Not all attacks on a woman's right to reproductive freedom are coming in the form of state legislation. Last fall a concrete supplier launched a boycott of a new clinic being built by Planned Parenthood in Austin, Texas. The boycott spread to every contractor in a 60-mile radius. After the initial setback, Planned Parenthood was besieged with calls from people willing to help. Planned Parenthood became its own contractor and has had to protect its subcontractors from harassment by refusing to release the companies' names. Still, protesters show up at the construction site with zoom lenses and threaten to post photographs of workers on the Web. Despite the ongoing harassment, the clinic's construction schedule is back on track and is set to open in the fall of 2004.

Of course, the anti-abortion movement hasn't limited itself to stopping abortion.

Women's right to reproductive freedom has come under such severe attack that access to emergency contraception and even the pill are increasingly threatened. Just last month, two cases arose in Texas that seem to be isolated incidents but are in fact part of a larger trend. In one case a pharmacist in Denton, Texas, refused to fill a woman's emergency contraception prescription -- even though she had just been raped. The drug store chain, Eckerd, immediately fired the pharmacist.

Another pharmacist in north Texas refused to fill a 32-year-old woman's prescription for the pill. Julee Lacey, a wife, mother and first-grade teacher, was incensed and took her story to the media. In this case, the pharmacy was CVS. "Our constituents who are outraged about this want to support pharmacies that react quickly and do the right thing, as Eckerd did," says Emily Snooks, executive director of Planned Parenthood of North Texas. "Well, now we come to find out that CVS is buying Eckerd. We can't get an answer out of CVS about what they're going to do to prevent this from happening again and whether or not that pharmacist will be terminated."

CVS has said that if a pharmacist objects to filling a prescription, he or she should refer the customer to a pharmacist who can be of assistance. Beyond that, the company hasn't elaborated on its policy or said if any disciplinary action was taken against the pharmacist who refused to dispense the pill. As it stands, Texas law does not protect pharmacists who object to filling certain prescriptions, but that may change. So-called conscious-clause legislation, which seeks to protect pharmacists from having to fill prescriptions that they morally object to, is yet another trend sweeping state legislatures.

While most of the proposed conscious-clause bills started out by protecting pharmacists who don't want to dispense RU-486, also known as an abortifacient, Virginia has gone so far as to consider a bill that would declare fertilization as the beginning of life. This would classify emergency contraception, the pill, the IUD and other methods of contraception that prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus as abortifacients. Pharmacists who are already exempt from having to dispense RU-486 could not be fired by the company for refusing to dispense birth control and emergency contraception under this definition.

After a pharmacist in Cincinnati was terminated for refusing to dispense the pill and emergency contraception at least 10 times during her seven years of employment at K-Mart, a conscious-clause bill was introduced in the Ohio Legislature to protect pharmacists from being disciplined. "Wider access to emergency contraception is the single most promising avenue for reducing this country's rate of unintended pregnancy," says Chrisse France, the executive director of Preterm, a nonprofit abortion clinic in Cleveland.

While pro-choice organizations and civil rights groups battle to keep contraception available, anti-abortion groups have opened another front: going after family planning funding. According to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, just this year 12 states have introduced bills that would eliminate all family planning funding to organizations that even discuss the option of abortion or refer women to clinics that perform abortions. Last year, six states succeeded in defunding family planning: Colorado, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.

"The [Texas] Legislature passed a bill that attempts to take away federal funding for family planning and require any family planning clinic to suspend any abortion services," says Snooks, executive director of Planned Parenthood of North Texas. "All the Planned Parenthood affiliates in Texas had to file a lawsuit against the state and get an injunction. The court will hear testimony regarding this issue on May 3. If we lose, that would be a loss of $13 million to clinics across Texas.

"If people knew that contraception is now being threatened, they would be outraged," continues Snooks, who believes that people are starting to wake up to what's happening at the state level. "We have a whole contingent of people going to Washington, D.C., for the march," says Snooks. "Most people don't think of North Texas as a hotbed of activism, but people are getting upset."

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