And my bit...Emergency Contraception.

A while ago, I began an investigation into the target boycott.

Here's a recap and analysis. Don't mind me if I repeat myself- this is a combination of notes and crushed up freelance pieces and parts of my law school personal statement. It has a lot of research I didn't fully get into here.



This past fall, Planned Parenthood of America urged people to boycott Target scores. This boycott was inspired by the refusal of a Target pharmacist Fenton, MO to fill a prescription for emergency contraception. Supporters of Planned Parenthood participated in a protest at Target offices in Missouri. A press release blasted Target for a policy that Planned Parenthood said differed from those of all other major pharmacy chains. Dan Savage, a popular syndicated sex and relationship columnist and editor of “The Stranger” a Seattle-based independent weekly, broke the story to his readers on November 1st. He, too, quoted the Planned Parenthood Press release. I wanted more information but there seemed to be none. Major newspapers didn’t mention either the boycott or the incident in Fenton. All internet information could be traced back, blog by blog, to the press release from Planned Parenthood. The press release itself was short on actual information about the incident. I talked to a pharmacy technician, and she raised further questions that could not be answered with the information Planned Parenthood Provided. When I was finally able to find limited coverage by a Missouri paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the additional information confused rather than clarified the situation.

First, in the article, the patient, Rachel Pourchot is identified as a St. Louis resident. Fenton, Missouri, is more than fifteen miles from St. Louis. Women, in general, do not fill prescriptions for birth control pills, a prescription that needs to be refilled frequently, that far from home. Second, Pourchot says that she uses two forms of birth control with her long-term boyfriend. Birth control pills are the first, so it may be assumed that the second method is a barrier or chemical method of contraception. Plan B would be a third line of defense, far from urgent. Third, she lists fear of assault as a reason to keep the pills on hand. It is true that hospitals generally give rape victims Plan B. Plan B is very effective at preventing a pregnancy after unprotected sex, and most rapes are unprotected. However, Rachel Pourchot was also filling a prescription for birth control pills that day. In case of assault, she would already be protected. There is no additional protection afforded by emergency contraception, as compared to the birth control pill. Plan B is levonorgestrel, the same estrogen as in Seasonale, Allese, Tri-Phasil, and other popular pill formulations. Finally, it is very odd, given that Rachel Pourchot was so casually filling her prescriptions that day, so far from home, that she did not just decide to fill the Plan B prescription another time or at another pharmacy, when told Plan B was out of stock. T
arget agrees that store had no Planned B in stock that day; they dispute whether the pharmacist confronted Ms. Pourchot. If the facts of the situation are as Ms. Pourchot reported them, the situation is still imperfect. A refusal of a prescription that was not urgent, and was out of stock, is thin premise for a national boycott.

Target is a strange choice of target, as well. Despite Planned Parenthood’s claims, their pharmacist refusal policy is not much different than that of other major pharmacy chains. I wrote to Walgreens, Brooks/Eckerd, Kmart, Target, and CVS, and asked what their policy was. Kmart declined to comment. Walgreens has a nearly identical policy to Target’s. CVS’s only differs in that they require a pharmacist to notify superiors of a refusal before it occurs, and it is doubtful that this would have any practical effect. Brooks/Eckerd was the only pharmacy that does not allow pharmacists to refuse to fill a legitimate prescription for any reason. Fenton aside, there’s no reason to single out Target as an offender.

So why would Planned Parenthood choose that specific pharmacist refusal, at that store, to launch a national anti-Target campaign? It could be that it happened in Missouri. Planned Parenthood has not been having an easy time in Missouri. Reproductive rights have not been having an easy time in Missouri. There is only one abortion clinic left in the state. Planned Parenthood has been ordered to pay back millions of dollars of family planning funding to the state. They have been targeted by legislation that would make it illegal to aid Missouri minors in obtaining abortions, even out of state. Governor Blunt has made a personal crusade of restricting access to abortion and contraception. In fact, at the same time as Ms. Pourchot was being refused her prescription, Governor Blunt was proposing legislation to protect pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions from being fired. The day before Planned Parenthood demonstrated at the Target district office in Bridgeton, Missouri, a group called “The Coalition against Governor Blunt’s War on Women” protested at the capital against the proposed legislation. Why protest a corporate policy rather than a law? It seems illogical, even useless, to protest against a corporation for following a policy that will soon be legally mandated. However, by centering the campaign against Target in Missouri, Planned Parenthood may have been able to turn the energy of local supporters towards a national target. Thus, they maintain an impression of advocacy on a local level, without spending any energy lobbying an unsympathetic legislature.

Why would Planned Parenthood of America care more about the accessability of emergency contraception to Target customers than the accessability of emergency contraception to every resident of Missouri? Being a Target customer is a choice. It is simple to simply go somewhere else for prescriptions, housewares, clothing, groceries, and all the other goods that Target supplies. While Missouri is not a prison, there are many reasons a person cannot easily move to another state when laws threaten their freedoms. Missouri is a state, growing socially more and more conservative, and more politically hostile to reproductive rights. Target is a store, beloved of young, socially progressive, middle-class, coastal and urban, women. Planned Parenthood put so much energy into changing Target’s policy, and so little advocating for Missourians, perhaps because Planned Parenthood supporters are more likely to shop at Target than live in Missouri. Their mission statement says they support the reproductive rights of everyone regardless of “income, marital status, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, national origin, or residence.” However, they seem to be changing their mission to preserving convenient access to needed services for their key demographic, while ignoring the growing restrictions on choice for those unfortunate enough to live in more conservative areas. This shift could be tragic. By prioritizing the desire of current and potential Target customers to have emergency contraceptive prescriptions filled at they same store where they can purchase enameled toasters in mod colors, Planned Parenthood becomes little more than a consumer advocacy group.