Pharmacy owners in Washington are requesting the Supreme Court to review their ruling on birth-control pills. According to reports, the pharmacists are invoking their religious rights against the state’s ruling which forces them to dispense abortion-inducing pills.
The Blaze reported that the owners of Stormans Inc. operating at Ralph’s Thriftway along with two pharmacists, Margo Thelen and Rhonda Mesler, assert that their participation in dispensing the morning-after pill (Plan B) and Ella violates their religious beliefs as Christians.
Back in July, the pharmacy owners lost when a three-judge panel of Ninth US Circuit of Appeals overturned a 2012 court victory. The Catholic Herald reported that should the group won the aforementioned case, it would have allowed them to “refuse to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception drugs”. This would have also allowed them to refer buyers to other pharmacies.
On January 4th, they submitted the request before the Supreme Court seeking the justices to review the reversed 2012 ruling.
“The Ninth Circuit reversed, ignoring the district court’s extensive factual findings and adopting an exceptionally narrow interpretation of the free exercise clause. It held that any law can satisfy the free exercise clause, no matter how clearly it targets religious conduct in practice, as long as it might also be applied to nonreligious conduct in theory,” reads a statement from their petition.
The pharmacists’ lawyers, according to CBN, are arguing that “emergency contraceptives are available at other nearby pharmacies”. They also commented that nobody should be forced to choose between religion and their family businesses, especially when the state is allowing referrals for any reasons possible.
Pharmacists from Louisiana and Illinois have also battled the same case against abortion pills in the past years. No word yet as to whether the Supreme Court will allow the petition to be heard in the coming weeks.
