Abortion charity ‘ bullied’ staff at Boots in pill row
BOOTS last night issued legal warnings to a family planning charity accusing it of leading a bullying campaign against the chemist chain’s bosses.
Its lawyers have written to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service claiming the country’s biggest abortion provider had encouraged harassment of its employees as part of a drive to reduce the price of the morning-after pill.
They said the charity had published the names of senior Boots staff on the internet and encouraged people to write to their personal email addresses via an online portal. The staff received 24,000 emails as a result.
An initial letter, sent at the start of August, said the campaign caused ‘immense personal distress’ to five Boots executives.
A second legal letter, sent yesterday, said the name of one staff member remained online and pleaded: ‘We seek only to prevent any further abuse of our client’s employees.’
The action follows nine months of public agitation over the cost of emergency contraception.
BPAS masterminded a public campaign against leading retailers in a bid to force them to lower the price of the morning-after pill. Critics warned such a step would encourage risky sexual behaviour and increase rates of sexually transmitted disease.
But BPAS and its supporters said it was essential to allow women to get affordable contraception when they needed it. Tesco and Superdrug this summer agreed to halve the cost from around £30 to £13.49, but Boots initially said it would not do so to avoid ‘incentivising inappropriate use’.
A campaign against the store followed, including threats to boycott the company – a bid backed by some Labour MPs. Last month Boots bowed to pressure and said it would look into reducing the price, but the abuse persisted.
A Boots spokesman last night said the firm did not wish to stifle public debate but added: ‘As a responsible employer, we actively seek to protect our colleagues from abuse and harassment.
‘In our legal letter to BPAS we made it very clear that we welcome the debate on the provision of emergency hormonal contraception, and respect their right to raise this issue with us.
‘We asked them simply to remove personal email details from their campaign widget and to agree not to encourage personal abuse of our people.
‘We provided examples of where our employees have received abuse by email and social media in response to BPAS’s campaign. BPAS have not yet agreed to do this and we will continue to ask that they agree to our simple request, which was made only to protect the interests of our employees.’
Clare Murphy of BPAS said: ‘We are pleased to see that in future Boots will be providing a cheaper emergency contraceptive product. We are extremely saddened it feels the need to resort to legal warnings against a charity representing the concerns of women in the process.’