Report: Pharmacist denied mother miscarriage medicine due to moral objection
An Arizona woman's story has gone viral on Facebook. Nicole Arteaga wrote that a Walgreens pharmacist denied her medication to end a pregnancy.
"Last night I experienced something no woman should ever have to go thru [sic]," Arteaga wrote in a post that has now been shared more than 33,000 times.
According to the post, Arteaga went to a Walgreens in Peoria to get a prescription for medication that would end her pregnancy. She was two months pregnant, but her doctor had told her the baby’s development had stopped and she would ultimately miscarry.
"I was having an undeveloped fetus with no heartbeat and so ultimately was going to have a miscarriage," she told AZ Family.
The doctor told Arteaga she could undergo a dilation and curettage procedure or take medicine.
"There were two... options. The medical procedure called a D&C, and go into the hospital, or he could prescribe some medication and I could do it in the comfort of my home," she said.
Arteaga chose to take the medicine, but the pharmacist at Walgreens refused to fill the prescription "because of his ethical beliefs."
"(He) asks me if I'm pregnant, which I say yes, and he tells me, 'I'm not giving you this one. I can't give you this one,'" she said.
"I stood at the mercy of this pharmacist explaining my situation in front of my 7-year-old, and five customers standing behind only to be denied because of his ethical beliefs. I get it, we all have our beliefs. But what he failed to understand is this isn’t the situation I had hoped for, this isn’t something I wanted. This is something I have zero control over," she wrote in her Facebook post.
Arteaga told AZ Central that she tried in vain to convince the pharmacist to give her the medicine.
“I tried to explain to him: 'I have to take this medication because it is an undeveloping fetus inside of me,' and he still refused, standing there silent and looking at me," she recalled. “He has no idea what it's like to want nothing more than to carry a child to full term and be unable to do so.”
Arteaga said she left the Walgreens in tears. She was later able to pick up her medicine from a Walgreens across town.
Arteaga said she contacted the store manager, Walgreens' corporate office, and has filed a complaint with the Arizona Board of Pharmacy."
Walgreens released the following statement in response to the incident:
"After learning what happened, we reached out to the patient and apologized for how the situation was handled. To respect the sincerely held beliefs of our pharmacists while at the same time meeting the needs of our patients, our policy allows pharmacists to step away from filling a prescription for which they have a moral objection. At the same time, they are also required to refer the prescription to another pharmacist or manager on duty to meet the patient's needs in a timely manner. We are looking into the matter to ensure that our patients' needs are handled properly.”
Arizona laws specifically allow pharmacies and pharmacists to refuse to fill a prescription for religious or moral reasons.