(3/30/04 - FORT WORTH, TX) A first-grade teacher says she is troubled that a pharmacist refused to fill her birth-control prescription, citing personal objections to contraception.
Julee Lacey, who has been married nine years and has two children, said she went to a CVS drug store in North Richland Hills, a Fort Worth suburb, on Sunday night but left empty-handed. Other pharmacists there had filled her birth-control prescription previously, she said.
"What happens if next time she decides not to fill something else?" Lacey, 32, said Tuesday. "When you go to a pharmacy with a doctor's prescription, you expect it to be filled. More than anything, I want people to be aware this can happen."
The pharmacist told her she could go to another store, but Lacey said driving there and filling out paperwork as a new customer would have taken too much time. When Lacey's husband went to the CVS a short time later, the pharmacist continued refusing and said birth control "was not right" and that the pills cause cancer, Lacey said.
But a store supervisor apologized and said CVS would examine its policy, Lacey said, and an employee delivered the pills to her home Monday night. She said she is not sure if she will remain a CVS customer and plans to file a complaint about that pharmacist with the Texas State Board of Pharmacy.
State law allows pharmacists to decline filling prescriptions if the medication could harm the patient but not for moral reasons, according to the board.
CVS officials did not return calls to The Associated Press seeking comment Tuesday.
A CVS spokesman told Dallas-Fort Worth television station KXAS that the company supports its pharmacists who have a deeply held belief -- but that in such cases, the store is supposed to help the customer by having another pharmacist fill the prescription or by calling a competing store.
Earlier this year an Eckerd pharmacist in Denton was fired after he, citing religious convictions, declined to fill a rape victim's prescription for the emergency contraception she was prescribed by a hospital doctor.
She finally got the pills at a Walgreen store, hours after she left an emergency room. The so called morning-after contraceptive pill is at least 75 percent effective at preventing pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.
Two of the pharmacist's co-workers who also refused to fill the rape victim's prescription were fired as well. Eckerd spokeswoman Joan Gallagher has said company policy does not allow pharmacists to decline to fill a prescription for moral or religious reasons.
