GovTrack’s Bill Summary
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H.R. 728: Access to Birth Control Act
- Introduced:
- Feb 14, 2013 (113th Congress, 2013–2015)
- Sponsor:
- Rep. Carolyn Maloney [D-NY12]
- Status:
- Referred to Committee
The bill’s title was written by the bill’s sponsor. H.R. stands for House of Representatives bill.
- Full Title
To establish certain duties for pharmacies to ensure provision of Food and Drug Administration-approved contraception, and for other purposes.
- Summary
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No summaries available.
- Text
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Last updated Feb 14, 2013.
9 pages
- Primary Source
-
View on THOMAS (The Library of Congress)
GovTrack gets most information from THOMAS, which is updated generally one day after events occur. Activity since the last update may not be reflected here.
- Citation
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Click a format for a citation suggestion:
Library of Congress Summary
The summary below was written by the Congressional Research Service, which is a nonpartisan division of the Library of Congress.
2/14/2013--Introduced.
Access to Birth Control Act - Amends the Public Health Service Act to require pharmacies to comply with certain rules related to contraceptives, including:
(1) providing a customer a contraceptive without delay if it is in stock;
(2) immediately informing a customer if the contraceptive is not in stock and either transferring the prescription to a pharmacy that has the contraceptive in stock or expediting the ordering of the contraceptive and notifying the customer when it arrives, based on customer preference, except for pharmacies that do not ordinarily stock contraceptives in the normal course of business; and
(3) ensuring that pharmacy employees do not take certain actions relating to a request for contraception, including intimidating, threatening, or harassing customers, interfering with or obstructing the delivery of services, intentionally misrepresenting or deceiving customers about the availability of contraception or its mechanism of action, breaching or threatening to breach medical confidentiality, or refusing to return a valid, lawful prescription.
Provides that a pharmacy is not prohibited from refusing to provide a contraceptive to a customer if:
(1) it is unlawful to dispense the contraceptive to the customer without a valid, lawful prescription and no such prescription is presented;
(2) the customer is unable to pay for the contraceptive; or
(3) the employee of the pharmacy refuses to provide the contraceptive on the basis of a professional clinical judgment.
Provides that this Act does not preempt state law or any professional obligation of a state board that provides greater protections for customers.
Sets forth civil penalties and establishes a a private cause of action for violations of this Act.
House Republican Conference Summary
The summary below was written by the House Republican Conference, which is the caucus of Republicans in the House of Representatives.
No summary available.
House Democratic Caucus Summary
The House Democratic Caucus does not provide summaries of bills.
So, yes, we display the House Republican Conference’s summaries when available even if we do not have a Democratic summary available. That’s because we feel it is better to give you as much information as possible, even if we cannot provide every viewpoint.
We’ll be looking for a source of summaries from the other side in the meanwhile.
The bill contains the following citations to other parts of U.S. law:
United States Code
The United States Code is the compilation of permanent laws enacted by Congress. Temporary and other non-permanent laws do not appear in the United States Code. (About half of the United States Code is the law itself, called positive law. The other half is merely a compilation of the laws but has no legal significance.)
- Title 42: THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE
- Chapter 6A: PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE
- Subchapter I: ADMINISTRATION AND MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS
- Part B: Miscellaneous Provisions
- Section 238: Gifts for benefit of Service