JEFFERSON CITY – After years of imposing restrictions on abortion, Missouri lawmakers are now taking aim at emergency contraception, commonly known as the morning-after pill.

   Legislation presented to a House panel this week would classify emergency contraception as an abortion-inducing medication, contrary to the definition used by the Food and Drug Administration.

   The bill also would protect pharmacies from lawsuits and from punishment by state regulators for refusing to sell or fill a prescription for any drug defined as triggering an abortion. Supporters said it would remove any financial incentive to sue the pharmacy’s owners for refusing to sell or stock an item that violated their conscience.

   Opponents attacked the proposal as an unconstitutional restraint on reproductive freedom and an unconscionable affront to sexual assault victims. They said the bill would enshrine an inaccurate medical description in Missouri law, lead to increased numbers of abortions and leave millions of rural Missouri women without access to a safe and reliable form of birth control.

   Filling prescriptions “is an essential function of your job,” said Pamela Sumners, executive director of the Missouri affiliate of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. “If you become a pharmacist, you should do your job.”

  The bill applies specifically to two drugs: RU486, the early name for mifepristone, the drug administered in a doctor’s office to perform a non-surgical abortion, and emergency contraception, which is marketed as Plan B.

   Mifepristone, which is used from five to seven weeks after conception, works by blocking a hormone needed to maintain the pregnancy.

   Plan B, which is effective up to about 100 hours after unprotected sexual intercourse, works primarily by preventing ovulation, the FDA says. If an egg has already been released, the drug also can prevent fertilization. And if fertilization has occurred, it can prevent the fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus.

   Susan Klein, a lobbyist for Missouri Right to Life, noted that the bill does not attempt to make emergency contraception illegal. It only seeks to prevent family planning activists from exerting legal pressure against pharmacies that refuse to dispense it.

   Klein said her group considers emergency contraception a form of abortion because her members believe that pregnancy begins the moment an egg is fertilized. Plan B, therefore, can lead to the death of “an already-created human being” by blocking implantation in the uterus, she said.

   By the time of implantation, “the human is long past the stage of being a so-called fertilized egg,” Klein said in written testimony. “If denied the ability to implant, then the human cannot form a placenta and continue to live. This means that a drug that prevents implantation causes an abortion.”

   Sumners said emergency contraception does not induce an abortion. As the FDA notes, it won’t work if the fertilized egg has already implanted in the uterus and pregnancy has begun. Under Klein’s definition of pregnancy, many standard forms of contraception, such as intrauterine devices, would be defined as abortion-inducing, Sumners said.

   Michelle Trupiano, a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood, said the bill is an effort to limit the availability of Plan B. The references to mifepristone are disingenuous, she said, because pharmacists are not allowed to dispense mifepristone, which must be administered by a doctor.

   Plan B is so safe that it is available without a prescription to women 18 years and older,Trupiano said.  However, one pharmacy that refuses to carry the Plan B can leave thousands of Missouri women without a backup method of birth control, she said.

   Sumners said a study found that 26 percent of women in Missouri do not live within 30 miles of a pharmacy that sells Plan B. She acknowledged that no pharmacy could be required to keep emergency contraception in stock. But if it is in stock, pharmacists should not be allowed to refuse to dispense it, she said.

   Colleen Coble, who heads a Columbia victims’ rights group, urged the panel to consider the bill’s impact on sexual assault victims. She emphasized that emergency contraception was not a form of abortion. The use of emergency contraception is standard care for rape victims, she said, even in Catholic hospitals.

   “In a case where your body has become a crime scene, where you have undergone an incredibly invasive examination to gather evidence, (this bill) would make you travel four counties away to avoid becoming pregnant by the person who violently attacked you,” Coble said. “This is an issue of health care. It’s an issue of decency.” 

   The legislation is House Bill 1625.