Some Pharmacies Refuse to Fill Birth Control Prescriptions

Aug. 8, 2008— -- Kay Pharmacy in Grand Rapids, Mich., looks like any other pharmacy. But while the aisles are stocked with adhesive bandages, pain relievers and allergy medicines, some things are not for sale: condoms and other forms of birth control.

Owner Mike Koelzer sent a letter to 200 of his customers in 2002, advising them that he would no longer be filling prescriptions for contraceptives.

"We probably had 80 percent of those that were angry," Koelzer said. "But I was and am willing to lose the business in order to not be a part of something I don't agree with.

"I feel they're wrong," he said, basing in his opinions on his Catholic faith. "While something is legal does not necessarily make it right and also does not make it something that I want to participate in."

While the number of pharmacies that refuse to sell contraceptives remains relatively small, a group called Pharmacists for Life said that the movement is growing. The effort picked up steam a few years ago when individual pharmacists began refusing to dispense Plan B, the so-called morning after pill, for religious reasons.

Brian Bundy is one of those pharmacists. That's why he was fired from a pharmacy in Flint, Mich., he said.

"This country was founded on religious beliefs and the freedom to have those beliefs," Bundy said." Therefore, they should carry over to our jobs."

Megan Kelly, a married mother from Arlington Heights, Ill., strongly disagrees. She said she was deeply disturbed when her pharmacist refused to fill her prescription for monthly birth control pills and Plan B.

"For someone to interfere with that or make me feel like what my doctor is saying is not right, is wrong," Kelly said. "And that was my biggest issue -- that her morals were better than mine, or her world trumped my world. That was really uncomfortable."