to come back to the pharmacy when he was not working or allow him to send the prescription to another Walgreens nearby. “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Arteaga told The Post. “[I was] left feeling helpless because I felt there was nothing I could do and I had no control over my body. I don’t have control over my body not being able to support having a healthy baby. I can’t help … what has happened inside of me.”
After Arteaga got her prescription filled, her story went viral after she posted on
The married couple and the condoms
It was supposed to be a routine trip to Walgreens for Nate Pentz. After he and his wife, Jess, realized that they had left their birth control at home in Minneapolis, the couple stopped by a store in Heyward, Wis., in July to pick up condoms. The trouble came during checkout when the cashier said he couldn’t sell Jess Pentz the box of condoms, her husband tweeted. When she explained to a cashier named John that she had picked up the condoms from inside the store, the Walgreens employee gave his reasoning for the holdup. “We can, but I won’t because of my faith,” he said, according to Nate Pentz.
We went to Hayward to get some groceries and a stop at— Nate Pentz (@natepentz)
@Walgreens because we had left Jess birth control at home. As Jess was checking out, cashier John told her he couldn’t sell her the condoms. “Oh I got them from over there.”
“We can, but I won’t because of my faith.” 1/x July 3, 2022 After Jess Pentz told the cashier that his opinion on her buying condoms was “none of your business,” the employee suggested that the rest of her transaction be handled by a manager, her husband said. The incident at Walgreens, which took place just days after the Supreme Court struck down Roe, prompted Nate Pentz to make an appointment to get a vasectomy— joining men across the country in scheduling the procedure amid the antiabortion legislation that’s gone into effect nationwide.