Q: Who Is Most Qualified To Make Your Most Important Life Decisions? A: Your Pharmacist
I'm not sure how many of you have been following the Bush Administration's insidious little encroachments into the notion of women as autonomous human beings with rights to equal participation in their own lives, but this shit is getting more intense by the day. For those of you who just scoff and say, "Yeah, whatever, he's pro-life, screw him" and assume that your derision somehow exempts or protects you, I ask you to consider the re-sculpting of the American and global landscape over the past 4+ years. Let's play "Have You Been Paying Attention?":
1) What is the Global Gag Rule, and what does it mean?
2) Do American teenagers know more now about safe sex than they did, say 5 years ago?
3) Can a woman who wants to use birth control still access it in the US?
1) This would require such a lengthy, vitriolic rant on my part that I'll just encourage you to read the outline here . It's amazing that abortion is still legal in the United States but they have managed to essentially outlaw it in some of the poorest countries in the world.
2) Well, what do you think? Read a re-post of a New York Times op-ed column here. If you don't mind registering on the New York Times site you can read it direct from the source. It's free to register and comes in handy for Crowbar all the time.
3) This is the Read N' Rant portion of our program:
11/08/2004
USA TODAY
Druggists refuse to give out pill
Say their religion forbids the use of contraceptives
By Charisse Jones
For a year, Julee Lacey stopped in a CVS pharmacy near her home in a Fort Worth suburb to get refills of her birth-control pills. Then one day last March, the pharmacist refused to fill Lacey's prescription because she did not believe in birth control.
“I was shocked,” says Lacey, 33, who was not able to get her prescription until the next day and missed taking one of her pills. “Their job is not to regulate what people take or do. It's just to fill the prescription that was ordered by my physician.”
Some pharmacists, however, disagree and refuse on moral grounds to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. And states from Rhode Island to Washington have proposed laws that would protect such decisions.
[Did you notice that? This is not one anecdotal incident...*multiple* states are suggesting this is conscionable.]
Mississippi enacted a sweeping statute that went into effect in July that allows health care providers, including pharmacists, to not participate in procedures that go against their conscience. South Dakota and Arkansas already had laws that protect a pharmacist's right to refuse to dispense medicines. Ten other states considered similar bills this year.
The American Pharmacists Association, with 50,000 members, has a policy that says druggists can refuse to fill prescriptions if they object on moral grounds [so what if they have moral grounds that state that cancer medications aren't acceptable? Can they refuse to dispense those drugs too? After all, to impede the growth of cancer one must kill many, many living cells], but they must make arrangements so a patient can still get the pills. Yet some pharmacists have refused to hand the prescription to another druggist to fill.
In Madison, Wis., a pharmacist faces possible disciplinary action by the state pharmacy board for refusing to transfer a woman's prescription for birth-control pills to another druggist or to give the slip back to her. He would not refill it because of his religious views.
[So this numb fuck believes he has the right to decide for me whether I should have to be a mother because HE wants me to? And would actually have the nerve to TAKE my prescription from me and not give it back? What would I have done, I wonder? Called 911 and reported a theft in progress? Or just blown an artery and started demolishing the pharmacy?]
Some advocates for women's reproductive rights are worried that such actions by pharmacists and legislatures are gaining momentum.
["worried"? We should be rioting.]
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a provision in September that would block federal funds from local, state and federal authorities if they make health care workers perform, pay for or make referrals for abortions.
“We have always understood that the battles about abortion were just the tip of a larger ideological iceberg, and that it's really birth control that they're after also,” says Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “The explosion in the number of legislative initiatives and the number of individuals who are just saying, ‘We're not going to fill that prescription for you because we don't believe in it' is astonishing,” she said.
Pharmacists have moved to the front of the debate because of such drugs as the “morning-after” pill, which is emergency contraception that can prevent fertilization if taken within 120 hours of unprotected intercourse.
While some pharmacists cite religious reasons for opposing birth control, others believe life begins with fertilization and see hormonal contraceptives, and the morning-after pill in particular, as capable of causing an abortion.
[Um, just to clarify, that point makes it appear that there are two groups, with separate sets of reasons. Read the sentence again - they're the same group and they're both for "religious reasons".]
“I refuse to dispense a drug with a significant mechanism to stop human life,” says Karen Brauer, president of the 1,500-member Pharmacists for Life International. [Notwithstanding the number of drugs she dispenses every day that could meet that criteria, this statement should read "I'm incapable of meeting the requirements of my profession and thus need to access no-longer-existent employment programs cut by the Bush administration".] Brauer was fired in 1996 after she refused to refill a prescription for birth-control pills at a Kmart in the Cincinnati suburb of Delhi Township.
Lacey, of North Richland Hills, Texas, filed a complaint with the Texas Board of Pharmacy after her prescription was refused in March. In February, another Texas pharmacist at an Eckerd drug store in Denton wouldn't give contraceptives to a woman who was said to be a rape victim.
[This story actually sparked a lively debate on Fark about sluts who deserve to get pregnant if they open their legs, and those wanting proof she had really been raped. That was the *last* time I stopped reading Fark.]
In the Madison case, pharmacist Neil Noesen, 30, after refusing to refill a birth-control prescription, did not transfer it to another pharmacist or return it to the woman. She was able to get her prescription refilled two days later at the same pharmacy, but she missed a pill because of the delay.
["Neil, meet Crowbar." **content censored due to graphic violence**]
She filed a complaint after the incident occurred in the summer of 2002 in Menomonie, Wis. Christopher Klein, spokesman for Wisconsin's Department of Regulation and Licensing, says the issue is that Noesen didn't transfer or return the prescription. A hearing was held in October. The most severe punishment would be revoking Noesen's pharmacist license, but Klein says that is unlikely.
[Why?? Why the hell is that unlikely? He refused to do his job, thus depriving someone of a prescribed medication and potentially placing them at risk. I'm burning his license in effigy right now...]
Susan Winckler, spokeswoman and staff counsel for the American Pharmacists Association, says it is rare that pharmacists refuse to fill a prescription for moral reasons. She says it is even less common for a pharmacist to refuse to provide a referral.
“The reality is every one of those instances is one too many,” Winckler says. “Our policy supports stepping away but not obstructing.”
In the 1970s, because of abortion and sterilization, some states adopted refusal clauses to allow certain health care professionals to opt out of providing those services. The issue re-emerged in the 1990s, says Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive issues.
Sonfield says medical workers, insurers and employers increasingly want the right to refuse certain services because of medical developments, such as the “morning-after” pill, embryonic stem-cell research and assisted suicide.
“The more health care items you have that people feel are controversial, some people are going to object and want to opt out of being a part of that,” he says.
[No problem. Opt out. If a profession calls for you to participate in things you are morally opposed to pick another goddamned profession.
"I want to be a vet but I will not euthanize animals for any reason" --> I can't be a vet.
"I want to work in palliative care but I do not agree with morphine-based painkillers" --> I can't work in palliative care.
"I want to be a soldier but I refuse to shoot anyone, on moral grounds" --> I can't be a soldier.
"I want to be a pharmacist but I won't give out medications unless I agree with them" --> I can't be a pharmacist.
1) What is the Global Gag Rule, and what does it mean?
2) Do American teenagers know more now about safe sex than they did, say 5 years ago?
3) Can a woman who wants to use birth control still access it in the US?
1) This would require such a lengthy, vitriolic rant on my part that I'll just encourage you to read the outline here . It's amazing that abortion is still legal in the United States but they have managed to essentially outlaw it in some of the poorest countries in the world.
2) Well, what do you think? Read a re-post of a New York Times op-ed column here. If you don't mind registering on the New York Times site you can read it direct from the source. It's free to register and comes in handy for Crowbar all the time.
3) This is the Read N' Rant portion of our program:
11/08/2004
USA TODAY
Druggists refuse to give out pill
Say their religion forbids the use of contraceptives
By Charisse Jones
For a year, Julee Lacey stopped in a CVS pharmacy near her home in a Fort Worth suburb to get refills of her birth-control pills. Then one day last March, the pharmacist refused to fill Lacey's prescription because she did not believe in birth control.
“I was shocked,” says Lacey, 33, who was not able to get her prescription until the next day and missed taking one of her pills. “Their job is not to regulate what people take or do. It's just to fill the prescription that was ordered by my physician.”
Some pharmacists, however, disagree and refuse on moral grounds to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. And states from Rhode Island to Washington have proposed laws that would protect such decisions.
[Did you notice that? This is not one anecdotal incident...*multiple* states are suggesting this is conscionable.]
Mississippi enacted a sweeping statute that went into effect in July that allows health care providers, including pharmacists, to not participate in procedures that go against their conscience. South Dakota and Arkansas already had laws that protect a pharmacist's right to refuse to dispense medicines. Ten other states considered similar bills this year.
The American Pharmacists Association, with 50,000 members, has a policy that says druggists can refuse to fill prescriptions if they object on moral grounds [so what if they have moral grounds that state that cancer medications aren't acceptable? Can they refuse to dispense those drugs too? After all, to impede the growth of cancer one must kill many, many living cells], but they must make arrangements so a patient can still get the pills. Yet some pharmacists have refused to hand the prescription to another druggist to fill.
In Madison, Wis., a pharmacist faces possible disciplinary action by the state pharmacy board for refusing to transfer a woman's prescription for birth-control pills to another druggist or to give the slip back to her. He would not refill it because of his religious views.
[So this numb fuck believes he has the right to decide for me whether I should have to be a mother because HE wants me to? And would actually have the nerve to TAKE my prescription from me and not give it back? What would I have done, I wonder? Called 911 and reported a theft in progress? Or just blown an artery and started demolishing the pharmacy?]
Some advocates for women's reproductive rights are worried that such actions by pharmacists and legislatures are gaining momentum.
["worried"? We should be rioting.]
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a provision in September that would block federal funds from local, state and federal authorities if they make health care workers perform, pay for or make referrals for abortions.
“We have always understood that the battles about abortion were just the tip of a larger ideological iceberg, and that it's really birth control that they're after also,” says Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “The explosion in the number of legislative initiatives and the number of individuals who are just saying, ‘We're not going to fill that prescription for you because we don't believe in it' is astonishing,” she said.
Pharmacists have moved to the front of the debate because of such drugs as the “morning-after” pill, which is emergency contraception that can prevent fertilization if taken within 120 hours of unprotected intercourse.
While some pharmacists cite religious reasons for opposing birth control, others believe life begins with fertilization and see hormonal contraceptives, and the morning-after pill in particular, as capable of causing an abortion.
[Um, just to clarify, that point makes it appear that there are two groups, with separate sets of reasons. Read the sentence again - they're the same group and they're both for "religious reasons".]
“I refuse to dispense a drug with a significant mechanism to stop human life,” says Karen Brauer, president of the 1,500-member Pharmacists for Life International. [Notwithstanding the number of drugs she dispenses every day that could meet that criteria, this statement should read "I'm incapable of meeting the requirements of my profession and thus need to access no-longer-existent employment programs cut by the Bush administration".] Brauer was fired in 1996 after she refused to refill a prescription for birth-control pills at a Kmart in the Cincinnati suburb of Delhi Township.
Lacey, of North Richland Hills, Texas, filed a complaint with the Texas Board of Pharmacy after her prescription was refused in March. In February, another Texas pharmacist at an Eckerd drug store in Denton wouldn't give contraceptives to a woman who was said to be a rape victim.
[This story actually sparked a lively debate on Fark about sluts who deserve to get pregnant if they open their legs, and those wanting proof she had really been raped. That was the *last* time I stopped reading Fark.]
In the Madison case, pharmacist Neil Noesen, 30, after refusing to refill a birth-control prescription, did not transfer it to another pharmacist or return it to the woman. She was able to get her prescription refilled two days later at the same pharmacy, but she missed a pill because of the delay.
["Neil, meet Crowbar." **content censored due to graphic violence**]
She filed a complaint after the incident occurred in the summer of 2002 in Menomonie, Wis. Christopher Klein, spokesman for Wisconsin's Department of Regulation and Licensing, says the issue is that Noesen didn't transfer or return the prescription. A hearing was held in October. The most severe punishment would be revoking Noesen's pharmacist license, but Klein says that is unlikely.
[Why?? Why the hell is that unlikely? He refused to do his job, thus depriving someone of a prescribed medication and potentially placing them at risk. I'm burning his license in effigy right now...]
Susan Winckler, spokeswoman and staff counsel for the American Pharmacists Association, says it is rare that pharmacists refuse to fill a prescription for moral reasons. She says it is even less common for a pharmacist to refuse to provide a referral.
“The reality is every one of those instances is one too many,” Winckler says. “Our policy supports stepping away but not obstructing.”
In the 1970s, because of abortion and sterilization, some states adopted refusal clauses to allow certain health care professionals to opt out of providing those services. The issue re-emerged in the 1990s, says Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive issues.
Sonfield says medical workers, insurers and employers increasingly want the right to refuse certain services because of medical developments, such as the “morning-after” pill, embryonic stem-cell research and assisted suicide.
“The more health care items you have that people feel are controversial, some people are going to object and want to opt out of being a part of that,” he says.
[No problem. Opt out. If a profession calls for you to participate in things you are morally opposed to pick another goddamned profession.
"I want to be a vet but I will not euthanize animals for any reason" --> I can't be a vet.
"I want to work in palliative care but I do not agree with morphine-based painkillers" --> I can't work in palliative care.
"I want to be a soldier but I refuse to shoot anyone, on moral grounds" --> I can't be a soldier.
"I want to be a pharmacist but I won't give out medications unless I agree with them" --> I can't be a pharmacist.
Why is this even a fucking ISSUE?! Oh, I know why....because this issue disproportionately affects women, and is about women being allowed to make basic decisions about the _rest_of_their_natural_lives. Who the hell do we think we are? Fuckin' uppity bitches.]
In Wisconsin, a petition drive is underway to revive a proposed law that would protect pharmacists who refuse to prescribe drugs they believe could cause an abortion or be used for assisted suicide.
“It just recognizes that pharmacists should not be forced to choose between their consciences and their livelihoods,” says Matt Sande of Pro-Life Wisconsin. “They should not be compelled to become parties to abortion.”
Oh you motherfuckers and your unadulterated self-serving idiocy. Ok, so let's compare:
If an emergency room doctor were a Jehovah's Witness and refused to give a blood transfusion (or even call someone else to do it), and then insisted they should not be forced to because their religion opposes it, do you think anybody would even be having this discussion? Do you think emergency room doctors would be supported in opting out of ordering transfusions, because they 'should not be forced to choose between their consciences and their livelihoods'? These same lobbyists would be the first ones screaming about having someone else's religious beliefs imposed on them and that doctor would be in jail so fast your head would spin. Point of fact, that doctor would never have made it through med school, and yet somehow, no one raised a red flag about these pharmacists' inability to do their jobs.
The hypocrisy is so incredibly thick I can barely breathe.
posted by Crowbar at 2:27 a.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home