Free the pharmacists.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Finally, there's a reproductive rights controversy with a safe, sensible solution that doesn't require either side to compromise its principles.

Women have a right to have their prescriptions for the Plan B emergency contraceptive filled at any pharmacy. They ought to receive prompt, respectful service.

Likewise, those few pharmacists who harbor religious objections to dispensing Plan B because they believe it terminates pregnancies ought to be able to practice their profession without compromising their conscience.

It hasn't worked to present the dissenting pharmacists with clinical data proving that Plan B does not interfere with a pregnancy in progress. For reasons that are difficult to discern, these pharmacists willingly fill prescriptions for birth control pills but object to dispensing Plan B, which uses the same synthetic hormone, only at higher doses.

Plan B, taken as directed, is highly effective at preventing pregnancy. There are more than 3 million unplanned pregnancies annually in the United States, and more than a million abortions.

Since up to half of unplanned pregnancies end in abortion, Plan B could significantly lower the number of abortions performed in the United States. That's what makes opposition to Plan B by anti-abortion pharmacists so self-defeating.

But if hard evidence won't change their minds, the best solution is the one the Food and Drug Administration should have approved two years ago following the overwhelming advice of FDA scientists: Plan B, one of the safest drugs ever studied, should be available to any woman over the counter, without a prescription. End of moral issue for pharmacists.