Arizona Pharmacist Legally Refused To Fill Woman's Prescription

PEORIA, AZ — An Arizona woman was refused medicine on Thursday because of the pharmacist's personal beliefs. The state's laws allow for this. Nicole Arteaga, a 35-year-old mother, wanted to have her baby, but she got some wrenching news at her 10-week pregnancy check up, reports say.

Arteaga learned on Wednesday, June 20, that her baby's heart had stopped beating and that it wasn't developing. She had already had a miscarriage in her life, and her pregnancy was going to end in another one.

A doctor prescribed Arteaga with a medicine to terminate the pregnancy, which would result in better health outcomes for her.

She went to the Walgreens at 91st and Peoria Avenues Thursday with her 7-year-old son to get her prescription filled and to pick up some dinner and a movie for the evening.

But the doctor wouldn't fill her prescription because it goes against his beliefs. “I stood at the mercy of this pharmacist explaining my situation in front of my 7-year-old, and five customers behind only to be denied because of his ethic(al) beliefs,” she said, according to AZ Central.

“I get it, we all have our beliefs. But what he failed to understand is this isn’t the situation I had hoped for, this isn’t something I wanted. This is something I have zero control over," Arteaga said, according to CNN.

The pharmacist told her to come back when he wasn't working or to go to another pharmacy. “I couldn’t believe what he was telling me,” Arteaga said. “He has no idea what it's like to want nothing more than to carry a child to full term and be unable to do so.”

The pharmacist ended up sending Arteaga's prescription to another Walgreens, where she picked it up Saturday without a problem.

Arizona state law doesn't prohibit pharmacists from refusing to fill prescriptions as long as they have moral objection, as does Walgreens' company policy, which allows pharmacists to step back and refuse to fill a prescription if there is a moral objection. AZ Central reports Walgreen's policy says pharmacists are required to transfer the prescription to another pharmacist to help them get their medicine "in a timely manner."

Texas passed a similar law in 2017.

There were other pharmacists at the Walgreens on Thursday who should have been able to fill the prescription, Arteaga says. Walgreens said they are "looking into the matter to ensure that our patients' needs are handled properly."

Walgreens says somebody reached out to Arteaga to apologize, but she said she hasn't gotten any such call.

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