I’m trying to find a delicate way to put this to Boots, but I can’t. The leading retailer refuses to follow the lead of Tesco and Superdrug and reduce the price of the morning after pill because it’s afraid women might use it ‘inappropriately’ if it’s cheap.

Let’s put it this way: Boots, it’s none of your business how or when women choose to use contraception.

It’s like something out of The Handmaid’s Tale. Any discriminatory surcharge that disproportionately targets women is sexist, plain and simple. There is no way a major chemist chain should be moralising to women like this.

Tell Boots to sell the morning after pill at a reasonable price like everybody else.

Not only is this price gouge discriminatory, it’s exploitative. Women already pay extra at the chemist for everything from razors to tampons. Emergency contraception is a necessary public health service and charging extra for it is frankly unconscionable.

And yet the Chief Pharmacist of Boots (who is a man) seems to think it’s possible for women to use it ‘inappropriately’. CEOs and other executives have no business policing the morality and sexual habits of women, thank you very much.

At SumOfUs, we believe that corporations should keep their hands off women’s bodies. It’s why hundreds of thousands of us have vigorously fought a biotech firm patenting a breast cancer gene in Australia and why even more of us stopped hundreds of corporations from advertising with Breitbart News, an extreme right-wing hate site that claimed contraception turned women into ‘sluts’. That means all contraception should be freely and easily accessible by all, including the morning after pill at Boots.

Boots, don’t be despicable. Apologise for your offensive statements and charge a reasonable rate for emergency contraception.

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