Legislation approved by the House of Representatives would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception or abortion drugs without fear of losing their job or other retaliation.

However, some fear the bill will place additional barriers on women in rural areas and victims of sexual assault.

Rape victims should have the ability to get emergency contraception, commonly known as the morning after pill, Rep. Marian McClure, R-30, said.

“God knows these women have already suffered a trauma, and to go to a pharmacist [after] having been raped…and to put them through that trauma of being refused, as a woman, I just find that to be incredible,” she said.

Assistant Minority Leader Linda Lopez, D-29, said a lack of access to emergency contraception in rural areas, where there is often one pharmacy per town, could compound with this bill and could result in unwanted children or abortions.

Doctors, said Rep. Doug Quelland, the sponsor of H2541, are already afforded the right to refuse performing abortions on moral grounds. He believes pharmacists ought to be afforded the same right when it comes to dispensing drugs.

“Do you want a state where health care workers are forced to violate their personal conscience and ethics≠” Mr. Quelland, R-10, asked during the Feb. 24 Committee of the Whole.

House Passes Bill

The House passed the bill Feb. 28 by a 35-24 vote.

Mr. Quelland said the bill is narrowly defined to restrict the right of conscience to certain reproductive drugs because of concerns about abortion. It does not encompass concerns about administering other drugs – such as anti-depression medications for children – because those prescriptions don’t aim to end a life.

“Those drugs aren’t going to abort a fetus, kill a living thing,” he said.

Providing the ability for a pharmacist to opt out of taking part in what he viewed as the ending of a human life was a chief concern of Rep. Ray Barnes, R-7, who voted in favor of the bill.

“Nobody should be required to be the executioner of someone they don’t want to execute,” he told members in explaining his vote.

Democrats Oppose Bill

Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-15, said Feb. 28 that the bill actually is the “continuing attack on the right of women in the state to have freedom of choice” over their bodies, adding that she was “offended” at the attempt to legislate that authority away from women. Rep. Olivia Cajero Bedford, D-27, said the decision to take such medication should be made by the woman and her doctor, not a pharmacist or politicians.

Several opponents said the bill essentially violates the code medical professionals follow by allowing personal beliefs to trump the patient’s needs.

“The need for services are what should dictate whether they get them or not,” said Minority Leader Phil Lopes, D-27.

Though the Arizona Catholic Conference supports the bill, Mr. Quelland said it is not about legislating religion. Nowhere in the language of the bill is there any reference to religion, he said, nor did he mention religion when touting the bill. It’s about conscience, he said, and it “will not favor the beliefs on one religion over another.”

Rep. Ted Downing, D-28, said the bill was legislating religious morality and may violate the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause regarding the separation of church and state. It’s “common sense,” he said, that religious beliefs often form a person’s conscience.

“I think we’re dancing on pinheads here to get around the core of the bill,” Mr. Downing said.

Ms. McClure, who identified herself as a Christian, said the bill would not have received a hearing if the conscientious objections to the medications weren’t those of Christians.

“If this had been a Muslim issue, a Buddhist issue or a Hindu issue, we would not be having this discussion, and I believe that with all my heart,” she said.

Mr. Quelland said several Christian and pro-life organizations support the bill, but that he has no control over which groups are in favor of which pieces of legislation.

Further, Ms. McClure said the bill is a “slippery slope” that will open the door for other groups to claim a right of conscience issue.

“There may be other people that have rights of conscience that I may disagree with and that the majority of the body would disagree with, and I find it disturbing that we put into state statute anything that has unintended consequences,” she said. “What’s to keep them from coming forward with a bill [in the future], saying, ‘What about my right of conscience≠’”

As a “far out” example, she said a pharmacist in the future may wish to not fill prescriptions for HIV medications because of a belief that doing so condones homosexuality and promiscuity. Pharmacists could, Ms. McClure said, bring the issue forward as a right of conscience.

Additionally, Mr. Quelland and Ms. McClure both noted that there are no known cases in Arizona of a pharmacist being fired or reprimanded for refusing to fill a prescription on moral grounds. Ms. McClure said that is evidence the legislation is unnecessary. Mr. Quelland, though, said he has received several letters from pharmacists who have left the state because such a law does not exist, and the bill gives them the opportunity to return.

H2541 and a similar bill in the Senate, S1485, which was scheduled to be heard in Senate COW March 3, will also serve to curb judicial activism, Mr. Quelland said. They are a pre-emptive strike to prevent moral legislation from the bench, he said.

“Some judge somewhere is going to decide what your conscience is and my conscience is,” Mr. Quelland said. “I’d rather have something on the books that sets a precedent for the next judge, because if there isn’t anything there in statute, for the judges, it’s almost like one free shot.” —