Target: Refusal Clause Happy

It looks like Target policy involves refusing to fill emergency contraception prescriptions. In a Missouri Target store, a 26 year old woman was refused an emergency contraception prescription. When she asked why, she was told by the pharmacist, “I won’t fill it and I don’t have to fill it and that’s my right!”

Why should something as ridiculous sounding as “Target Greatland” have control over a woman’s body?

I’m not really surprised, given that when you walk into a Target store, you are a “guest” not a “customer.” This is fantastic linguistic chicanery, because while one can legitimately claim “the customer is always right,” anyone who has unknowingly served Drink Number 7 to a party guest would be hard-pressed to suggest that “the guest is always right.”

Planned Parenthood has sent three letters to Target. There have been an additional 4,600 letters from people around the country. Target refused to respond to them.

Target has however answered the City Pages. And Target claims, without producing their findings, that the “alleged incident” was a he-said, she-said thing and, through perhaps unintentional subtext, they have essentially endorsed the refusal clause.

There are two solutions here: (1) boycott Target or pressure them to adopt a wholesale ban on refusal clauses and (2) engage in a national campaign to get state legislation (in as many states as possible) passed that prohibits any pharmacy from employing the refusal clause (specifically in relation to a woman’s right to buy an emergency prescription).

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