Listen close and you will hear the sound of a person getting extremely impatient with pharmacists engaged in non-feasance.

It's not just North Carolina. Lots of states have that problem. It was a while ago, but when I tried to EC in Las Vegas, Nevada, I had trouble. (By the way, Las Vegas has a ton of abortion clinics.) Here is my story: http://www.elainevigneault.com/2007/05/23/my-plan-b-story.html

Are women able to get doctors to prescribe this? Can they order it online to have ahead of time if the condom breaks? How long does it last before it expires?

Do hospitals carry it for rape victims? More importantly, is NC passing a law that would require them to give EC to rape victims?

I'm a NC native and I've had to find EC a few times. Once, I had to call 5 different pharmacies until I found 1 that carries it. Now, all Planned Parenthood locations carry EC. Sadly, PPs are only found in large city areas of NC.

If there were more demand, more pharmacies would stock it. The report I heard on WUNC had the researcher saying that a lot of NC women don't know that it's over the counter, and even more don't even know such a thing *exists* in the first place. The report also said that of the pharmacies that don't routinely stock it, only 1/3 would refuse to order it. (Not that any should, but it's not *quite* as dire as all the places that don't carry it refusing to do so. Just business.)

Seriously, some pharmacy chains routinely understock a lot of medications (Eckerds is notorious for the "3-day partial until more comes in" ... even for common shit like blood pressure meds) because they don't want the money tied up in inventory. Which is pretty bullshit, IMO, because that just pisses off your customers, if they have to come twice to get their medicine. But it happens, and I imagine some of that is happening with Plan B.

As regards rape victims and EDs, I don't really know.

C. Diane,

I live in Pennsylvania, and I get my birth control RX filled at the local supermarket - Weis Markets. Last month I had to call nearly all the Weis Markets in the Harrisburg area just to find Yaz. Even my rural Weis Market at college had Yaz in every month!

The North Carolina (and seemingly other states) situation leaves me speechless. I do not understand how pharmacies get away with not selling birth control/EC because they do not believe in it/it's against their morals/etc. Of course we all know the reasons why we think they should sell it; don't the pharmacists understand that? Booo.