Last week, two social media stories emerged in which Walgreens (WBA) customers attempted to purchase or fill prescriptions for contraception and were denied service by employees.
Coming mere weeks after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, those responding to the claims have declared Walgreens an enemy in the fight for reproductive rights and calling for a boycott. Is this a statement about Walgreens company culture or merely a projection of anger onto the nearest pharmacy?
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Walgreens Responds to the Overturn of Roe v. Wade
In the weeks that followed the "Roe" decision, Walgreens was one of the companies promising to cover some reproductive expenses for its employees. It's a gesture of support taken by many companies all across social media -- but it's hard to know which companies will or have put their coverage-money where their mouths are. It certainly doesn't look good when two new viral stories emerge about Walgreens employees refusing to sell contraception to customers.
These posts are frequently looped in with another Twitter post about a customer receiving a package of Enfamil (RBGPF) baby formula after she used her Walgreens rewards card to buy a pregnancy test. And yes, the idea of Walgreens selling personal data and companies sending out unsolicited pregnancy "care packages" during a formula shortage is egregious. But it's also completely unrelated to Walgreens' -- or any other pharmacy's -- policies regarding refusal of medication.
In fact, those policies have more to do with the state you're in than they do the pharmacy.
"Conscience Clauses" Aren't Anything New
The social outcry about pharmacists refusing medications isn't new or exclusive to Walgreens. According to 2017's National Women’s Law Center fact sheet, cases of prescription denial in various states goes back as far as 2004, when a Texas woman was refused time-sensitive contraception after a rape.
Some of these occurrences happened at Walgreens, but some also took place at CVS (CVS) and other pharmacies across the nation. More recently in 2018, a woman in Arizona was refused a medication that would induce a medically necessary miscarriage.
Several states have laws allowing pharmacists to refuse medication based on their religious beliefs. Many were initially intended to give pharmacists and doctors freedom to refuse medication to a person they suspect may be suffering from addiction. But politicians have found room for language in these laws allowing the refusal of service based on moral objections, too. Any pharmacy operating under the jurisdiction of a state with a "conscience clause" is required to follow the law, regardless of company policy or culture.
Walgreens does have a policy in place to address a circumstance of medication refusal, which it tweeted in response to one user's question about the issue.
However, a business that refuses to fill a contraceptive prescription could open the company up to gender discrimination lawsuits.
Will Customers Boycott?
Perhaps the recent overturn of "Roe" emboldened some otherwise quietly-conservative people to express their state-given rights to refuse medication dispensing. The real responsibility falls to companies, including Walgreens, to have a contingency plan to ensure customers have access to medications needed.
In the event that no employee present will help, customers are to be referred to another pharmacy -- assuming there's one nearby. But in the end, this problem is as much a concern for Walgreens as it is CVS or your local mom-and-pop drug store.
Will customers projecting their anger onto Walgreens negatively affect the company's sales? It's highly unlikely. But in a time of uncertainty for reproductive rights and another covid spike, now is a better time than ever to know more about the laws that affect our local pharmacies.
