Fortunately there is the internet, and the ability to have perscription drugs mailed to you - and sometimes even perscribed over the internet.
(I find this very frightening when talking about Vicodin, and even disconcerting talking about BCP)
Ummm… Just a slight nitpick here, the OP is talking about birth control pills, not a procedure - birth control pills. You know, something that prevents pregnancy, not gets rid of a fetus. Taking a birth control pill (or wearing a condom, for that matter) is NOT an invasive medical procedure, nor is it the morning after pill (which I think should be available to women without perscription, but that’s just me).
And no, the pharmacist and/or doctor is NOT a “fucking slave” as you so succinctly put it; however, he or she is there to act in my best interest. If it is in my best interest to have birth control pills (and it is, because without hormones, I have seizures, which could potentially kill any fetus I carry), and if a doctor or pharmacist objected to doing what was in my best interest, I would absolutely be really fucking pissed off, and with very good reason.
Let’s get utilitarian for one moment and compare consequences. Doctor writes a scrip that he feels icky about. Consequence: doctor feels icky.
Woman is denied access to birth control, is not privileged enough to be able to find another PCP. Consequence: an unwanted child is born to a person who may/may not have the resources to care for it.
Hmmmm, I wonder which one we should lose sleep over.
Hmmmm, let’s see …
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A woman goes to her doctor and for whatever reasons and discussions held between the woman and her doctor, leaves with a perscription.
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Said woman now goes to a pharmacist to have the perscription filled.
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Said pharmacist, having certain moral issues with the drug (and its intended effects), refuses to fill the perscription.
(Assumptions made the pharmacist does not post any notices that said pharmacy only fills perscriptions that meet selected personal and moral values of the pharmacist.)
Compare this with …
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A newspaper contracts with an individual to deliver the newspapers in a geographic area on a daily basis.
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The carrier has a defined route with customers who pay for the newspaper so that they can keep abreast of the news and events of the day.
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The carrier, citing personal moral issues, refuses to deliver said newspaper on days when the headlines conflict with said personal beliefs.
(Assumptions made the news carrier prior to contracting with the newspaper for delivery of said papers did not raise any notice that said carrier only delivers newspapers containing headlines and stories that meet selected personal and moral values of the carrier.)
Granted, the pharmacist and the news carrier are hardly compatible/comparable occupations. However, I believe the principle to be the same.
It is easy to say, just find another doctor who will prescribe OCP when you live in an area that is well-served with ob-gyns and family practioners. When you live in a rural area where there is one doctor or practice that is available AND there is no planned parenthood nearby (or even within your state), it is another. Yes, there might be a doctor who will prescribe them fifty or a hundred miles away but if you don’t have your own transportation it can be mighty hard to get there.
The issue of FPs who won’t prescribe OCP to any woman (married, unmarried, etc) makes me almost as angry as FPs who won’t prescribe antidepressants since depression is a “sin.” (In my opinion, those who do refuse to give prescriptions to patients with depression are commiting malpractice.)
If you think divorce is immoral, don’t become a Family Law attorney. Think corporations are evil, don’t become a stockbroker. Think video games are corrupting our youth, don’t become a game artist for Blizzard. Think birth control is immoral, don’t become an OB\GYN or GP.
Or, if you do any of these things, you need to be up front with your clients from the start. When they call for their first appointment, you need to find out if they want a divorce/want you to by Exxon/want you to create an image of someone having their head chopped off/want you to write a perscription for birth control (these being pretty standard things to do in these jobs) and say “I’m sorry, you’ll need to find another attorney/broker/artist/doctor. I don’t do divorce/non-environmentally friendly stock portfolios/violent images/prescriptions for birth control” If you are nice, you’d refer them to someone else, but you’d be under no obligation.
What’s immoral is letting someone come into your office, billing them for your time, and then having them leave without having gotten what they want because you won’t provide it, when what they are making is a reasonable and legal request of you in your profession.
Doctors have an additional problem. People NEED health care and in some communities there is a shortage of doctors. A doctor working in a small community may need to treat all sorts of patients with all sorts of problems. If some 23 year old woman never gets into see the doctor because the only one in town won’t provide birth control, and then gets cervical cancer, that’s a problem. The only doctor in town needs to be a little more pragmatic - or service a town where he and the community can afford for him to maintain his morals.
I turned down a promotion into management a while ago. The reason, I don’t want to lay anyone off. I realize that sometimes its a business necessity, but I have ethical issues with doing it and ethical issues with how its done. So I don’t do it. Its meant my career isn’t where it could be, but that’s life.
I would lose sleep over valuing utility over morality and moral independence.
I don’t see how you could possibly think that it is OK to force the doctor to perscribe medication to woman even though it violates his moral values just so the woman can continue to have sex without risk of the natural consequences of sex.
So in your mind the right of the woman to have sex with reduced risk of pregnancy is a more important right than a doctor’s right to abstain from violating his own personal, religious, and ethical values. Interesting.
By the way, for most people, being forced to violate one’s own moral values and standards amounts to much more than an “icky feeling.” I get an icky feeling when I eat greasy food - when I violate my moral values I suffer from guilt, emotional pain and distress, and breakdown of personal authenticity. Not quite apples and apples.
I ran into this briefly while my normal gynecologist was out on maternity leave - the doctor did write my prescription, but made it eminently clear that he did not approve of my then 18-year-old self being on birth control. I’m thinking he actually wrote the scrip after learning I was only on the pills because of debilitating cramps. Thank goodness my normal doctor is back now.
Had this happened a year later, he would have looked completely ridiculous, as it was really a moot point in the end. Tests done this spring showed I’m infertile anyway.
Honestly, anyone who has strong opinions against a major part of a field should not go into that field. It will cause a lot of problems on both ends.
Sorry, Coelecanth, if doing what’s in someone else’s best interests is going to cause you severe personal distress, don’t fucking go to medical school, or nursing school, or pharmacy school. As a health care professional, it is a doctor/nurse/pharmacist’s moral obligation to do what’s in the patient’s best interest. That’s what the various oaths for these professions are all about. The patient’s well-being comes before everything else. If you are unwilling or unable to put the patient’s well-being ahead of your personal beliefs, you have no business taking that oath.
Then it sounds to me like you have problems with people having sex and using birth control. Might I suggest that going into the medical field would be a bad idea? And if you went into medicine only to experience an epiphany after you got your license, then you really oughta think hard about changing fields.
See above advice.
That was the part of the article that really got me riled up - I think it was Katie Williams’ part of the story. It says that when she made the appointment, she stated that she needed an exam and a pill renewal. Why didn’t someone tell her right then that the doctor was not prescribing the pills?
What would be the problem with sending a letter to your existing patients just saying “I’ve come to the conclusion that I can no longer in good conscience do XYZ, and I’ll understand if you prefer to find someone who will.”
Are you aware that oral contraceptives are used for more than just burth control? They are a common prescription for, among other afflictions, dysmenorrhea or endometriosis. Often they are the only non-surgical option for stopping the pain before it can start. Several posters in this thread have said that they use BCP for this very purpose.
I find it strange to deny on moral grounds the only medication that can head off debilitating pain. To present a severe but not uncommon example, if a teenaged virgin walked into an office with severely painful periods, would you rather she suffer because her doctor disapproves of birth control for unmarried women?
So basically, our only option is to ask a doctor out front, when we first meet with him or her, “Do you have any problems prescribing birth control/abortions/etc?”
Damn. I mean…damn.
If you’re going to a doctor for your reproductive health issues, that’s probably a question you should be asking.
It would be best if physicians indicated right up front their individual choices about what they won’t treat, but it’s not likely to happen. So be proactive.
And if I find a pharmacist who is refusing to fill a valid prescription written by me for my patient I will have a chat with said pharmacist. Frankly, it’s not the business of the pharmacist to know whether I’m prescribing hormonal therapy to prevent a conception or to try to stop dysfunctional uterine bleeding. That’s between me and my patient.
Thank you!
It is none of his business whatsoever. If he can’t wrap his brain around that fact he should go into another field.
Why thank you Podkayne but I did not state, credit nor discredit the current admin, just the war on terror (which can be traced back to the 1979 hostage situation) and the freeing of the women of Iraq. As for your hijack about the current admin just going after oil rich countries, please provide a cite where the US has stolen a single f’n drop of Iraqi oil or shut the F up
Well at least one of you are not foaming at the mouth. Honestly I see a restrictions on ‘partial birth abortion’ in the US combined to women in Iraq being free, able to vote, drive, and in general not treated like property overall a big plus for women’s rights worldwide.
Amen, amen, amen. The whole “stay-at-home” 1950s housewife who did nothing but look after her kids and cook for her man, with - just maybe - a friend popping round for a 5 minute cup of tea and a chat, during which hausfrau continues her domestic duties lest she shirk for 5 minutes from nappies, cleaning and scrubbing, is a total fucking manufactured myth. It is also the route to misery, isolation, post-natal depression, and total loss of self-esteem.
Have a look at the developing world. Women may be confined to the domestic sphere, but it is a real community/family effort. Women are rarely - if ever - alone with kids with no other female adult company. The adult company is critical for women not to go insane.
OK, hon, go back and re-read the thread. We are NOT talking about a woman who is full-time-and-nothing-else homemaker, we’re talking about women with an outside job in addition to the job of raising her children.
You can NOT do the sort of career-job/telecommuting work you get paid for by an outside source AND raise kids at the same time. Someone is going to have to mind the little ones while the outside-job work gets done.
And are you seriously saying that, while recuperating from her multiple surgeries, she had NO help from anyone else - not your father, not a relative, not a sitter? I flat out don’t believe that. And if that DID occur it was, quite frankly, inhumane and abusive to ask a woman recuperating from either back or gall bladder or hysterectomy surgery to also take care of other human beings - of any age - during her recovery period. So… did someone other than your mother look after you during those times, or were you just left to fend for yourselves for a couple weeks?
Bingo. Dangerosa you’ve underlined exactly how I feel about the issue. I don’t want to force a doctor or pharmacist to do something they disagree with. I think that is wrong. However, they chose to go into a field where this is an accepted part of the job. Be a laboratory chemist instead of a pharmacist if you have issues with dispensing some medications. Be a heart specialist instead of a gyn if you have issues with some aspects of reproductive control.
I would not want to be the patient of a doctor who did not both 1) follow her own moral dictates and 2) respect my right to make decisions about my own body. Finding a doctor where there is no conflict would be my solution – even if that required quite a bit of effort on my part. The same is true of my pharmacist.