Some patients seeking care, and are refused

Patients nationwide describe their experiences – being shocked, judged, humiliated, frightened and angered when they have encountered health-care workers who are overt in some religious beliefs.

Sometimes providers proselytize gay or unmarried patients but do provide care. Sometimes they refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control or morning-after pills but refer patients elsewhere. Other times they refuse to treat them at all.

Many patients decline to be identified because the refusals occur at deeply personal, often traumatic moments, such as the point of discontinuing care for a dying loved one.

But some patients agreed to be interviewed, including Deb, who was turned away by a pharmacist at a drugstore in Denton, Texas, in 2004, when she tried to get the morning-after pill after being raped on a date. She discussed her experience with a reporter for the first time on the condition that her last name not be used.

“It almost felt like I was being raped again,” said Deb, who already had tried two other pharmacies. “I couldn’t believe someone could do something violent and then I couldn’t have a choice about what to do about it.

“The horror of what I went through was almost as bad as the first assault. It was like twisting a knife in a wound.”

Deb, who describes herself as “more pro-life than pro-choice,” finally got the prescription. She did not get pregnant, but she remains shaken.

“I didn’t feel like I had to be burdened by being possibly pregnant after being violently attacked,” she said. “I don’t think it should be a pharmacist’s choice to make the decision about who should receive the medication and when.”

Cynthia Copeland also had a run-in with a pharmacist in 2004. He wrongly assumed she was planning an abortion because she had a prescription for a drug that can be used for that purpose.

In fact, Copeland already had undergone a procedure to remove a fetus that had no pulse, and she needed the drug to complete the process.

“I was sitting there in the drugstore waiting and heard the pharmacist say really loudly, ‘I refuse to participate in an abortion,’ ” said Copeland, 39, who lives near Los Angeles. “I felt so violated.

“The miscarriage was about grief, and that was made public in a way that really compounded my grief.”

Cheryl Bray, 42, a real estate broker in Encinitas, Calif., was flabbergasted that a family practitioner turned her away when she sought a routine physical needed to adopt a baby from Mexico. The doctor said he objected to a single woman’s adopting a child.

“He said something about how, according to his religious beliefs, children should have two parents,” said Bray, whose complaint against the doctor earlier this year was dismissed by the state medical board. “I was under a tight deadline.

“I started crying. I cried in his office, and then I went back to my car and cried for a long time before I could drive home.”

Bray found another doctor to do the physical and adopted the baby girl. But she said the experience still reverberates.

“I didn’t know what discrimination felt like before,” Bray said. But “now I know. It’s a horrible feeling.”