PLAN B BIRTH CONTROL HASSLE
By Mary McCarty in
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
... Tashina Byrd has a simple answer for people who wonder why she's telling the world about her recent contraceptive emergency.
(For those who need to know, the condom broke.)
"It isn't just my business," she says. "This is a lot bigger than me."
The 23-year-old Springfield woman and her boyfriend, Brian O'Neill of Columbus, thought they were simply walking up to the pharmacy window at the Bechtle Avenue Wal-Mart in Springfield to purchase the over-the-counter emergency contraceptive, Plan B.
They had no idea they were about to walk into a national news story — one that does, indeed, raise a much larger question: Should a woman's ability to obtain birth control be subject to the moral beliefs of the pharmacist behind the counter?
... Plan B isn't the abortion-pill RU 486, which must be dispensed from a doctor's office. It doesn't end a pregnancy; it prevents a pregnancy from taking place. "It's the same ingredient as a birth-control pill, only a nuclear dose," O'Neill notes.
The couple watched as the young pharmacy assistant brought the drug to the pharmacist on duty, Brent Beams. "I could see the pharmacist, and he smiled and he laughed and he shook his head," Byrd says.
The pharmacy assistant told her, "We have it on hand, but we can't give it to you."
The Ohio Pharmacists Association's current policy is that if a pharmacist has a conscientious objection, the customer should find another pharmacist or another pharmacy.
