You Can Guess What Happened to This Nurse When She Refused to Dispense Abortion Drugs

A pro-life nurse practitioner named Robyn Strader worked at a CVS pharmacy in Texas since 2015. She’d asked for and received a religious accommodation to exempt her from dispensing contraceptives, some of which could induce abortions.

If someone asked Strader for contraceptives, which wasn’t often, she referred the person to another nurse at the store or to a different location two miles away.

CVS decided to end such accommodations last year and claimed Strader had no religious accommodation on file. CVS also claimed an exemption would be an undue hardship. The company fired her after she refused to dispense contraceptives.

Strader filed a complaint this week with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. From her legal counsel, First Liberty Institute:

In its complaint to the EEOC, First Liberty attorneys state, “CVS discriminated against Ms. Strader on the basis of religion when it prospectively preempted all requests for religious accommodations related to contraception prescription, derided her religious beliefs and pressured her to abandon them, discontinued a six-year religious accommodation without cause, refused to consider her request for an ongoing religious accommodation, failed to engage with her about possible accommodations, and terminated her because of her religious beliefs. In these ways, CVS violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.”

Photo credit: ajay_suresh (Creative Commons) – Some rights reserved