HARRISBURG -- Patient care and pharmacists' rights are converging in the debate over the morning-after pill.

State Rep. Dan Frankel believes he's found middle ground in legislation that would ensure patients' access to emergency contraceptives while allowing pharmacists to refuse to dispense them based on their personal views against abortion.

According to the legislation, if a pharmacist refuses to fill the prescription, another pharmacist at the store must fill it or transfer it to another nearby pharmacy. The legislation also would ban pharmacists from humiliating or intentionally violating the privacy of customers seeking the prescription.

Violators would face fines of up to $5,000.

"Emergency contraception is critical in cases of rape or accidents like condom breaks," Mr. Frankel said. "But it has to be taken within 72 hours to be effective so a busybody pharmacist can be a serious problem."

Currently, pharmacists can use discretion in deciding whether to fill prescriptions.

Gynecologist Cynthia H. Chuang, of Hershey Medical Center, says Frankel's bill is responsible and responsive to both sides. "It respects pharmacists' right to conscientiously object" but it provides access for women who need the pill, she said.

Pharmacists who equate emergency contraception with abortion, though, say there is no middle ground.

"I have a moral problem with it. It's stopping a life, and my job is to protect that life," said John G. Yakim of Yakim Pharmacy in Plum.

Patrick Hopkins, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Pennsylvania Advocates, countered that emergency contraception is not the same as abortion and will not end an established pregnancy.

It can, though, prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterine wall, which constitutes the beginning of pregnancy, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

To the Catholic Church, pregnancy occurs at the time of fertilization, not implantation. It is immoral, therefore, to take the morning-after pill because its only purpose is to destroy human life, said Brother Shawn Matthew Anderson, a former pharmacist who now is a monk of St. Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe.

"This is an act that is anti-life in the purest sense," he said.

That's why Mr. Yakim won't fill prescriptions for emergency contraceptives, which essentially are extremely high doses of standard birth-control pills, something he routinely dispenses.

"If a 17-year-old girl wants to have sex, I don't agree that's a good thing for her to be doing but it's not my place to judge whether she's committing an immoral act," Mr. Yakim said. "However [if I dispense emergency contraception] I am participating in an abortion and I'm the one committing the immoral act."

Mr. Frankel says medical decisions should be left between the doctor and patient.

Likewise, lawmakers should stay out of the pharmaceutical business, said Karen Rehder, an anti-abortion gynecologist in Pittsburgh.

"The Legislature should stay out of it because they don't have medical training," Dr. Rehder said.

She does not prescribe emergency contraception but will sometimes direct patients to colleagues who do.

"I tell them I'm a pro-life physician and I can't do anything I think might ever harm a baby and that there are other people that will prescribe it," Dr. Rehder said.

Illinois recently enacted legislation similar to Mr. Frankel's bill. Last week, Walgreen Co. suspended four Illinois pharmacists because they violated the state's law when they refused to dispense emergency contraceptives on moral grounds.

Pharmacists are obligated to follow their oath to "maintain moral, ethical and legal conduct," Brother Anderson said. The morning-after pill may be legal but, to strict Catholics, its use is neither moral nor ethical, he said. "It is an evil act that directly acts against the good of life," he said. "You just can't justify an attack on human life."

Women who want emergency contraception now face a triple burden, abortion rights advocates say. First, they have to find a doctor willing to prescribe the morning-after pill, then they have to find a store that stocks it and finally, hope there is a pharmacist on-duty who will dispense it.

Women need reasonable access to the treatment, especially because it must be taken within 72 hours to be effective, Mr. Frankel said.

A recent Planned Parenthood survey of 833 pharmacists shows improvement is needed, Mr. Frankel said. It found 21 pharmacists who would refuse to fill a prescription for emergency contraception.

"That doesn't sound like a large number, but it is if you're one of the women who went to that pharmacy and it's the only one within driving distance of where you live," Mr. Hopkins said.

Mr. Frankel's bill is a companion to another piece of legislation introduced in October that would require hospitals to offer the morning-after pill to rape victims.

Jennifer Grove, who supervises a rape crisis center, said either bill would have helped a 14-year-old victim she saw two years ago in southeast Pennsylvania.

An emergency-room doctor prescribed the morning-after pill, but the girl couldn't get the prescription filled. One pharmacist refused to dispense it and another didn't stock it so the teen-ager went home and prayed she didn't get pregnant, Ms. Grove said. Fortunately, she didn't, but she shouldn't have had to agonize over it when a medication could have provided reassurance, Ms. Grove said.

Mr. Frankel's bill is a step in the right direction, she said.

"I'm glad someone is doing something," she said.