Olive Lockett says she was "scathed" by her doctor for not being in a relationship. Photo / Facebook, Olive Lockett
Olive Lockett says she was "scathed" by her doctor for not being in a relationship. Photo / Facebook, Olive Lockett
A woman has spoken out after a doctor refused to renew her contraceptive pill prescription.
Olive Lockett, 19, from Bathurst, New South Wales, claims she was visiting a medical centre for a checkup on her glandular fever and while there, requested a new script.
"I don't have a regular GP so I just go to medical centres. I booked a doctor online and after speaking to her about the glandular fever I asked for my prescription to be renewed," Ms Lockett told Daily Mail Australia.
"Her face dropped, she paused and just said 'oh'."
Ms Lockett, who has been on the contraceptive pill since she was 14 due to painful periods, said the doctor's "eyes widened" when she said she wasn't in a stable relationship.
Ms Lockett says no woman should be made to feel this way by a medical professional. Photo / Facebook, Olive Lockett
"She was just shocked to find out that I was on the pill and not in a relationship and I didn't even have time to explain that I've been on it all this time because I have such unstable awful periods," she said.
"It felt like she was a teacher who was really disappointed in me... I felt like I was in the principal's office. She just assumed I was having casual sex.
"Then she started asking whether I used other kinds of protection and I felt like I was 15 just starting to talk about sex. I'm 19."
Ms Lockett said the doctor continued to talk about contraception and likened it to a "lecture."
I asked her why she wouldn't prescribe it and she said "for my own religious reasons" which is completely fine but there was no sign or anything.
"The way she treated me and the tone she was speaking in made me feel absolutely sick and it was humiliating, I felt so degraded.
"It wasn't handled professionally, it was extreme. Everything I said was wrong in her eyes and she ended up having to call the clinic I went to last time and I had to go across town to get the prescription."
Ms Lockett said the whole experience left her in shock.
"My periods are so bad, there have been times where I have been pacing my room in the middle of the night for hours in the most unimaginable pain. I need this and the fact that she'd deny that is just ridiculous to me," she said.
The university student posted about her experience on Facebook and was backed by hundreds of her friends.
"I think I accidentally slipped and fell into a time machine because I just had a medical doctor scathe me for not being in a relationship and asking her for a repeat pill prescription," she wrote.
"She didn't even give it to me in the end due to 'religious reasons'. I honestly thought myself lucky to not have to ever encounter things like this in my life, but I cannot imagine what it's like for girls to have to feel this anger every day of their lives."
Ms Lockett said no woman should be made to feel this way by a medical professional.
"I always see stories in the media about women who are declined access to these things by pharmacists and doctors overseas and I was shocked by what they had to put up with," she said.
"It always seemed so far away and I thought I lived in a country where I shouldn't have to deal with that. So to experience this just makes me feel so bad for others who deal with this every single day... it was fascinating to just get a taste of that."
Australian doctors do have a right to object to prescribing certain medications. In New Zealand, under the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act, doctors are able to refuse a patient the pill, but they do have to refer them on to another doctor.
In 2013, New Zealand woman Melissa Pont, then 23, was refused the contraceptive pill by her doctor based on his opinion that she had not yet done her "reproductive job".
