Target Panders to Far Right on Emergency Contraception

Target took a stand on emergency contraception. In a media statement dated November 10th, 2005 Target said: “In the rare event that a pharmacist’s beliefs conflict with filling a guest’s prescription for the emergency contraceptive Plan B, our policy requires our pharmacists to take responsibility for ensuring that the guest’s prescription is filled in a timely and respectful manner, either by another Target pharmacist or a different pharmacy. The emergency contraceptive Plan B is the only medication for which this policy applies.”

While that official policy may seem reasonable it puts a tremendous amount of burden on a customer holding a valid prescription. Further, you need to understand that this has a huge impact in small rural towns where the choice is often Wal Mart (which won't fill the prescription at all) and Target (who might refer a customer to another location, which may be very far away). In reality that this leaves many rural people without much of a choice.

There is the convenience and the practicality charge and then there is the potential abuse, in the form of allegations that they actually just flat out have refused to fill prescriptions. The far right is now using this issue to further erode reproductive freedom as several states led by conservatives governors and legislatures have back legislation to allow pharamacists to refuse filling such prescriptions. Once again, this will leave the poor and the rural without true reproductive freedom.

This is just another example of the Target corporation not supporting the values of the Davis community.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting