Update: Annejumps sent me a livejournal on a woman who had her Valtrex prescription refused because the pharmacist wants her to suffer from her herpes. Nice.
A number of readers have sent me this article with very good news in it–the Illinois law that forbids pharmacists to use false piety to hide their desire to punish women for having Teh Sex by withholding legal contraceptives from them is getting enforced. Walgreen’s has suspenced four pharmacists already for refusing to help female customers because they disapprove of their sex lives. Naturally, the pharmacists are thinking of suing, because if there’s anything the pseudo-pious love more than getting up into someone else’s business, it’s pretending to be martyrs.
The religious claims of the woman-punishing pharmacists are so transparent as to be laughable. I live in the Land of a Million Denominations, so I’ve worked with tons of people in my time who have religious beliefs that could conceivably come in conflict with the work culture or their work duties. You know what they do ever single time? Opt out of stuff that’s not directly required by the job and otherwise do the job they’re hired to do. The rule of thumb is simple enough–we respected their private beliefs and they did not try to use their job duties or the withholding of said duties or throwing temper tantrums or something like that in order to get others to comply with their religious beliefs. In other words, they understood to have their religious beliefs respected, they had to respect others’ religious beliefs.
The irony in all this is the most discomfort I’ve ever seen revolves around public Christmas displays, since I’ve worked with a number of Christians whose particular denomination teaches that observing Christmas is sinful. Most chose to simply ignore the decorations and opt out of holiday parties. I’ve never worked for a moment with anyone who felt that they had a right to use their religion as a crutch to refuse service to someone who’s personal beliefs differed from them. Again, that’s no doubt because a) they are adult enough to know that they have to do the job they were hired to do and b) that religious discrimination is wrong, and if it’s wrong against them, it’s wrong to do it to others.
What I find interesting about this whole thing is how rarely someone points out that the pharmacists acting like martyrs and claiming religious discrimination are doing so in order to discriminate against their customers, and on two levels, no less. There’s the obvious one–they are discriminating against women, holding female customers to a standard that the customers have sex lives the pharmacists approve of or they don’t get their drugs. But they are also discriminating against customers for their religious/personal belief systems. If someone is taking contraceptive pills, she obviously doesn’t have a personal belief that women controlling their own reproduction is wrong. And it’s likely that many women who use the pill are like me and think that women controlling when and who we have children with is a moral good, so anyone who tries to force us to comply to their personal belief system instead of ours seems to me to be discriminating himself. When I worked in customer service type jobs, I don’t think that I met a single Christian coworker who would have thought themselves in the right to refuse service to a customer for having different religious beliefs, even in the transaction involved those. For instance, I’d known lots of bank tellers who believed that Islam was a Satanic religion or that all Jews were going to hell, but they weren’t going to throw a temper tantrum when given a deposit for an account in the name of a mosque or a temple. I don’t think it ever occured to them they had a right to use their job to harass a customer for having different religious beliefs.
Of course, people get befuddled on this when it comes to women’s right to have her own private beliefs about when to have children and who to have them with. (The latter is a critical point–by denying EC to someone, you are fighting her right to say that she doesn’t want children with a one night stand or even a rapist.) As a society, we tend to still think of women’s bodies as being public property, which only emboldens pharmacists who think that a stranger’s uterus falls under their god’s jurisdiction instead of her god’s jurisdiction. (Or her own, for us atheists.)
Anyway, I think that the pharmacist-cum-martyr bit is a first class case of the kind of projection that Steve Almond describes here. Instead of openly admitting that they want to use any means necessary to force their religious beliefs on women, religious wingnuts instead are pretending that they are actually being oppressed if they are forced by law to respect others’ right to their own beliefs. They’ve convinced themselves that black is white, that they’re beliefs can only be respected if they are allowed to force them on others. It’s the same urge behind the paranoia behind the war on Christmas–if there’s even an inkling of evidence that people who believe differently than they do deserve respect, all hell breaks loose and it’s martyr time. One does wonder if the theocrats ever do manage to completely take over the government and force everyone else to at least pretend to be right wing Christians if they will continue to act like they are oppressed victims because someone out there is probably thinking quietly to himself that their religion is a load of shit and she disagrees.
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Instead of openly admitting that they want to use any means necessary to force their religious beliefs on women, religious wingnuts instead are pretending that they are actually being oppressed if they are forced by law to respect others’ right to their own beliefs.
That pretty much nails it.
I’ve often wondered if this in itself isn’t a reaction resulting from the growing militancy of evangelical christians in regards to what they see as the free pass they’ve grown to expect in the past become less and less available to them?
Several years ago, in 1992 to be exact, I was working my way through college as a Sears warehouse worker and several of the others once asked me what church I went to. When I told them I didn’t go to church they all looked taken back as if the mere notion of someone not going to church seemed alien to them and unheard of. That this came from a group of african americans whose attitudes prior to that moment had always been to be cynical and skeptical of all things part of the establishment, for them to be shocked that I would not be part of the establishment and attend church was a surprise for me as it was for them.
But what it told me is that when confronted by such truths some have a hard time believing them, as if it’s so alien to them that it deserves to be judged wronge.
Like a generation gap, the older a person gets the more alien the culture of the younger becomes and in such becomes strange and unusual enough to be judged and judge as being bad for all involved.
Look at the case of rock and roll.
Anybody suggesting that Elvis or the musicians of the 1950’s and early 60’s were threats to america’s youth today would be laughed at. But the did then. They thought rock and roll was a threat to not only american values but was an instrument meant to undermine christian beliefs as well. Godless communists, satanists and such, etc, etc.
What’s funny about that is that a secret survey taken back in the late 1980’s found that admitted lifelong, devoted Satanists and devil worshippers preferred classical music over rock and roll, and actually thought the same about it as did the older generations during the 1950’s and 60’s. The study further found that those who claimed devil worship and loved rock and roll eventually turned out to be relbellious fads that they grew out of and eventually went back to becoming christians or atheists where both god and the devil’s existence was disbelieved.
But in conclusion I’m thinking that as we start to interpret the constitution more and more correctly, and not follow the fallacy of believing that the founding fathers were christians creating a christian nation(, they weren’t. They were deists and despised religion, least of all the organized kind,) the more we can expect the militant evangelicals to scream oppression more and more, and try to act back in spite by doing what has been happing in drug stores.
With political groups using religion as a weapon, and they starting to form more organized radical groups meant to push and promote their christian-capitalist-rich-people-are-our-friends-and-masters mentality, we should expect this to become more outspoken as time goes by.
These people are not going to give up without a fight and just like in the middle east we should start to consider the truth that if muslims can become militant and start blowing things up, killing anyone they want, tthat christians are capable of the same.
They might deny it now but as religion becomes too heavily mingled and interchanged with politics the hate within one becomes the justifcation in another and we’ll start seeing tax increases or environmental regulation meant to keep factories from spewing their filth in our water supplies as being the tools of satan meant to convert us to evil.
MYOB’
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Amanda, elizabethan england, the big old scary terrorist boogeymen were practicing catholics, who were being hunted down and killed if they were caught, because they all were plotting to over throw the protestant government of course.
That’s what happens when the Right kind of Christian get in charge, they’re still oppressed and they’re still being hunted even when they have quiet little death squads and secret police hunting down heretics to their One True Way.
The war on christmas will just eventually get subsumed by the War on Terra, except the EEvil liberal/islamic/catholic/jew connection the radical right wing talking heads posit will be more official recognised.
One thing i was going o say in that last post but forgot to is my belief that this is part of an organized effort by rightwing groups to try and force the issue. An attempt they are making to try and push this into the supreme court where they can say their rights were trampled on.
The next step is to ensure that when such companies as Walgreens consider not hiring christians as pharmacists they can sue then too for discrimination, until it gets to the point that walgreens is forced to either give up supplying the pills and other contraceptives or go out of business.
MYOB’
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Well, Rock and Roll makes your hand shake when wielding the knife and catching the blood in a chalice. Still, Rock is the Devil’s music.Amanda, here’s another bible-beating doctor gone wild, this time up in Michigan: Wiccan says she got lecture, not birth control prescription she wanted.
T“One does wonder if the theocrats ever do manage to completely take over the government and force everyone else to at least pretend to be right wing Christians if they will continue to act like they are oppressed victims because”
1984
Amanda, I just emailed you an entry I read on LiveJournal where a woman’s Valtrex prescription was refused, with the pharmacist saying she was being punished for her sins.
Your point about these pharmacists discriminating against their customers on the basis of their religious beliefs is spot-on.
Catholics like to talk about Natural Family Planning as being the G-d-sanctioned way to regulate fertility. Basically, it involves keeping track of when you are likely to be fertile and avoiding sexual intercourse during those times.
Well, guess what? Orthodox Jews practicing the laws of family purity are pretty much ONLY allowed to have sex during fertile times, since they are not allowed to have any contact during the wife’s menstrual period or for seven days afterwards.
Additionally, Orthodox Jews are, in general, not permitted to use barrier methods of birth control. (The reasoning behind this is somewhat complicated, but trust me. No condoms for Orthodox Jews.)
You know what the preferred method of birth control is among Orthodox Jews, recommended by even the most right-wing rabbis world-wide? That’s right. The pill. (Again, for complicated reasons, but basically because Jewish law exempts women from the commandment of “be fruitful and multiply” since pregnancy is physically dangerous, and therefore a birth control method that solely regulates the fertility of the woman is permitted, whereas a man, obligated to at least try to fulfill that commandment, isn’t allowed to use barriers to his fertility.)
“Instead of openly admitting that they want to use any means necessary to force their religious beliefs on women, religious wingnuts instead are pretending that they are actually being oppressed if they are forced by law to respect others’ right to their own beliefs.”
This is in fact the disgusting message behind Dobson’s protest of Spongebob Squarepants. Dobson wasn’t pushing an idiotic idea that Spongebob was “teh gay” (like Falwell did years ago with Tinky Winky) - Dobson was saying that Spongebob was bad BECAUSE HE PROMOTED TOLERANCE of people who were different.
Tolerance of others beliefs has become a bad thing to these folks - the’ve become strict followers of the portions of the Bible that preach intolerance of other beliefs, and they demand that THEIR beliefs are the only right ones. A dangerous belief system for a democracy of any stripe.
i think what’s most important here is that these pharmacists were hired to do a job. they are pharmacists. their job is to dispense pharmaceuticals to people who’s doctors have decided they should have them. if they wanted to decide who should and shouldn’t have the aforementioned pharmaceuticals, they should have become doctors instead of pharmacists. since it’s too late for that, they need to shut the fuck up and do their fucking job, or they can go find a new one. it’s very simple.
and besides all that, show me where, in any religious text, it says “Thou shalt not provide a vital medical service to a woman of indeterminate virtue.”
Pam,
The wiccan subject you brought up sounds like grounds for medical malpractice. If a physician is choosing to deny or prescrive medical care based on their religious beliefs rather than medical training then that is grounds for quackery charges. It goes along the lines of faith healing and that is a no-no regardless of where you do it.
MYOB’
.
mil0
Adding to what you said, it really should be noted that in some cases, perhaps most of them if we were to find out, those pharmacists who refused to fill the perscription would often refuse to stand aside and let another take their place and fill the perscription or recommend another pharmacy that would. Thus they are screwed if the condom broke, etc.
MYOB’
.
One does wonder if the theocrats ever do manage to completely take over the government and force everyone else to at least pretend to be right wing Christians if they will continue to act like they are oppressed victims because someone out there is probably thinking quietly to himself that their religion is a load of shit and she disagrees.
Probably, as pdf23ds says. But mostly (and the 1984 scenario will be folded into this) I think they’ll tell us about strong yet nebulous threats from outside forces like Islam and Catholicism in the rest of the world
mil0, I see that sort of comment frequently in discussions on this topic.
I am convinced that they get into the business on purpose, precisely so that they can be gatekeepers and judgers, knowing that they have the power to keep people from medication, whether it’s legal or not. This is part of the Liberty University/Patrick Henry College/etc. tactic of getting young wingnuts into law, medicine, etc. to influence policy that way. There have always been some rogue, random pharmacists, but as this piece shows, this is a concerted effort to shape what medicines people have access to. (You can read about OB-GYNs who don’t prescribe birth control in that piece. I can’t imagine they have that much business.)
I think another reason these assholes get their shorts in a bunch about other people’s sex lives (and women’s in particular) is that for the Boy-Am-I-Ever-Pious branch of evangelicalism (and the Boy-Am-I-Ever-Pious branches of quite a few other religions), whatever natural sense of morality or outrage members might have is completely colonized by obsessing over sex.
You notice that the people who are freaked out by gay marriage (or gay anything) or EC or anything sexual almost never get too upset by reports of Bush’s lying, or some woman getting socked by her husband or anything else unless there’s some sex in it. The only thing about Abu Ghraib–with the torture, the destruction of innocent lives and America’s good name, it’s being basically a free, highly effective recruiting campaign for Al Qaeda–the sole aspect that got these Holy Joes going was all those naked S&M-esque photos.
In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that this sort of all-consuming overreaction to everyone else’s private lives is a sign that the overreactor in question has NO sense of morality. They’ve got a thing about sex–and that’s it. Period.
Sorting out for yourself what’s right and what’s wrong is real work. No-joke, honest-to-Pete mental labor. However, you can essentially pay for someone to do it for you by joining a religion. People are as entitled to beliefs they’ve bought “off the rack” as the ones the rest of us have come to through careful consideration–but there’s no particular reason to afford their prefab opinions any special respect over anyone else’s.
And look at what an advantage it is for these religions to pretend sex is a moral end-all and be-all! Since every normal person has these feelings, we’re all automatically in the wrong and have to throw some effort into atonement–the effort being something that moves the religion’s agenda. (Note that religions that focus more on the supposed wickedness of sex tend to be the ones that go in more for missionary work–ie, religious hegemony–over, say, looking out for the poor and downtrodden.) And the religion’s administrators can crawl right into bed with any dirtbag willing to grease their palms without anyone raising an eyebrow, if the eyebrow-raising is reserved for the extremely trivial area of sexual nonconformity.
“In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that this sort of all-consuming overreaction to everyone else’s private lives is a sign that the overreactor in question has NO sense of morality. They’ve got a thing about sex–and that’s it. Period.”
let’s see what we can do about making this into a popular meme for campaign ‘06. because it is a fantastic point.
also, i’m annoyed at myself. what’s the proper penance for using “who’s” instead of “whose?”
what’s the proper penance for using “who’s” instead of “whose?”
All-consuming guilt.
All-consuming guilt.
that can’t be it. i’m catholic (well, kind of, sort of, not really), all-consuming guilt is just something we do, regardless of whether we have anything in particular to feel guilty about.
I really, really, really hope that I catch wind of my particular pharmacy chain pulling something like this locally. My wife and I spend a lot of money on medicine (with insurance, I’m talking high five figures, if not six) and nothing would please me more than finally being able to use the one sector in which my family has significant purchasing power to exert a little pressure.
I mean, I’d prefer this kind of thing never happened anywhere, but considering we’re living in ur-Gilead, let’s get it on.
You know what the preferred method of birth control is among Orthodox Jews, recommended by even the most right-wing rabbis world-wide? That’s right. The pill.
And since the pill doesn’t interfere with the menstrual cycle, it must come across as being “natural” and not interfering with the other sexual laws that Orthodox Jews must follow. Interesting. Particularly since the inventor of the pill figured that the Catholic church would be accepting of the pill since it kept the woman’s “natural cycle” intact. Funny that it would be the Catholic Church that would reject it but the Orthodox Jews that would think it was just dandy.
The modern pharmacists seem to be suffering from the same affliction that formerly-entitled white men are suffering from– namely, they’re angry that their power and privilege has been taken away from them. Being a pharmacist used to be a profession in which pharmacists would own their own small businesses and provide guidance regarding what medicines customers should take. Now, the responsibility for providing guidance about medicine has been taken over entirely by the physicians, and pharmacists, instead of being independent small business owners, are now mid-level employees of large corporate stores. Refusing to fill a prescription on “moral grounds” is probably the only way left that pharmacists can let themselves feel like they’re in a position of power, anymore.
they still get to stand on that step that makes them a foot-and-a-half taller, though, right? that’s pretty empowering. if not, maybe they should try wearing lifts? very empowering (or so i’ve heard).
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but haven’t there been a number of instances of postal workers trashing Playboy or TV Guide or Time because the cover or content are just too smutty? How come they always get the “what a weirdo” reaction, while people are seriously debating whether a pharmacist should be expected to do his or her job or not?
They’ve convinced themselves that black is white, that they’re beliefs can only be respected if they are allowed to force them on others.
The most blatant case being the evangelical military chaplains, who declare that their religion requires them to evangelize and try to convert people of other religions, so if the military doesn’t allow that it’s religious discrimination. Feh.
Bah Humbug
I love Christmas, but the wingnuts are really bringing out the Grinch in me. If I have to read one more article about how Christians are being persecuted by stores wishing them “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” I might just convert to Hind…
A hundred Hail Mary’s, then.
so how many of these pharmacists work at places like Target or MalWart that say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Xmas?” shouldn’t they quit such a pagan place of employment?
A hundred Hail Mary’s, then.
Prayers or passes?
Maybe the AMA’s idea of allowing physicians to dispense medicine when there’s a lack of willing pharmacists to do the same will work.
Oh, and the reason the AMA’s considering such a notion? Pharmacists are not only denying birth control and MAP to women, they’re also using their “consciences” and religion to refuse dispensing pain medications and psychotropic drugs, too. And obviously, meds for herpes, according to the livejournal post that annejumps found.
(I recommend reading the rest of the link I’ve given; not only patients, but doctors, are pissed that pharmacists are doing this).
Actually, it was the priests who were hunted down and killed in Elizabethan England. The rank and file were left pretty much alone, so long as they paid their fines for refusing to attend the Protestant service.
Elizabeth herself didn’t have much choice in the matter; according to the Catholic authorities, she was illegitimate and had no right to the throne, so it was a matter of siding with the Protestants and life, or siding with the Catholics and dethronement and near certain execution. Pope Pious V even issued a papal bull called “Regnans in Excelsis”, saying that whoever assasinated her was not only free of sin, but gained merit in heaven’s eye. Sort of like Pat Robertson calling for the assasination of Chavez.
Despite all this, most English Catholics were left to their own devices. Lord Howard, an English Catholic, led the English fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada. Even the English students studying at the Catholic Jesuit school broke out in cheers when they heard the Spanish fleet was gone. So patriotism, in most cases, won out over religion.
annejumps said:
Amanda, I just emailed you an entry I read on LiveJournal where a woman’s Valtrex prescription was refused, with the pharmacist saying she was being punished for her sins.
What if the same pharmacist or doctor said to a lifelong smoker suffering from lung cancer, “No I will not dispense your chemo drugs…Your disease is God’s punishment meted out for your self-indulgent sins”…
I’ll bet the self-righteous asshole would be shitcanned on the spot.
My understanding is that pharamacists are licensed by each state.
Why is that state licensing boards can’t suspend or revoke the licenses of those pharmacists who refuse to dispense medications legally prescribed by MDs?
i heard art caplan speaking on public radio, saying that because we have moral exceptions for physicians (i.e., doctors who refuse to do abortions) we should also allow others to have moral exceptions. i think the pharmacists’ position is totally ridiculous, but what about people who truly believe they’re causing abortion by giving a woman birth control? (i’m not saying most even do believe this, but what if they did?) it seems to me that the most reasonable thing to do would be to pass a law like the one in illinois- anyone can refuse to fill a prescription *as long as someone else in the pharmacy at that time will do it.* this would put the burden on the pharmacies- they’d have to make sure that there was another person on staff whenever the wingnut pharmacist was working. what could be bad is the state forcing small pharmacies to hire 2 pharmacists where they’d normally have one. but it could also force pharmacists working alone to fill all prescriptions.
again, i tend to believe that these pharmacists are more worried about control than life, but i’m also uncomfortable making people do things they’re truly morally opposed to. does anyone else think this is reasonable?
oh, also- that kind of law would be better for preventing martyrdom. there’d be no issue for them to press.
what about people who truly believe they’re causing abortion by giving a woman birth control?
And what if it’s a woman who’s not sexually active but who is taking the pill to prevent debilitating cramps and weeks of menstrual bleeding? Should she have to justify and explain herself to someone who probably won’t believe her?
I’d also be worried about the knowledge of a doctor or pharmacist who truly thinks that birth control pills flat-out cause abortions, but anyway….
“And what if it’s a woman who’s not sexually active but who is taking the pill to prevent debilitating cramps and weeks of menstrual bleeding? Should she have to justify and explain herself to someone who probably won’t believe her?”
if the pharmacy always made sure there was at least one pharmacist on duty that would fill a given prescription, the customer would never even know there was an issue. the other pharmacist would just fill it. no proselytising, no justifying.
Give them a copy of the definition of conception according to the American College of Ob/Gyns. Seriously, there isn’t a form of birth control that I know of that effects anything resembling an abortion.
Conception is defined as the point at which the fertilized egg implants on the uterine wall.
No, not reasonable. A doctor might claim it’s immoral to render aid to a person of a particular group. A parent might claim teaching girl children past the 6th grade is immoral. And on and on.if the pharmacy always made sure there was at least one pharmacist on duty that would fill a given prescription, the customer would never even know there was an issue. the other pharmacist would just fill it. no proselytising, no justifying.
But if they went to the judgy pharmacist first, they would still have to hear some shit. Besides, a lot of the time it seems the problem is that the woman gets the scrip, period, not just that the pharmacist doesn’t want to fill it — witness the cases where the pharmacists have said about referrals, “Why would I just tell her where else she should go to get it if I think it’s wrong?” At least they’re being consistent….
Truly believing in the Great Pumpkin doesn’t mean it’s going to rise up out of the pumpkin patch on Halloween, Linus.
Additionally, Orthodox Jews are, in general, not permitted to use barrier methods of birth control. (The reasoning behind this is somewhat complicated, but trust me. No condoms for Orthodox Jews.)
Maayan, what *is* the reasoning? Seriously - not trying to be prurient here, but I’m really curious, because I’ve *heard* the complicated reasoning behind *Catholic* prohibition of ‘prophylactics’ all my life and I *still* don’t understand it (particlarly since the same people who rail against the US supporting health groups providing condoms in the third world don’t have a problem with the US military handing them out like candy to servicemen) but mostly because the rationales seem to shift and be ad-hoc pileups to defend the indefensible.
(things like “if you use condoms, then you’re Rejecting Lifegiving Potentiality and your sex is desacralized; or People who use condoms are going to be willing to have abortions when the condoms fail, it’s a gateway drug, so to speak. Or the discredited-but-who-cares-about-facts? claims that the failure rates are so hight you might as well be playing russian roulette with a syrnge full of stds..)
So I’m curious as to if there’s actually a metaphysically-consistent argument out there anywhere against condoms - so I can be ready to argue against it when it jumps the permeable barrier, the way the “baby pesticide” one did from our Roman Catholic arguments in re the Pill.
Hell, if they want to be martyrs, I’m agreeable… but none of this halfway penny-ante “i have to do something I don’t like” whiny shit. You want the martyr points, you go talk to Cheney and volunteer for the “tortured to death” schtick. You can give your life to save the life of a man you’ve never met who doesn’t even believe as you do… there’s no act anywhere more Christian than that, and Darth still gets to get his twisted little rocks off.
Why do I think that when the rubber meets the road they’re poseurs?
i’m very conflicted about this, especially since i saw this, which is a whole other level of scary: http://stuartbuck.blogspot.com/2004/04/michigan-law.html
i do think the guy is right when he makes a distinction between procedures and classes of people: you can object to performing a certain procedure, but not to performing the procedure only for some, like gay people or a female 6th grader.
i was trying to find out what laws really are pertaining to doctors and moral objections to certain procedures, because it seems that if there’s already a precedent for doctors, the pharmacists may have more of a case. i haven’t found much though; maybe someone else knows about this? can doctors refuse to do abortions in non-life-threatening situations or when another doctor is available?
if the pharmacist doesn’t want her to have the prescription, too bad- if the law requires that the pharmacy fill it, not even a referral is necessary. and besides, a law forcing all pharmacists to fill all prescriptions is still not going to prevent customers from ‘hear(ing) some shit,’ especially if the pharmacist is pissed that he (probably a ‘he’) can’t legally prevent her from getting it. if you think you can legislate that, too, then throw it in with the ‘must-fill’ bill.
Sigh. I worked for Art Caplan and I would have expected better from him. The problem with moral exceptions is that where ever you end up drawing the line, it’s pretty damn arbitrary. You also inevitably hit the point where people aren’t going to respect your religious beliefs because of their consequences (witness the prosecution of Christian Science parents who refused medical attention for their children and opted for faith healing instead).
Bottom line: filling prescriptions is your job. Being the moral arbiter of what is virtuous and pure is not.
you can object to performing a certain procedure, but not to performing the procedure only for some, like gay people or a female 6th grader.
Then he can’t object to not allowing women to obtain contraceptives either hten, as women are a specific group.
It’d be like refusing to administer one of those new “racially targetted” medications, you have a substance without which the taker could experience a life threatening condition, a life threatening condition that you want the person who you’re refusing medication to, to suffer.
That should be assault with intent.
Because that lifethreatening condition is what the “abortifacient” is deliberatly preventing.
Also most of the things they object to don’t actually break their moral codes, they object to abortifacients, most of what they’re actually objecting to are not abortifacients. At the very least they should be forced to cite the specific things said by jesus that enable them to refuse people’s medication.
(And yes this needs to be stopped quickly before the scientologists realise that herpes medication is just as objectionable to fundies as antipsychotics are to sciencies)
Is anyone else starting to wonder if there’s some wingnut group that’s been financing little nuts’ pharmacy school education in order to start this shit? It seems odd that it’s showing up so much just recently.
Though I would laugh heartily if store clerks started refusing to ring up mixed fibres clothing…
It’s a little different, jm. A physician is the caregiver; from a legal standpoint, he, NOT the pharmacist, is the authority involved. The pharmacist’s job, which some refuse to do, is to follow orders. If there’s a problem with the order, it’s hir responsibility to consult with the physician (if it’s a problem of a medical nature) or to recuse hirself and have another pharmacist step in. “I don’t consider this prescription morally acceptable” isn’t part of the deal.
However, strictly speaking a physician is not bound to take any action which s/he considers inimical to the patient’s wellbeing OR which s/he considers wrong.
My father believed that performing abortions was in conflict with the Hippocratic oath, and so he referred out those which came to his private practice. He was also a volunteer for some years at Planned Parenthood clinics, and he helped locate abortion services for who knows how many women in trouble.
See, he was an ER physician for ten or fifteen years pre-Roe, so he ALSO recognized the basic reality that there is NO way to prevent a woman from terminating a pregnancy if she wants to desperately enough. So long as we have clothes we will have clothes hangers and bleach.
That’s the ignored reality here. Efforts to block sex education, and ban abortions do not prevent either sex or abortions, they probably INCREASE the levels of both… but it makes it more likely it’ll be poor women being destroyed. The rich will get what they want, anyway; they always do.
Rob C., see my comment at 1:45.
JUST SAYIN….
I don’t disagree with much of anything above but one thing bothers me. How come “we” are picketting pharmacies that refuse to dispense legal drugs for women? How come,,, huh…huh…? It seems to me that to often the Left talks about what we believe in and the Right *does* something about it. Put a couple hundred ’soccer moms’ with signs in front of a frickin’ Walgreens and watch ‘em fold. What ever happened to the activisit tradition of the Left?
ok, whatever. maybe pharmacists will start denying meds to all blacks, gays, women, etc. i agree that once you start denying things on a subjective basis (subjective reading of the bible, or crazy preacher teachings) where will they stop? how can we judge if people have real moral objections? this is a real problem. i don’t know what the answer is, except maybe that people can be fired if objections prevent them from doing 10% or more of their jobs.
however, none of this matters if the pharmacy requires prescriptions to be filled. who cares if they think bc is an abortifacient, as long as you can still get your prescription?
has nobody else out there been in a position where you were required to do something you thought was immoral? i was a weekend caretaker for a mentally disabled woman for a while, and i quit because part of my duties were to take her to the de-facto white power bar in town. i refused to give them my money, or even to sit in the company of those people. so i quit. should i have been forced to spend time with neonazis? (as long as i kept my mouth shut, i wasn’t in any personal danger.) i quit, but should i have had the right to ask not to go there, or to be transferred?
Magis, I’d like to know where Big Pharma and their Big Stompy Foot is in all this. Contraceptives are some of their most profitable drugs, which is one reason they keep coming up with new formulations — new formulations mean they keep the patents.
To be entirely elitist, pharmacists perhaps need to be reminded that in the health care hierarchy, they are The Help. They fill the scrips and make sure there are no interactions between other drugs, but they’re there to provide a service.
Pills now, antidepressants, valtrex, Antabuse, antidepressants and psychotropics next.
Magis, I’d like to know where Big Pharma and their Big Stompy Foot is in all this.
I wonder too. Ironically, “evil” Big Pharma may be the “saviour” here if the wingnut pharmacists go too far. Might not be big enough for them to care, though. I wonder if, say, Ortho-MacNeil has said anything about it.
Well, now, as usual, your are very insightful.
Betcha if companies that make a lot of products write a pharmacy and say if you don’t sell our whole line you’ll sell none that would get their attention! Of course, it’s not that easy because they probably go through ‘middle-men’ but still….
I still say we need to be WAY MORE activist. But if we organize a letter writing campaign to the distributors and manufacturers it would get their attention. It would seem to me the bloggoverse would be a great organizing tool.
Cue Guinness Commercial: Brilliant!
Not that it’s any of the pharmacist’s business in the first place, but one can’t assume that a person trying to fill a Valtrex prescription is a “sinner”. Valtrex is also prescribed to treat a non-STD, shingles. It’s a re-eruption of chicken pox virus that often lays dormant in or near the spinal column and comes out along one of the major nerves. It can be quite painful and prompt treatment can reduce the chance of long-term nerve damage. But they probably think it’s a small price to pay for imposing thier beliefs on others.
again, i tend to believe that these pharmacists are more worried about control than life, but i’m also uncomfortable making people do things they’re truly morally opposed to. does anyone else think this is reasonable?
Nobody’s making them do work they are morally opposed to. They signed up for the job knowing damned well what it entailed. I am morally opposed to clubbing baby seals to death. I’m not gonna take a job that requires me to club baby seals to death and then whine and bang my heels over the fact that I can’t bring myself to do it. I’ll get a different goddamned job is what I’ll do.
These people are DELIBERATELY taking these jobs and then refusing to fulfill them precisely because they want to make sure the job doesn’t get done.
Hey! Nixon had shingles!
Well, now, as usual, your are very insightful.
Is that “you’re?” Or would I be a fuckstick to point that out?
Hi; this is actually Lis’s husband here — I saw the question about why Jewish law — well, some Jewish TRADITION, really (there are technical differences) — discourages barrier contraception, specifically condoms.
The basic reason is the line in Genesis 2:24
“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
That’s talking about sex, and the concept is that, if you’ve got a barrier in place, that’s not quite becoming one flesh.
IUD’s are acceptible by most concepts, except that they’re more invasive than the Pill, so, if the woman’s hormone levels are normal and aren’t going to be messed up by it, it’s preferable.
Maayan,
The reason why orthodox Jewish men would be unlikely to use condoms is quite different than the Catholic reasoning.
My understanding is that there a couple of issues involved.
1. The obligation to procreate is incumbent on men but not women, so for a man to purposely prevent it would be more problematic (although not necessarily enough to prohibit it, especially if he already had or was planning to have two children)
2. Men have the obligation to avoid spilling seed. I think there’s argument as to whether or not ejaculating into a condom would constitute spilling seed in a forbidden way, but it’s another mark against it.
3. It’s considered to be better to not interrupt, um, the mood, with barrier methods, to be as little disruptive of sex as possible. So condoms aren’t so good. A barrier a woman puts into her hours before hand is better. A pill she takes completely removed from sex is even is better.
In the most right wing communities, you have to have the permission of your rabbi to use birth control.
Also I’m pretty sure that if a condom were necessary for health reasons, like if one spouse had herpes or something, that would be fine. It’s just not preferred.
Seth,
I know it’s been pointed out before, but nor is it safe to assume that any woman seeking birth control pills is doing it so that she can run out and have lots and lots of sex. I have one friend who took them for a while to control her wildly erratic menstrual cycle. When I was in high school, my dermatologist suggested them as a possible treatment for acne (!!)
Whatever a person’s reason for seeking a prescription for anything, it’s between her and her doctor. A pharmacist’s job is to dispense the meds, not to second-guess or interfere with the treatment that the doctor prescribed. Unless there’s the possibility of a dangerous drug interaction — and even then, isn’t (s)he supposed to contact the doctor? — it’s none of his or her damn business whether I need the pills to control my period or to ease bad cramps, or because I have bad skin but can’t go on the more common acne meds, or because I’m in a serious relationship that includes sex, or because I’m screwing a different man every night.
i heard art caplan speaking on public radio, saying that because we have moral exceptions for physicians (i.e., doctors who refuse to do abortions) we should also allow others to have moral exceptions.
I know that here in California, a caregiver (doctor or nurse) can refuse to take part in a procedure they have moral objections to. Abortion is the most obvious example, but there’s also stuff like circumcisions, etc. However, a big part of that is that the doctor or nurse is required to find someone else to take their place and is not allowed to block the procedure by virtue of their moral objection.
I personally would not mind allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill a prescription themselves as long as there was a clause that required them to find someone to fill it. (Not just to give the prescription back, but to hand it off to someone else in the same store to fill it.) Of course, we’d then hear the whining about how even knowing that the evil, evil Pill is being prescribed somewhere near them is contaminating their souls.
“Amanda, elizabethan england, the big old scary terrorist boogeymen were practicing catholics, who were being hunted down and killed if they were caught, because they all were plotting to over throw the protestant government of course.”
Go back a few years before that and you had Catholics burning Protestants at the stake for heresy and The Spanish Inquisition; which burned it’s last heretic in the 19th century, go back far enough and you have Emperor Constantine permitting the pouring of molten lead into the throats of non-believers.
Christianity has not been a persecuted religion for a very long time.
Not true, strictly speaking.
Anti-Christian crackdowns by the Chinese government made the news as recently as last year, the atrocities by Sudan’s janjaweed militias have a significant religious component (anti-Christian and anti-Animist) alongside the racial one, and mob violence against Christians, often winked at by the authorities, occurs at least sporadically in Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Egypt. In Palestine, Arab Christians get pretty much the same treatment from the Israelis as their Muslim neighbors do; the New York Times had a great article a couple years back about a confrontation between Palestinian Christians and an Israeli army unit comprised of Druze Muslims, who are generally pro-Israeli after centuries of persecution by Sunnis and Shiites alike.
Then, if you want to go back a few years, I know that persecution of the Ukrainian Catholic Church by the Soviet Union lasted almost up to the minute of Ukrainian independence, and the mistreatment of other Catholic and Orthodox churches in the former Warsaw Pact only began to end with glasnost.
Of course, none of this happened in the west, unless you count, say, Soviet-era Poland, and this is what matters for the purposes of the discussion at hand. If some pharmacist tried to establish some kind of moral linkage between his being asked to fill my birth control prescription and Christian women being raped and enslaved in the Sudan, I’d be sorely tempted to pop him one for the presumption.
(As I live in the deepest blue of Blue America, the possibility that a pharmacist would refuse to fulfill a birth control prescription for me seems minimal, even before considering that I have no ovaries, what with being male and all. This seems like it could be an interesting experiment, though. Would one of these pharmacists fill an order for birth control if placed by a man?)
One of my clients needed a prescription for Plan B - the condom broke. She got the script, took it to Eckerd’s and was lectured in a loud voice by the pharmacist about how Eckerd’s as a company does NOT fill scripts for Plan B and how ashamed she should be of herself. She told then just as loudly she’d take her money to CVS, FYI, yall.
Related to c-minus’s point, could a transphobic pharmacist refuse to fill a prescription for hormone treatments? Could a homophobic pharmacist refuse to dispense AZT or whatever it is nowadays? I know AIDS isn’t a gay disease, but I’m not wearing fundy ideological blinders.
I thought CVS bought Eckerd’s over a year ago.
Alas, the Live Journal entry has been pulled. It appears that the RWers were flaming the woman who wrote it. bastards.
“Is anyone else starting to wonder if there’s some wingnut group that’s been financing little nuts’ pharmacy school education in order to start this shit? It seems odd that it’s showing up so much just recently.”
You bet your ass bub! Do not underestimate the lengths the fundies will go to make an opportunity to proselytize, control, or convert. Now it is very possible that these folks are recently born again and were pharamicists before they were nosy theocrats but hey the fundie right made and continue to make inroads in politics what is to stop them from doing so in areas of our society.
What we need is a pharacist who is willing to martyr him/herself for the left by refusing to fill Viagra prescriptions until the man submits the prescription with a) his marriage license and b) a notarized statement to use the drug only when engaging in sex with his spouse.
Would it be taking things too far for the pharmacist to require that the man also affirm, in the notarized document, that he and his wife are attempting to procreate?
At any rate, I’d love to see that test case come to trial.
One of my clients needed a prescription for Plan B - the condom broke. She got the script, took it to Eckerd’s and was lectured in a loud voice by the pharmacist about how Eckerd’s as a company does NOT fill scripts for Plan B and how ashamed she should be of herself. She told then just as loudly she’d take her money to CVS, FYI, yall.
ergh….infuriating. i think we should allow these pharmacists to refuse to fill these prescriptions, but only if they get someone else in the same pharmacy to fill it, and allow the person seeking the drugs to kick them in the temple while wearing a steel-toed boot.
i just thought of something - what if they purposely fill the scrip wrong? like, instead of birth control, you get sudafed, and you don’t even know?
a dangerous situation like that requires, to my mind, the knowledge that a pharmacist is not a fucking nut. these particular pharmacists are claiming that they are being persecuted, but they;re full of shit. however, maybe we should be persecuting them. after all, an unstable person who believes in fantastic things like Gandalf-in-the-Sky-with-Diamonds shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near potentially dangerous medication.
I’m waiting for the day when grocery store clerks refuse to sell shrimp or barbers refuse to trim beards.
Renska,
My pharmacist in the suburbs of Chicago has been doing this for about 2 years.
He even has a sign up, it says “No ring? No Viagra.”
He also has pamphlets that explain the difference between birth control and abortion, and have a list of ALL the possible conditions that BCP is proscribed to treat.
This is why I pay for my pills off of my insurance plan. I want this man to be in business forever.
Goddess! How many times is this going to happen?!?!?!
My advice to everyone is to make up and more or less memorize a nice big rant, for use on any pharmacist who denies you your prescription. Tell them their morals are reprehensible, that they are morally wrong to think it’s acceptable to force other people to abide by their beliefs, tell them they’re unprofessional and have no business holding the job they have—you could also play the pro-life card yourself, and call them morally degenerate for trying to raise the number of abortions, get the more business for the “abortion industry,” etc.
My current favorite is to tell them that they’re the equivalent of UPS; they’re a delivery service, and they have no more right to deny you what the doctor has directed you to take, than Yahoo Mail’s email server has the right to randomly delete mail that’s sent to you.
That, and insist that *I*, being of a different religion, don’t fall under their god’s authority. Sex is not wrong for me, etc. They hate that.
My advice to everyone is to make up and more or less memorize a nice big rant,
mine starts off with “Listen, Asshole:”
then again, being male, i’m not really sure what the pharmacist would deny me, especially in good old reasonable New Jersey. we’re so densely populated, i have a feeling that if anyone pulled that shit around here, well…let’s just say their shit would be fucked up. a crowbar to the teeth in trenton will ruin your whole week.
the nice thing about not being religious is that you only have to turn the other cheek when you really want to.
Aren’t pharmacies state-protected businesses? i.e. they have to be operated by a state-registered pharmacist?
If I recollect correctly, the reason for pharmacy regulation was that it was considered against the common weal for uncontrolled snake-oil salesmen to be running around, so pharmacists were given a state-protected monopoly on dispensing drugs. This guaranteed for the public that their medication was of a certain purity, that its strength was calibrated, that the ingredients in the medication had been tested to some agreed standard.
If an industry wants state protection against competition from just anybody else’s lotions and potions, then they have to abide by the state’s regulations and provisions requiring them to supply whatever medication has been legally prescribed by a doctor.
This simply is not a free choice issue. Their industry has state protection against free competition, therefore they have to abide by state regulations. End of story.
bellatrys — it took me so long to respond to you that lis’s husband and Tara beat me to it, and answered much better than I would have. So yeah, what they said.
Even sincere piety would be terrible and entirely insufficient grounds for these pharmacists to conduct themselves in this manner. What’s next, Muslim busboys refusing to clear plates that have leftover pork chops on them? This is outrageous!
Even sincere piety would be terrible and entirely insufficient grounds for these pharmacists to conduct themselves in this manner. What’s next, Muslim busboys refusing to clear plates that have leftover pork chops on them? This is outrageous!
Magis:
I assume you meant to ask why we AREN’T picketing pharmacies. My socialist group has a standing plan to do exactly that — including contacting other groups, of course — if we hear of this happening in the Bay Area, but so far as I know, it’s not happened locally.
But in general, yes, I think that’s EXACTLY what we should be doing. We should organize rapid response networks. They fill our prescriptions, or we shut them down.
My advice to everyone is to make up and more or less memorize a nice big rant, for use on any pharmacist who denies you your prescription.
One benefit of this strategy is that these pharmacists think having sex and getting pregnant are things one should be ashamed of, so declaring loudly in public that you want contraception (emergency or otherwise) demonstrates that you refuse to be ashamed of it.
Which may just make them all the more certain your hellbound, but I suppose it’s possible they’ll think about what they’re doing.
My advice to everyone is to make up and more or less memorize a nice big rant, for use on any pharmacist who denies you your prescription.
One benefit of this strategy is that these pharmacists think having sex and getting pregnant are things one should be ashamed of, so declaring loudly in public that you want contraception (emergency or otherwise) demonstrates that you refuse to be ashamed of it.
Which may just make them all the more certain you’re hellbound, but I suppose it’s possible they’ll think about what they’re doing.