# Pharmacists, and fulfilling prescriptions against that go against their moral beliefs **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 25, 2013, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pharmacists-and-fulfilling-prescriptions-against-that-go-against-their-moral-beliefs/672210 "2013-10-25T14:46:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 50
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pharmacists-and-fulfilling-prescriptions-against-that-go-against-their-moral-beliefs/672210/50 "2013-10-26T03:28:42Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Denying a woman access to birth control (and yes, that’s what abortion is) is an act of bigotry and aggression. Providing the state with poison to kill someone is _also_ an act of aggression. And both undercut trust and respect of the profession; if someone is willing to forbid a woman contraception to “punish the slut”, why wouldn’t they be willing to quietly replace an AIDS patients antiviral drugs with something that doesn’t work to punish _them?_ They’ve already demonstrated that what matters to them is their bigotry, not their profession. > > People in a medical profession shouldn’t use their position to harm people; it undercuts the trust that lets the institution of medicine function. Therefore, pharmacists should neither provide poison to kill the victims of the death penalty, nor should they be allowed to torment women because some book of Iron Age mythology tells them to. Der Trihs, you should know better than this. In effect, your need to cast those with whom you disagree in the worst possible light can be extremely detrimental to any form of discussion and distracts from reasonable debate. In the above post, you characterize a group of people with beliefs differing from yours as bullies (by your repeated use of the word ‘aggression’) and bigots. Instead of dealing with people as individuals you seem to prefer to treat them as classes of beings. This is no different than a true bigot holding erroneous beliefs about ‘all jews’ or ‘all blacks’. It is offensive and makes you a lightning rod for those who would - whether intentionally or not - alter the course of what could be a reasonable debate. And that I will not permit. Over-the-top comments - which seem to come from you on a regular basis - are out of line. You should think hard before you again accuse an entire group of people of ‘punishing the slut’ or being bigots when they simply disagree with you. Barring direct evidence in posts or public statements such statements as yours serve no purpose. Hell, you equate - in the post above - those who oppose birth control with a straw man that goes around murdering - through the secret denial of life-saving drugs - HIV positive persons. There is no means by which you can justify that statement on a rational basis. The sad thing is that I - and those paying attention - know that you CAN post in a reasonable manner. You do so in other fora on the boards. You do so the majority of the time in Great Debates. You must learn to control your posting style so that you - the intelligent and passionate man you appear to be - will be taken seriously and stop racking up warnings. It is not hard to find ways to express disagreement with the viewpoints of others that does not lead to the insult direct or over-the-top accusations. I encourage you to expand your linguistic horizons. In time, I believe you’ll enjoy debate more when you find you don’t need to resort to bomb throwing accusations that mean little and, honestly, only serve to make others - even those who might agree with your politics for the most part - take you less seriously than you might hope. Of course, if you must do so, the BBQ Pit is one click away. There you may attack and accuse other posters and groups to your hearts content. But in Great Debates you may not. Warning issued. Don’t do it again. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pharmacists-and-fulfilling-prescriptions-against-that-go-against-their-moral-beliefs/672210)._