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Judge states “undisputed fact” that birth control pill “prevents implantation”

CINCINNATI, Ohio, Jan. 25, 2001 (LSN.ca) – United States District Court Judge Herman Weber has rejected the argument of K-Mart in their bid to quash a lawsuit filed by a pro-life pharmacist in Hamilton, Ohio. In 1996 K-Mart fired pharmacist Karen Brauer, after she refused to dispense an abortifacient birth control pill called Micronor. Micronor, a progestin-only birth control pill, works in a significant number of cases by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg and thus it and similar drugs, rather than preventing pregnancy, act sometimes to terminate a human life that has already begun.

The American Center for Law and Justice, an international public interest law firm, filed suit against K-Mart in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati in August 1999. K-Mart went to court in an effort to dismiss the suit. But in an opinion issued Tuesday, federal justice Weber disagreed with K-Mart’s narrow reading of the state conscience statute. He said, it “is obviously intended to allow an individual who morally or ethically opposes abortion … to follow the dictates of her conscience and refuse to participate in such procedures.”

The court likewise rejected K-Mart’s arguments that the legislature did not intend the conscience law to apply to the dispensing of a drug that sometimes prevents implantation. Judge Weber said: “What is critical … is the undisputed fact that Micronor does prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in some cases and plaintiff’s asserted belief that this process results in abortion and is morally wrong.” Francis J. Manion, Senior Counsel for the ACLJ, said the court’s decision is an important step in protecting the rights of employees who hold religious beliefs.

See the ACLJ press release at:  https://www.businesswire.com/webbox/bw.012401/210242492.htm