Advocates: Kroger still stalling on pill

Two weeks after Kroger Co. said it was clarifying its policy on stocking the so-called "morning after" pill, activists say dozens of stores continue to block sales of the emergency contraceptive.

Representatives of NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion-rights group that also works on other reproductive health issues, sent a letter to Kroger officials Wednesday asking them to carry the drug at all of their pharmacies.

Ted Miller, communications director for the group, said members called 231 Kroger-run pharmacies across the country and found that 21 percent of the stores did not make the drug immediately available.

Reasons ranged from an employee in Kansas who said he would not sell the drug to another in Utah who said it had not been approved for over-the-counter sales in that state, the group said.

A Kroger spokeswoman said that the Cincinnati-based chain does stock the drug at all of its locations and blamed the confusion on employees who did not understand the company's policies. The company sent messages to all of its pharmacies clarifying the policy and said many of the calls NARAL members made to stores came before the policy was clarified, she said.

"We think some of this is due to some confusion over the policy," said Kroger spokeswoman Lynn Marmer.

Sold as Plan B, emergency contraception is a high dose of the drug found in many regular birth-control pills. It can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.

Critics argue that the pill encourages promiscuity and unprotected sex. Some consider the pill related to abortion, although it is different from the abortion pill RU-486 and has no effect on women who already are pregnant.

Formerly available only by prescription, the federal Food and Drug Administration made the morning-after pill available over the counter to adults in August.

On March 9, activists in Georgia called on Kroger to make the pill more readily available after a 42-year-old married mother of two from Rome, Ga., complained that a store manager in her hometown told her she couldn't buy it there because the store's pharmacist refused.

Marmer said that since it no longer requires a prescription, pharmacists may simply ask any other employee to sell it and that a customer should never be sent to another store to buy it.

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On the Net:

Kroger: http://www.kroger.com

NARAL Pro-Choice America: http://www.naral.org