(CNSNews.com) – A unique pro-life pharmacy opened its doors Monday in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Chantilly, Va. The owners say Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy will sell medications and products found in most other drug stores -- but it will not fill prescriptions for contraceptives, or sell condoms.
“Birth control hurts women,” said Bob Laird, executive director of Divine Mercy Care (DMC), the nonprofit group that owns the pharmacy. “It (birth control) is leading to the degradation of our society.”
The pharmacy, which is not owned by the Catholic Church, was however blessed by Bishop Paul S. Loverde of the Catholic diocese of Arlington, and will reflect Catholic doctrine, which teaches that it is immoral to use contraceptives or any form of artificial birth control. All of the members of DMC’s board of directors are Catholic, Laird said.
The store will not direct women to other pharmacies that sell contraceptives and birth control, he said, adding that customers “can find them on their own” at other pharmacies in the area.
Instead, pharmacists will provide information on Natural Family Planning, which is an alternative to birth control – one that Laird said helps women, “because it empowers them.”
“By understanding their fertility, they can decide if they want to postpone or have relations,” he told CNSNews.com.
Abortion advocates in Virginia, meanwhile, have launched a boycott of the pharmacy to protest its opening.
NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia is actively circulating petitions on its Web site, condemning the store for refusing to provide contraceptives – or refer women to pharmacies that sell them.
“(Ninety-eight percent) of American women will use some form of contraception in their lifetimes,” the group said on its Web site. “The decision of whether to get pregnant is one that should be made by a woman -- not by other people who want to impose their beliefs on her.”
The abortion rights group did not respond to calls from CNSNews.com about this story. Laird, however, said that the pharmacy, “like any business,” is free to offer whatever it pleases to its customers, providing that it complies with federal and state regulations.
“If I decide to stock Pepsi products here, am I violating (the customer’s) right by not stocking Coke?” Laird said.
CNSNews.com, meanwhile, found three other drug stores within a half-mile radius of Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy, and confirmed that two of the three – CVS Pharmacy and Kmart Pharmacy, both part of national chains – do sell condoms and contraceptives. The third, Progress Pharmacy, Ltd., did not.
There are only six pharmacies in the U.S. -- not counting Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy -- that promise never to sell contraceptives, or to fill prescriptions for abortion-inducing drugs, according to the group Pharmacists for Life International.
Currently, Massachusetts, California, New Jersey, Illinois and Washington all have state laws mandating that pharmacies fill every prescription or send the customer elsewhere.
Virginia law, meanwhile, does not require pharmacists to fill every prescription.