Pharmacists for Life

The group that's trying to make it commonplace for pharmacists to refuse service to women who want birth control (not just, say, RU-486, but plain old "the pill" and other contraceptives) is Pharmacists for Life (PFL).

The founder of the group is Bogomir (M.) Kuhar, a pro-lifer so radical that he's anti-birth control. Kuhar has calculated that many millions of lives are "terminated" each year by people who use contraceptives.

Dr. Bogomir Kuhar, a pharmacist concerned about chemical abortion, has calculated that in combining all forms of induced abortion -- the IUD, Depo-Provera, Norplant, surgical, and the Pill (and injectables, implants, and oral products that work in a similar fashion), between 9.6 and 13.4 million young lives are terminated in the U.S. alone each year.

Kuhar appears to have been involved in pro-life Catholic movement since at least the late eighties. On that single page he is identified in several diferent ways, including:

• Bogomir M. Kuhar
  
• Bogomir Kuhar PhD
  
• Bogomir Kuhar PD
  
• Bogomire Kuhar PD
  

The Pharmacists for Life group, though they claim to represent "over 1600+ pharmacists, and many hundreds of lay supporters, in the USA, Canada and worldwide," seems to be run out Powell, Ohio, probably in the Kuhars' home.

The contact phone (740.881.5520) and post office box for PIL is the same as the vitamin-selling business that the Kuhar's have at kuhar.com (known as Life Enterprises, though sometimes identified as Pro-Life Enterprises). Presumably the Marcia Kuhar listed there is Bogomir's wife.

She's also used the same PO Box and phone number as her contacts listed on the Central Ohio Association of Occupational Health Nurses, Inc., also known as COAOHN.

With this single phone number being used as Marcia's contact number, PFL's contact number, and the businesses' contact nubmer, PFL is probably running out of their house, which also houses their business.

And, as Media Matters has pointed out, "Pharmacists for Life's most recent IRS filings indicate that the organization has no paid employees and raised and spent less than $30,000 in 2003 (the most recent year for which figures are available)."

Good for them in one way -- at least for now they're apparently not an astroturf group, supported by a big PR firm but trying to appear home-grown. But it's bad for them in another way -- they're tiny and represent a very small number of religiously hyper=zealous pharmacists who do not want women to receive birth control.

Media Matters has also discussed Karen L. Brauer, the pharmacist fired by Kmart for lying to a patron, refusing to fill her prescription, and refusing to forward her prescription to another pharmacy. She's a piece of work and we'll have more about her soon. [Update: The post about Karen Brauer is up now.]