New Laws to Allow Pharmacists in California and Oregon Prescribe Hormonal Contraceptives

California and Oregon officials are all set to introduce new laws that will allow pharmacists in the two states to prescribe hormonal contraceptives to women. This new step will allow easy access of birth control to women.

Although the new laws will not allow the birth controls available ‘over the counter’, it will only make getting birth control a convenient one-stop-shopping affair.

Republicans in these two states also supported legislation, and favored the larger economic argument for preventing unintended pregnancies.

State Rep. Knute Buehler, a Republican who sponsored Oregon’s law, told the New York Times, “I feel strongly that this is what’s best for women’s health in the 21st century, and I also feel it will have repercussions for decreasing poverty because one of the key things for women in poverty is unintended pregnancy”.

Mark DeFrancesco of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists told the Times that his basic viewpoint is that there should be no one between the patients and the pill. This new model can become a barrier and can even derail the over-the-counter movement, said DeFrancesco.

As of now, the insurance companies do not cover over-the-counter medications but the new bills in Oregon and California might represent the best model for opening access without raising costs.

Women’s health activist and journalist Robin Marty has also written how over-the-counter birth control could shift the contraceptive landscape in not completely positive ways.

Exerts hope California and Oregon will become laboratories for a new kind of birth control provisions and will set examples for others.