This is Amanda guest-blogging again. . . This week, a new Virginia drug store is opening that refuses as a matter of faith to sell contraceptives of any kind, even if a person has a prescription. According to the Washington Times, the Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy (DMC) is one of the country’s few “pro-life pharmacies” that refuse to dispense contraceptives on moral and health grounds, arguing that they cause abortions, lead to promiscuity or endanger a woman’s health. This has already been discussed by other feminist blogs, but I wanted to take issue with one aspect in particular of this story.

I’m mostly troubled by the statement, written by Associated Press writer Matthew Bakarat, that “[DMC] only sells items that are health-related, including vitamins, skin care products and over-the-counter medications.” It’s one thing for DMC executive director Robert Laird to claim that “[b]irth control is not health care.”. Laird is the executive director of a self-proclaimed pro-life and faith-filled pharmacy with a rightly-formed conscience—I don’t expect to agree with him on the uses of contraception (or much else, for that matter). And of course, progressive consumers in the area should boycott DMC Pharmacy and other so-called “pro-life” pharmacies. But when the mainstream media is actually believing and repeating this radical right-wing lie that contraception is not an essential part of health care—that contraception isn’t “health-related,” as Bakarat said—we need to call them out on it.

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, contraception is basic, preventive health care and should be readily available and treated the same as prophylactic therapies for other medical conditions. To casually place contraception in the “non-health related” column opposite “vitamins, skin care products and over-the-counter medications” devalues its importance for consumers to make decisions about their own bodies, health, safety, and self-determination.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, virtually all women (98%) aged 15–44 who have ever had intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method; among the 42 million fertile, sexually active women who do not want to become pregnant, 89% are practicing contraception.. We know—and the numbers reflect—that access to choices about contraception is an essential component to overall health and well-being. But by parroting DMC’s definition of “health-related,” the writer reflected back to readers the notion that contraception is something other than what it is—something perhaps superfluous or even risky—from the position of an ostensibly objective reporter. This conveys a dangerous and untrue message to readers; after all, what could be more essential to one’s health than the decision to start (or delay starting) a family?

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