Prescription for disaster.

Byline: The Register-Guard

This really happened: A pharmacist in Texas refused on religious grounds to fill a prescription for emergency contraception - for a rape victim who didn't want to become pregnant.

Think about it. A woman is sexually assaulted. She must endure a necessarily explicit police interview and the collection of bodily fluid evidence. A trip to the emergency room involves additional detailed interviewing and contact with numerous health care workers.

After an internal examination, the ER physician prescribes emergency contraception for the victim. Taken within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse, a two-pill dose of emergency contraceptives is highly effective at preventing pregnancy. The sooner it's taken, the better it works.

The victim gets dressed and a friend drives her, prescription in hand, to the nearest pharmacy. After waiting in line with a bunch of strangers, the woman finally gets to see the pharmacist. He looks at her prescription and tells her that what she is doing is morally wrong, and he will not fill the prescription because it goes against his religious beliefs. He looks over her shoulder and says, "Next."

As callous and unprofessional as that episode may seem, the Washington Board of Pharmacy has just voted unanimously to permit the state's pharmacists to treat women the same way the Texas rape victim was treated. At least in Washington, pharmacists who refuse to fill a prescription under the board's so-called conscience clause would be required to "provide timely alternatives for the patient to obtain treatment." Under that wishy-washy guideline, a pharmacist need do nothing more than point to a phone book and tell the patient to look in the Yellow Pages for another drugstore.

The pharmacy board hasn't limited matters of pharmaceutical conscience just to emergency contraception.

The proposed rule would allow any pharmacist to turn away any patient seeking to fill a prescription for any drug that offended the pharmacist's religious or moral sensi- tivities.

So, how about AIDS drugs? Treatments for sexually transmitted diseases? Erectile dysfunction? Hormone therapy for transsexuals? Standard birth control pills? Chemotherapy drugs that could endanger a pregnancy? Infertility treatments?

The prosposed rule creates the potential for arbitrary, discriminatory, improper and unwarranted imposition of an individual's personal beliefs into the doctor-patient relationship.

If the board is foolish enough to ratify this disastrous rule in August, the Washington Legislature should intervene immediately to protect patients' rights to prompt, professional medical treatment as prescribed by their physicians.

By the way, the Texas pharmacist was fired.