ATLANTA - Two weeks after Kroger Co. said it was clarifying its policy on stocking the so-called "morning after" pill, activists say dozens of stores continue to place barriers on buying the emergency contraceptive.
Representatives of NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion-rights group that also works on other reproductive health issues, sent a letter to Kroger officials Wednesday asking them to carry the drug at all of their pharmacies.
Ted Miller, the communications director for the group, said members called 231 Kroger-run pharmacies across the country and found that 21 percent of the stores did not make the drug immediately available.
"Accommodating the customer, in Kroger's mind, means that pharmacists can say, 'I won't give it to you, but you can go down the road or go to another place,'" Mr. Miller said.
A Kroger spokeswoman said the Cincinnati-based chain does stock the drug at all of its locations and blamed the confusion on employees who did not understand the company's policies.
Critics argue that the pill, sold as Plan B, encourages promiscuity and unprotected sex. Some consider the pill related to abortion, although it is different from the abortion pill RU-486 and has no effect on women who already are pregnant.
Formerly available only by prescription, the federal Food and Drug Administration made the morning after pill available over the counter to adults in August.
Kroger spokeswoman Lynn Marmer said that the company sent messages to all of its phar-macies clarifying the policy and said many of the calls that the NARAL members made to stores came before the policy was clarified.
Ms. Marmer said that since emergency contraception no longer requires a prescription, pharmacists may simply ask any other employee to sell the pill and that a customer should never be sent to another store to buy it.
BACKGROUND: Sold as Plan B, emergency contraception is a high dose of the drug found in many regular birth-control pills. It can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex. Formerly available only by prescription, the federal Food and Drug Administration made the morning-after pill available over the counter to adults in August.
DEVELOPMENTS:
- On March 9, activists in Georgia called on Kroger to make the pill more readily available after Carrie Baker, a 42-year-old married mother of two from Rome, Ga., complained that a store manager in her hometown told her she couldn't buy it there because the store's pharmacist refused.
KROGER'S RESPONSE: Kroger issued a statement saying its policy is to carry the drug in all pharmacies and that measures will be taken to "find a way to accommodate the customer" when an employee objects to selling it.
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