An article in the Windy City Times this week took a historical look back at the AIDS epidemic in Chicago and across the country.

At least three decades ago doctors started noticing illnesses impacting their gay male patients. And soon it became clear that an epidemic was at hand.

The story notes that, during the summer of 1981, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR, June 5 and July 3) first reported that a new disease might be in our midst. It could have been around for years, but was just at that time starting to exhibit itself.

The individual illnesses striking these young gay men were otherwise rare—pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma, the latter manifested as purple lesions. These and other strange illnesses had started to be diagnosed some 30 months prior to the 1981 MMWR reports. In January 1982 the syndromes together began to be called GRID, gay-related immunodeficiency, and the acronym stood until July of that year, when it was renamed AIDS, or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

The rumors and media reports, including those in the gay press, only trickled out for many months. But by 1983—'84, it was clear a major epidemic was at hand, one that struck more than gay men.

In Chicago, while existing organizations such as Howard Brown Memorial Clinic (now Howard Brown Health Center) and Gay Horizons (now Center on Halsted) tried to cope with new legal, psychosocial, and health issues facing the community, more support would be needed.

Within three years, major institutions were founded, many of them still in existence in 2011. These included AIDS Foundation of Chicago, Chicago House, Open Hand (now Vital Bridges), Test Positive Aware Network, Stop AIDS, Kupona Network, AIDS Legal Council of Chicago, Chicago Women's AIDS Project, and dozens more. Eventually, more than 100 agencies dealt with some aspect of AIDS, from fundraising events, such as AIDS Walk and the AIDS Ride, to service groups, research and prevention organizations.

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A USA Today story published this week examines the divergent points of view on the sale of contraceptives. The ACLU of Illinois Executive Director Colleen Connell provides an interesting perspective.

People who think pharmacists who oppose abortion should not be required to sell the "morning after pill" call laws to support this "conscience laws." People who think women should have access to legal medications they need call them "refusal laws."

You can see it in the comments following this week's ruling in support of the 1998 Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act. In 2005, then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued a ruling to force "pharmacies to fill prescriptions without making moral judgments.

But when the state tried to enforce this, two pharmacists, aided by the American Center for Law and Justice, went to court for the right to refuse. Tuesday, Circuit Judge John Belz wrote that governor's ruling was unconstitutional, that it would be...

... coercing individuals or entities to provide healthcare services that violate their belief.

The pharmacists and the ACLJ are delighted. The ruling affects commercial pharmacies as well as individuals who might pick and choose which FDA-approved legal medications they believe should be dispensed. As the Center's site notes, the judge's ruling points out:

Meanwhile, The state's attorney general is appealing and the American Civil Liberties Union is joining in. Colleen K. Connell, Illinois ACLU director pointed out:

The court's ruling fails to account for the important constitutional rights at issue when women are denied access to reproductive health care and medication.

The battle over whose conscience trumps medical choices is far wider than Illinois, of course. It puts health workers who bring their faith and values to their jobs in tension with their clients, patients and customers who may have different beliefs on whether or when to have children.

The ACLU is tracking cases state by state and in Congress and finds this tension goes beyond contraception issues.

The Illinois Attorney General is appealing a decision by a judge this week that Illinois pharmacists can't be forced to dispense emergency contraception, according to a Chicago Tribune article.

"We are disappointed by the Court’s ruling permitting not only individual pharmacists, but also commercial pharmacies, to refuse to provide FDA approved medications, including contraception," said Colleen Connell, ACLU of Illinois Executive Director.

"The Court’s ruling fails to account for the important constitutional rights at issue when women are denied access to reproductive health care and medication. It also allows individual religious views to dictate the kind of medication available to the citizens of Illinois in commercial pharmacies. We are grateful that the Illinois Attorney General is considering an appeal and look forward to the opportunity to participate in that process."

Pharmacists Luke VanderBleek and Glenn Kosirog and the three drug stores they operate sued over the 2005 rule imposed by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich. A circuit court originally dismissed the claim, but the state Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that a court must hear it.

Plan B emergency contraception contains a high dose of birth control pills and can be used to prevent pregnancy if taken within three days of unprotected sex by blocking ovulation or fertilization. Critics of the contraceptive say it is the equivalent of an abortion pill because it can prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus. The pharmacists object to dispensing the pill on religious grounds.

In January 2008, the ACLU of Illinois filed an amicus brief urging the court to reject plaintiffs’ challenge to the rule. We argued that plaintiffs’ expansive reading of the Health Care Right of Conscience Act as providing absolute protection for the conscience objections of health care workers, despite the impact such refusals would have on women seeking to access constitutionally-protected health care, was incorrect and inappropriate. In December 2008, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the claims were ripe and, without reaching the merits of the case, sent the matter back to the circuit court for further litigation.

According to the Tribune article, after a nearly six-year struggle, Sangamon County Circuit Judge John Belz said requiring pharmacists to sell the so-called morning-after pill violates state right-of-conscience law and the First Amendment.