CVS Has to Start Enforcing its Policies with Employees

I was infuriated, but not surprised, to read a blog post on feministing describing a CVS employee stepping waaay out of bounds and trying to refuse to sell a pregnancy test to a teenage girl. As much as I love CVS, they have been a bit lax and hypocritical on the family planning front for years. Around the time Emergency Contraception (aka Plan B) first became available OTC, CVS gained a great deal of good press by pledging to ensure availability and prompt dispensing of EC. This was and still is a big deal because many stores, such as WalMart, have opted to allow their pharmacists to refuse this legal medication to women on the basis of their personal moral stance against birth control. Other pharmacies are avoiding the issue entirely by simply not stocking the pill.

Just weeks later, a CVS pharmacist in Coventry, RI refused to fill an EC prescription and there was no real fallout for CVS, nor did they take action beyond issuing a lame apology. To know that know the minimum wage cashiers are being allowed to run roughshod on their customers' rights is just disgusting.