Excerpt from the full fact sheet:

In theory, the concept is simple: a woman walks into a pharmacy with a birth-control prescription from her doctor and should walk out with the medication—without intimidation, without delay, without a run-around. But in reality, there is a growing movement of pharmacists refusing to fill women's legally prescribed birth-control prescriptions. Some pharmacists even go so far as to lecture women, humiliate them in public, or refuse to hand back the prescription after they refuse to fill it.

These pharmacists are emboldened because of laws referred to as refusal clauses (sometimes called "conscience" clauses), which permit a broad range of individuals and institutions—including hospitals, hospital employees, health-care providers, employers, and insurers—to refuse to provide, pay, counsel or even refer for medical treatment.

Recently there has been a resurgence of legislative activity related to refusal clauses. On the federal level, anti-choice members of Congress passed a sweeping law known as the Federal Refusal Clause, which permits health-care companies to refuse to comply with federal, state, and local laws and regulations that pertain to abortion services, counseling, and referrals. On the state level, in 2008, anti-choice legislators in 10 states have introduced bills like these. And, most recently, the Bush Department of Health and Human Services published a regulation that further expanded refusal rights; the regulation offers broad rights to employees who are only tangentially involved in providing the services at issue (for example, receptionists scheduling appointments), and it has the potential to grant entire health-care corporations the same "conscience" rights as those offered to individuals.

Download the fact sheet (PDF)