pharmacists continue to be allowed, either by law, or absence of prohibitive law, to deny women their prescriptions for birth control or access to emergency contraception.
Reports of pharmacies refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control—or provide EC—have surfaced in at least twenty-six states across the nation, including: AZ, CA, DC, GA, IL, LA, MA, MI, MN, MO, MT, NH, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, RI, TN, TX, VA, WA, WV, WI
Six states actually permit such refusals via “conscience clauses”:
Policies: Six states—AZ, AR, GA, ID, MS, and SD—have laws or regulations that specifically allow pharmacies or pharmacists to refuse for religious or moral reasons without critical protections for patients, such as requirements to refer or transfer prescriptions.
https://nwlc.org/resources/pharmacy-refusals-101/
And now employers can refuse insurance coverage for birth control on religious or moral grounds:
On Oct. 6, 2017, the Trump Administration released two new rules that allow any employer with religious or moral objections to refuse to comply with the Affordable Care Act requirement that women receive insurance coverage of birth control, without additional cost
The Trump Administration issued two separate rules. One exempts virtually any employer from providing birth control coverage because of religious objections – this includes non-profit organizations, closely-held and publicly traded for-profit companies, and “any other nongovernmental employer.” It also includes institutions of higher education. The second rule grants an exemption for employers other than publicly traded for-profit employers if they object based on undefined “moral” reasons. In other words, the Trump Administration has granted an exemption from providing birth control coverage to almost the entire American workforce.
https://nwlc.org/resources/trump-administration-allows-employers-to-take-birth-control-coverage-away-from-women/
I bring this up not to lessen the serious problem of LGBTQ discrimination in stories such as the one posted in the OP, but to remind people that discrimination against women on “moral or religious” grounds remains an ongoing—and frequently unremarked—problem of great severity as well, with lives impacted and sometimes at risk.
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