Pharmacists 'denying birth control'

[PowerToThePeople]

Sorry if this is a repost. First I have heard of it.

---
A growing number of pharmacists across America are refusing to dispense birth control and the morning-after pill, because it goes against their religious and moral convictions.

---

"There are many incidences of pharmacists not giving back the prescription so that the women can fill it somewhere else."

---

"While they have the right to obtain the prescription, as an individual I always have my own rights not to fill it."

---

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4425603.stm

[madinmaryland]

1. But they have no problem selling viagra and

other male enhancement drugs.

:wtf:

Plus many pharmacies also sell cigarettes, beer, wine, lottery tickets, etc. Don't they have problems with these other items and don't they go against the teachings of their religion?

Hypocrites!

:argh:

[hiley]

4. Viagra covered by most insurance

BIRTH CONTROL no way (most insurances) unless
you have medical problems which requires the pill.
edit most
thanks

[gollygee]

5. My birth control was covered by my insurance

oh wait, now that I think about it I did once upon a time have insurance that didn't cover birth control. That sucked.

[K-W]

33. most comprehensive insurance covers birth control EOM

[hiley]

2. disturbing as hell huh ?

look on blog
really good links below story .
hiley

[gollygee]

3. They can have my IUD when they pry it from my cold, dead cervix

thank god I don't have to get a prescription for pills filled every damn month anymore. I'd be pretty pissed off if anyone tried that with me.

[hiley]

6. sometimes they even

take the prescription sheet away and have been refusing to give it back so patient has to call Doctor after already being humiliated.

[LibertyLover]

12. One of them

tried that a while back. The pharmacist tried it on a very savvy college student, who called the police and had him charged with theft. I think it may have been in Michigan or Wisconsin and if my memory is correct (bear in mind that I'm the mother of a 2 year old, so I guarantee nothing LOL)the case went to trial. The pharmacist pulled the "conscience" thing. I believe he lost and said he was going to appeal. The Christian Pharmacists Association got busy and started lobbying state legislatures for an opt out clause for conscience and a bunch of them bought it.

[hiley]

23. Crazy

stuff

[fluffyslayer]

45. Amen!

Without my pills, I used to get no period for months at a time, then two to three weeks(!) of pure hell during which I snapped at everyone and couldn't even go to my classes half the time. Not to mention my face full of acne. Any holier-than-thou pharmacist that would tell me that I should have to live my life like that because my eggs are more important than I am can kiss my ass.

[Cleita]

7. So what's going to happen next? Over turn Roe vs. Wade?

Are unmarried women going to be forced to bring babies they don't want to full term? Are they going to be called sinners because they aren't married? Will there be more shotgun weddings as a result?

Hey welcome back to the fifties.

[NervousRex]

8. They should be fired...

for not doing their jobs.

[countryjake]

9. Found this opinion piece in our little paper yesterday...

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-sartwell6apr06,0,4433842.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

When Your Conscience Goes to Work
No one should be forced to sacrifice his beliefs to a job.
By Crispin Sartwell, Crispin Sartwell teaches political philosophy at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa.

~snip~

"I personally am no opponent of birth control of any sort or, for that matter, of abortion rights. But people whose jobs require them to violate their own deeply held convictions ought to refuse to do the job, and any politician who upholds freedom or dignity must uphold their right to do so.

What you should ask yourself in this case is not whether you think people should have access to birth control, but whether you should be required to do things that violate your deepest convictions. Should a soldier be required to torture prisoners, for example? Should he refuse to do so if ordered? Should a liberal corporate peon be required to contribute to the Republican Party? Should a Christian secretary have to assist in the advocacy of man-boy love?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~end snip~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For those who think the right-wing is just "snipping at issues" in order to hold opinions in their favor, just watch what is now happening to women's right to birth-control. This new "expanding of conscience" when comparing war-crimes or pedophilia to dispensing prescriptions to women is absolutely unconscionable!

[Ms Chicklet]

10. What Sartwell fails to consider

Is that the pharmacists' right to practice their faith in their chose profession ends when it infringes on my rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

[gollygee]

13. Or, put another way

the phramacists' right to practice their faith ends when it infringes on my right to not practice their faith.

[Mandate My Ass]

11. No cigar there

Should a soldier be required to torture prisoners, for example?Should a liberal corporate peon be required to contribute to the Republican Party? Should a Christian secretary have to assist in the advocacy of man-boy love?"

Torture is illegal, so no, it does not apply.

Extortion is illegal, so no, it does not apply.

Man-boy love advocacy (or lack thereof) does not affect the health, well-being or medical treatment privately agreed upon between patient and doctor, and the lack of advocacy does not dissuade or deny man-boy love advocates the opportunity practice their preference in private without consequence, so no, it does not apply.

[countryjake]

16. And he calls himself a philosopher...

When he used that line, "when individuals have no responsibility, they start robbing, raping, pillaging and murdering" & then brought up the Nuremburg defense, I felt an intense desire to "liquidate" his function from our newspaper! Equating birth-control with such outrageousness in his measured way is becoming their tactic...my newspaper will be getting a letter, for sure!

[mondo joe]

14. Fuck him. If peopledon't want to fill prescriptions they shouldn't

be pharmacists. It's that simple.

[B Calm]

15. Malloy said if he ever lost his job he would get a job as a cashier

in a drug store and refuse people who want to buy cigarettes, etc etc..

[Malva Zebrina]

17. I am confused

do these pharmacists work in a place where condoms are sold on racks right in front of the pharmacy? In my pharmacy, the pharmacy has a cash register and one can also check out other items bought in the store.

I suggest this--women rise up and become activist. Go to the pharmacy that refuses to fill your birth control prescription and buy up every single condom on the rack, and request that the pharmacist check your purchase out. Plop the entire purchase right in front of his eyes. Further,while he is checking you out, order a whole carton of condoms from him.

[NC_Nurse]

18. Time to get another job

if you have problems with doing your job for religious reasons then you need to get another job fer chrissake!

How about becoming a missionary in a third world country if your beliefs are so "deep"?

I didn't think so....:eyes:

[TheWraith]

19. This is being blown way out of proportion.

It's a scattered handful of incidents the have been latched onto by a few women's groups that want to exploit it for fear and fundraising. While someone shouldn't be able to pick and choose what parts of their job they perform, this is hardly the horrendous epidemic that the extreme advocacy groups are claiming it is.

[htuttle]

20. 23 states considered 'conscience clause' laws last year...

...to allow pharmacists to deny certain prescriptions. At least four states already have them, and SD, Arkansas and Georgia are trying to strengthen their current laws to allow pharmacists to deny birth control prescriptions.

But you say that this is just 'women's groups' who are just blowing this all out of proportion trying to increase fundraising?

What the hell would it take to wake you up?

[Lars39]

21. You are sadly misinformed.

http://tinyurl.com/5ahuy

http://tinyurl.com/6clcc

http://tinyurl.com/6yn9o

[gollygee]

27. You wouldn't feel that way

if you'd been raped and needed to take emergency contraception - the sooner the more likely it'll work - and the fucking pharmacist wouldn't give it to you.

[Nobody]

29. Sorry. I'm just a woman, my health issues aren't important

It's not a horrendous epidemic yet and we're working to keep it from becoming one.

But to some people, being a woman means that the entire world is entitled to decide for you how you will deal with some very personal issues. They, not you, get to decide how many children you will have and what you will do to get to their, not your, ideal number.

So far there are four nation-wide chains that allow pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions for women. Nowhere has it EVER been reported that the selfsame conscience has EVER prevented a man from getting his viagra.

One of these, Wal Mart, refuses to carry emergency contraception. If you or someone you know is ever raped, keep this in mind when looking for a pharmacy to fill that particular prescription.

I ask you this question: What if the only pharmacy for 20 miles around you was staffed solely by Christian Scientists who refused every prescription brought in, even if it was insulin for diabetes.

(an 11 year old boy died because his Christian Scientist parents refused to give him anything that would help control diabetes. The parents had to stand trial)

[Pithlet]

39. So, how many cases have to happen

before we should do anything about it? What is your number? When do we get to speak up about it, according to you. Will you be okay with it after 100? 1000? Please, enlighten us.

We should only ever do anything about a problem once it becomes an epidemic? Wouldn't it be logical to do something BEFORE then?

It sounds to me like you just want to brush this off because it is a "woman's issue." Don't tell us to shut up about a problem that could affect millions of us personally because YOU don't feel that it is a big deal.

[OneBlueSky]

22. I'll support a boycott of any drugstore chain that tolerates . . .

this kind of behavior by any of its pharmacists anywhere . . . Eckerd, CVS, whomever . . . and I have a hunch we'll be seeing some boycott calls real soon . . .

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

24. The thing is...they KNEW they'd have to do this eventually.

One cannot just drop an application at the local Walgreens to become a pharmacist: you have to get licensed most places.
So they KNEW they would have to perscribe birth control pills. Any pharmicist who's acting surprised about this is full of shit. They should have never become pharmacists in the first place if they have "religious and moral convictions" about this kind of thing.

[aaronnyc]

26. But the "morning after pill" is relatively new

The objections I have heard about have been about "the morning after pill", not other forms of contraceptives. So many did not know that they would have to sell this, when they got their lisence.

I have mixed feelings about this. It doesn't seem like to refuse to sell products which they don't personally approve of, and in any other job a person who does this would be fired. However, if they honestly think "the morning after pill" is equivelent to murder, then it does not seem right to force them to sell it or lose their entire careers. Some of these women are single mothers who have no other qualifications but to be pharmacists.

Could a Rite Aid put a sign up a like: "Tuesday-Thursday
12-7pm "morning after pills" will not be sold. At all other times they will be available"
I understand that this would not be ideal, but I have sympathy for some of these people who have are basically forced to do something they find intensely immoral.

[Nobody]

31. They're refusing ordinary contraceptives

All emergency rooms and doctors offices should have a supply of emergency contraceptives on hand for rape victims. These have to be taken within 42 hours or they're not effective.

The latest round of stories that have been aired have been about birth control pills taken to prevent pregnancy. The same pills that alleviate painful periods and are used to treat ovarian cysts and are sometimes prescribed for teens. My sister has been on birth control pills for this reason since she first started menstruating.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

32. Then they shouldn't have studied pharmacy.

The birth control pill has been around for over 40 years. There's no excuse for pharmacists that refuse birth control perscriptions. They should have known when they went into this business that they would have to *gasp* touch those icky pills and fill out perscriptions for women. And this isn't just about the morning after pill, either. In fact, emergency contraception isn't just limited to the morning after pill: they've been giving that out for years before the introduction of this "morning after pill".
Pharmacists have been refusing birth control perscriptions, not just the "morning after pill."

[aaronnyc]

40. I agree about traditional birth control pills

They knew that they would be giving these out before they became pharmacists, so I have no sympathy for them. Some of the cases I had heard about, were specifically regarding the morning after pill.

Many people think the morning after pill is a form abortion (which they believe is immoral), but think that traditional contraceptives like condoms are okay. People like this, who signed on to be pharmacists BEFORE the morning after pill was made legal are the ones who I have sympathy for.

I would agree that all pharmacists should have to sell "traditional" forms of birth control.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

43. The post below you by GollyGee sums it up.

The "Morning after pill" is just a higher dosage of birth control pills.
It's given to prevent pregnancy, especially in cases of rape. There was a pharmacist (I don't have the link at this time) that refused to give said pills to a rape victim. That pharmacist simply should lose their job.

It's not their job to be moral authorities. It's their job to count the pills out. If the pharmacist won't do their job then they should change career paths. It's that simple.

This has only come about in the past few years, as the "moral authority" becomes more emboldened since one of "their own" is in the White House.
This is just the beginning. This is about control over women's lives. This is about dictating the terms of our society to women, and forcing them to do what men want.

[gollygee]

35. The Morning After Pill is just made up of regular birth control pills

just a higher dosage - but the same stuff and it does the same thing. It makes the womb unfriendly for fertilization and stops ovulation. Stopping implantation is still at best a secondary purpose - but that's the same as regular birth control pills. These pills don't do anything that regular birth control pills don't do.

[aaronnyc]

44. That's not how I understood it

I'm a guy so this really isn't my area of expertise, and I should probably defer to you. However, I'd be curious if you could explain
how I have misunderstood this.

I thought that the Morning After Pill - which is by definition taken after sex - does something to make the fertilized egg unable to grow into a fetus. "The pill", on the other hand prevents an egg from ever being fertilized.

Given my understanding of the Morning After Pill,it made sense to me that people who believe that life begins at the moment of conception, would believe that the Morning After Pill is immoral and similar to abortion. I had been of the belief that "The Pill" was similar to condoms or tube-tying, since they all prevent contraception.

Since one is taken after sex, and the other is taken before (and after), I thought that two performed fundamentally differnt functions. Are you saying that "The Pill" is often ineffective at preventing fertilization, but it later succeeds at stopping the embryo from becoming a fetus? I am simply curious if this is the case, because this is not how it had ever been explained to me.

[gollygee]

47. Fertilization doesn't take place until a few days after intercourse

So both The Pill and The Morning After Pill, which are really the same thing but different doses, work by getting to the woman's reproductive system before fertilization occurs.

I think you are confusing Emergency Contraception, otherwise known as The Morning After Pill, with RU-486, or The Abortion Pill. They are two entirely different things. A woman doesn't take RU-486 until after she's conceived and has gotten a positive pregnancy test.

[Jade Fox]

25. So do I get to refuse to do things on my job I find morally objectionable?

No. I get to do my job as it is, or find another.

Same should go for these jerks.

[Generator]

28. Ya know this has been discussed but really there is nothing to discuss

It seems to me, back when I had to work-I had to do my job. If I didn't I would be fired.

FIRE THEM.

IF that customer has a legal prescription and doesn't fill it: FIRE THEM. They aren't doing their job. No discussion neeeded. This country is becoming a fucking joke.

No, you don't have your "individual rights" when on the job-you have the right to do your job or not do your fucking job and get fired.

Let me repeat: FIRE THEM.

It's not a difficult concept.

Fuck the American Taliban. This country was founded on seperation of church and state. Fuck religion. I've fucking had ENOUGH.

[Blue Belle]

30. Bill Maher did a really funny "New Rule" this week on this...

And I have to say, I agree with him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Courtesy of HBO.com:
http://www.hbo.com/billmaher/new_rules/

New Rule: Pharmacists have to fill prescriptions. As our audience seems to already know, more and more American pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control because of their personal moral objections. Hey, you know what would really teach us a lesson? If you took off your pretend doctor jacket and got another job.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe cutting off the pill doesn't even go far enough. Yeah, it's high time activist drugstores stopped coddling sluts on every aisle. Let's not sell any more makeup either. A good woman doesn't paint herself. And no more deodorant. You should smell bad. Keep the boys from getting ideas. And no suntan lotion. I've seen what happens at the MTV Beach House, you whore. You want to avoid melanoma, buy a veil.

Why is this country becoming Utah?! You know, I know the conservatives are always saying that the coastal elites don't really get it about them because we just fly over. Okay, maybe. But, you know what? You guys don't get us either. We need to fuck. Refusal to provide birth control threatens our economy and our very way of life here in Southern California. There's a lot of hot chicks out here, man. We need birth control! I mean, seriously, how do you think movies get made?

Now, of course, I know the other side is saying, yes, but this is a moral issue. Yeah, but the problem is, not everyone gets their morals from the same book. You go by the book that says slavery is okay but sex is wrong until after marriage, at which point it becomes a blessed sacrament between a husband and the wife who is withholding it.

In conclusion, let me say to all the activist pharmacists out there, the ones who think sex is bad probably because sex with them always is. Fellas, a pharmacist is not a law-giver, not even a doctor. In the medical pecking order, you rank somewhere in between a chiropractor and a tree surgeon.

You don't answer to a law above the laws of men. You work for Sav-On. The doctors are the ones who make medical decisions because they went to medical school, whereas you were transferred from the counter where people drop off film.

[proud2BlibKansan]

34. Maher is right

Pharmacists are paid to fill prescriptions. DOCTORS make decisions about what those prescriptions are.

And I would definitely support a boycott of pharmacies who allow their pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions. Anyone know any others besides WalMart who do this?

[Nobody]

38. Eckerds, CVS, Walgreens n/t

[proud2BlibKansan]

41. Really?

Is this nationwide or just in selected areas?

[proud2BlibKansan]

42. I just checked

our health insurance allows us to fill prescriptions at Eckerd (which is now CVS) or Walgreen's - nowhere else. This sucks. I will need to just stay healthy and hope I don't need any prescriptions filled.

[Pushed To The Left]

36. Bill Maher is the man! n/t

[Pushed To The Left]

37. More proof that the right wing

is phony on the abortion issue. No birth control= more chance of an abortion. It's not about saving "the unborn". It's about control.

[Blue Belle]

46. But once they are born...

That's when the support from the GOP stops.