TUESDAY, Aug. 2, 2022 (HealthDay News) — A Minnesota jury is expected to decide later this week whether a woman’s human rights were violated when a pharmacist denied her request of filling a prescription for emergency contraception, sometimes called the morning-after pill.
Although the case dates back to 2019, the issue has been at the center of political debate in the United States since the US Supreme Court struck down a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion in June. Concerns about whether the conservative court could also limit birth control rights in the future prompted the US House of Representatives to pass a bill last week to guarantee the right.
In Minnesota, Andrea Anderson sued pharmacist George Badeaux under the state Human Rights Law, CBS News reported. Minnesota law prohibits discrimination based on sex. This includes matters related to pregnancy and childbirth.
Anderson had tried to fill her prescription for the morning-after pill in January 2019 at Thrifty White Pharmacy in the small town of McGregor, the Star Tribune reported Badeaux told him that he could not fill it because of his religious beliefs, but that he could fill it the next day with another pharmacist if a snowstorm did not prevent that pharmacist from going to work. The mother of five drove 100 miles round trip in wintry weather to fill her prescription in Brainerd, Minnesota.
Badeaux can explain his religious beliefs to the jury, “but not in such a way as to confuse the jury into thinking this is a religious freedom contest,” according to a judge’s ruling in the case. He cannot raise federal constitutional issues such as freedom of religion because the case is filed under the state’s Human Rights Act, Aitkin County District Judge David Hermerding said, CBS News reported.
“The question for the jury is not [the] the defendant’s constitutional rights,” the judge wrote. “Is whether he deliberately deceived, obfuscated, and blocked Ms. Anderson’s path to obtain” emergency contraception.
