Hormonal contraception has been legal for decades but some say women's access to the pill may be challenged.
Recently, an increasing number of pharmacists who have moral objections to birth control and emergency contraception are refusing to fill prescriptions for these medications.
Peggy Lorah, director of the Center for Women Students, said that in some cases, pharmacists also don't return the prescription to women after refusing to fill it, which further limits their access to contraception.
"Birth control medication is so much a part of our culture that I don't foresee a time when women would not be able to have access to it, but I think it's a slippery slope," Lorah said.
Phyllis Mansfield, a women's studies and health education professor, said she thinks the movement against birth control and abortion rights is really about denying women reproductive choices.
"The majority of people in the anti-choice movement are men who do not want to see women have equal opportunities," Mansfield said. "What we're seeing now in terms of birth control was predictable. It was really just the next step."
She said she sees the current situation as an anti-women movement that is about preserving the traditional roles of women, including motherhood.
"The climate is so bad right now in this country, with religious fundamentalism rampant and our president being so strongly anti-choice, that it supports the audacity to deny women the rights to get birth control prescriptions filled," Mansfield said.
In the past two weeks, bills have been introduced in both houses of Congress that would require pharmacies to fill all legal prescriptions -- although they are expected to face opposition from the Republican majority.
Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life International, said the Ohio-based organization supports the ability of pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control if they don't want to be involved in ending human life and impairing women's health.
"There is no hormonal birth control which does not carry the liability of, at least in some cases, stopping a human life as part of its efficacy -- and by stopping a life, I mean killing," said Brauer, who was fired from a Kmart in Ohio because she would not dispense the birth control pill Micronor.
However, Margaret Spear, director of University Health Services (UHS), said the birth control pill is not abortive, and it is a safe, legal medication.
"Decisions on whether to use them or not is a private, confidential decision made between a woman and her healthcare provider," Spear said. "The pharmacist's role is to fill that prescription."
The birth control pill works either by inhibiting ovulation, by inhibiting implantation if a woman ovulates despite being on the pill, or by changing the cervical mucus to impede access of sperm into the uterus, Spear said.
She added that emergency contraception is a high dosage of birth control that essentially works in the same way, and it is not effective if the woman taking it is already pregnant.
UHS provides both the birth control pill and emergency contraception to all students who have prescriptions for them, Spear said.
Lorah said she thinks pharmacies should advertise whether or not they will prescribe hormonal contraception.
"People may make different choices about where they seek their prescription needs," she said.
Mansfield said if a particular pharmacist is uncomfortable filling the prescription, the pharmacy should make arrangements to have another person do it for them.
"They work in teams and have a responsibility to dispense the medication," Mansfield said.
Brauer said she doesn't think pharmacists should be required to refer women to pharmacies that will fill birth control prescriptions.
"Any person who is capable of getting to the pharmacy can get their fingers on the [telephone] dial pad," Brauer said. "They don't need pharmacists to refer them -- all that does is involve the unwilling."
She said women have the freedom to go to another pharmacy to get what they want.
"We don't have the power to control women," Brauer added.
