Fired Baptist Nurse Sues CVS After Refusing to Prescribe Birth Control, Abortion Drugs
The pharmacy chain, featuring in-store MinuteClinics, dropped its religious accommodation in 2021.
A Christian nurse practitioner is accusing CVS pharmacy of firing her for refusing to prescribe birth control pills and abortifacients, drugs aimed at ending the embryonic development of unborn children.
CVS Health Corporation ended a six-year religious accommodation for nurse practitioner Robyn Strader in August 2021 and fired her October 31, 2021, for refusing to comply with the change, alleges the lawsuit filed January 11 in the Texas Northern District Court.
“After accommodating Robyn for six and a half years without a single complaint, CVS fired her because it simply did not like her pro-life religious beliefs,” First Liberty Institute counsel Christine Pratt, one of Strader’s attorneys, said in a press release announcing the case. “It is illegal to issue a blanket revocation of all religious accommodations when it is so easy for CVS to accommodate its employees. CVS is sending a message that religious health care workers are not welcome and need not apply.”
The lawsuit comes days after the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) urged CVS and Walgreens to accommodate workers who object to filling prescriptions for mifepristone, a drug used in achieving chemical abortions, or to reverse the companies’ decisions to fill such prescriptions in the first place.
A clear policy that “respects deeply held beliefs about the preciousness of life and honors individual consciences that believe abortion is a moral evil,” ERLC President Brent Leatherwood wrote in a January 6 letter to the companies, would be welcomed “in a corporate world often solely driven by maximizing profits, with little regard for the personal views of employees.
“It has long been ...