For your sake, I certainly hope you do a series of stretching exercises before warping facts like you’ve done here.
If* treatment * confused your argument so, I hesitate to move on to care and treatment. But in your absurd hypothetical, you want us to accept a pharmacist who is intent on watching another human being die based on a conscious belief, in CLEAR violation of the CC law, then I’m forced to believe you find it necessary to reach beyond logic or reason to come up with your absurd hypothetical results. But by damn, you’re intent on proving the sky is falling with respect to CC laws, no matter how irrational the supporting logic needed to do it.
Do you really imagine a reader following along here, reading what you’ve written, and thinking, “Oooh, good point!”
Very simple: you are claiming that we should treat racial discrimination as analogous to denial of services at a pharmacy. I’m saying that no legal authorities agree with you, and inviting you to rebut that claim.
And your response is the four words quoted above.
I’m happy with that summary of our respective positions.
Your admission that you were wrong and refuse to corerct your error, and made numerous incorrect statements about what the law actually says is accpeted. Very kind of you.
You misspelled
“Since you showed I was utterly wrong about “treatment” as it was completely undefined, and my claims about pharmacists having to provide prescriptions were directly gainsaid by the law I claimed supported them.”
It’s easy, these sorts of typos happen.
I’m getting used to the word-games you folks are using in this discussion. “Absurd hypothetical” evidently means “What the law actually says and explicitly allows, but I’d rather handwave away, if at all possible.”
I really do wish that once your errors were pointed out, you didn’t reuse them again. And again. And again. Yet again, the only obligation that a pharmacist has is to provide undefined “care and treatment”. They are, explicitly, not mandated to fill the necessary prescription. In fact, if the prescription is the thing that’s necessary and the pharmacist has used their “conscience” to deny it to a patient (which you also dispute, because unless every pharmacist in the known universe also denies is, you’re calling no backsiez), their only obligation is to provide non-defined “care and treatment” until someone comes along who will provide the medicine.
It’s telling that you can’t show how the law says anything else, despite your fictional claims that while I’d quoted and analyzed it multiple times, I “hadn’t seen it”.
Nope Bricker, remember, having a position would be “irrelevant”. You don’t have one.
I doubt there are pharmacist who are as confused about what “care and treatment” mean as your faulty logic might suggest.
But, for the sake of allowing you yet another chance to make a valid point, please take a moment and find a single fact that demonstrates your absurd hypothetical examples are anything more than an irrational, exaggerated fear on your part.
Just one example of anyone suffering the fate you claim the law allows will be sufficient.
You have confused “position,” which I most certainly have, with “personal opinion about what the law should be,” which I also have but have not fully shared.
My position is of much relevance in a debate. Here it is again: no legal authorities agree that racial discrimination is on par with refusal of service at a pharmacy.
You know, it does not matter if we can point to instances where someone was harmed by these Conscience Clause rules. Our rights are not measured by how many people are harmed. If you have your Free Speech rights stepped on it does not matter if the other 300 million people in America suffer no harm.
Allowing pharmacists to deny service based on their conscience is not fundamentally different than a burger joint denying service to a black man because he is black. It does not matter if there is another burger joint right next door. It does not matter that the black man suffers nothing more than a 15 second walk next door for a burger.
No legal authorities agree that women should not be discriminated against via conscience clause laws? Well, for 90 years of the Jim Crow era no courts in those states (or federal courts) agreed that black people had a right to get a burger anywhere that sells them. In short, no courts agreed Jim Crow was wrong…till they did. In the meantime the country was treated to 90 years of that horror show.
If we were debating Jim Crow laws in 1950 I fully expect your bigotry would shine through as you defended the status quo telling us, “No courts agree with you. The guy can get a burger elsewhere so no harm is done.”
Further, these conscience clause laws cannot be analyzed alone. In the Jim Crow era you might look at any one law and deem it to not be that onerus. In aggregate they added up to something pretty oppressive.
Those opposed to abortion gleefully throw every possible roadblock in the way of getting an abortion they possibly can. Any one might seem not so bad. Taken together they add up to a much greater barrier than they do analyzed individually.
I am pretty sure in the past you (or maybe it was someone else…I forget and this is heavily paraphrased) noted that nickle-and-dime laws to restrict gun sales in various ways, when added together, became an impermissible restriction of constitutional rights.
I cited earlier the natural progression your conscience clause laws bring us to with the Protect Life Act which will allow hospitals to not only refuse an abortion to save the life of the woman but also allow them to do nothing to get her help elsewhere. She can literally die right there. This is a federal law so would apply everywhere in the US.
I’d call that a harm and if you think it can’t happen recall the nun who was excommunicated not to long ago for allowing an abortion to save a woman’s life (I believe she was also demoted). Think the next Catholic hospital administrator won’t remember that if a similar circumstance presents itself?
Put down the goalposts and step away carefully. Whatever pharmacists may think it means, “care and treatment” is utterly undefined in the law. Additionally, you were dead wrong when you claimed that the law said pharmacists must provide the prescription that it explicitly says they don’t have to provide. The law, in fact, does not contain the claim that you made, which is that pharmacists must provide the prescription in the case of life-threatening (also undefined) situations.
Instead of retracting your errors, you are now simply trying to handwave away the facts as “faulty logic”.
Already covered this: I’m getting used to the word-games you folks are using in this discussion. “Absurd hypothetical” evidently means “What the law actually says and explicitly allows, but I’d rather handwave away, if at all possible.” Any time you’d like to address your errors, or show that they aren’t, feel free. Or continue to obfuscate if you insist. Maybe claiming “fearmongering!” a few more times will give your argument that logical ooomph it’s lacking.
Nope, you have not presented any position. You have dodged, you have offered up snide sniping, but you have provided no actual position. Even here, this is your traditional dodge in this thread “the law says…”
We all get that. We’re debating what the law should say. We also know that you understand this, and so your game-playing is particularly obviously. To point it out yet again:
To point out the obvious to you, this is how you’d debate if you actually intended to present a position:
It is okay to discriminate against women who may have had abortions, but it is not okay to discriminate against blacks because [fill in the blank.].
-[they’re different] does not answer take an actual position. Why does that difference mean you can discriminate against one but not the other? Races and sexes are also different, can we discriminate against women then? And [they’re protected classes] does not state a position either. Why should people be protected from discrimination because of their race or sex but not because or whether or not they have medical needs but might have engaged in a legal procedure that the pharmacist personally doesn’t like?
-[bandwagon fallacy] does not take an actual position. Why is the “will of the people” right in this case? Was Jim Crow also right because it too represented the will of the people and was upheld in the courts?
-[appeal to tradition] does not take an actual position. Why should we preference “a tradition of not making people perform parts of their jobs that they don’t like” above the medical needs of patients who have been prescribed medicine by certified doctors and who have gone to a state-regulated business to obtain those medicines?
-[because not many are probably going to be effected] does not take an actual position. Why is it okay for a general principle to be violated if there are only a few exceptions? There’s only one of you, if you were denied your free speech rights should we just shrug our shoulders, since sure the principle was violated but it only has the potential to effect one American and that’s an infinitesimal percentage?
Etc, etc, etc.*
We all understand that this is how the laws are written and they’ve been interpreted. Your continued return to hiding behind them speaks to a lack of any actual arugment that you could possibly put forward. * Now that you understand that each and every single person groks what the laws are, take a position (finally) on what the laws should be, why that is, and why it’s correct do discriminate against women who’ve (may have) had abortions.
To be honest I have little hope that you’ll actually provide your position and defend it as this seems to be a Nyeh Nyeh! sniping “debate” thread, but who knows.
That’s not true. Some rights are analyzed that way. Other rights can indeed be analyzed by what actual impact the law has on them. Your confident pronouncement of a contrary principle is utterly wrong. It depends on the rights being discussed.
Again: your confident assertion of a fact does not transform it from wishful thinking into an actual fact. If you said, “In my ideal world, it does not matter if there is another burger joint right next door,” you’d be fine. But in the real, actual world, racial discrimination is not analyzed in the same way as access to a particular pharmacy is.
So that would make you wrong.
As an aspirational statement, I’m sure you’d like things to be that way. But they are not.
So what? I could use the precise argument the other way. In discussing New Jersey’s requirement that pharmacists serve regardless of their beliefs, I could say it’s wrong, and dismiss the fact that no court agrees with me by pointing to Jim Crow decisions.
But here’s a further data point. Jim Crow laws were on a steady decline; as 1964 approached, they were eroded piece by piece. One could safely say the trend in the country was to eradicate them.
In contrast, the trend for pharmacist conscience clause rules has been on the rise.
So if the comparison with Jim Crow is even slightly useful, it’s in the negative, and shows us that things aren’t going the Whack-a-Mole way.
This entire thread has been you asserting that your wishes about how the world should be are not wishes, but actual facts.
Wasn’t it the Left that claimed to live in a “reality based community” during the Bush years?
Q FinnAgain
I already stated that I was not going to go into the meaning of care and treatment due to the problems you encountered dealing with the term treatment. Fortunately, there aren’t many other people who don’t comprehend the requirement of that provision. I doubt a medical professional has a problem understanding it either.
You’re really reaching for something to build on in this thread. Sand isn’t working well is it? I’d suggest, once again, you find an example of real harm coming from the CC laws and return with the cite.
Because in this country, we value personal freedom, and we intrude upon it only when the alternatives are far worse. In the case of racial discrimination, the alternatives are far worse. In the case of a person haviong to walk a few blocks to a different pharmacy, they are not. Racial discrimination pervades the entire life of those discriminated against. Telling someone to use a different pharmacy is not comparable in scope or seriousness.
And before you dismiss the “this is what the law is” argument, let point out what ELSE we do in this country: we elect leaders who make the law. If we don’t like their work, we replace them. This is the key point about being American: we, jointly, are sovereign in this land.
So it’s quite relevant to point to what the law is, because we made the law, and that gives it the same legitimacy – in fact, much more – than the decree of a emperor or potentate of an earlier age.
You struggle with this. You say that despite the law, your view should be considered the correct one. Well, the beauty of the system we have is that you’re free to advocate for adoption of your ideas. And perhaps you will sway enough people that the law will change.
But you certainly haven’t swayed me. And you and your ilk seem to be fighting a losing battle, with more and more states adopting conscience clause laws, rather than the trend going the other way.
Except we have laid out our arguments, you are just making an assertion here.
Jim Crow laws were on the rise before they were on the decline. This is meaningless.
As has been pointed out to you numerous times in this thread we all get what the law currently says. It is you hiding behind that fact and giving no rationale for why it is a good law. We are arguing why it is a bad law. The thread is filled with those arguments. Arguments you have assiduously avoided addressing beyond, “The courts say it is legal! They do not agree with you so you are wrong!” :rolleyes:
It is nothing more than the Conscience Clause laws you are defending expanded to include hospitals so they do not have to perform an abortion under any circumstance even if it means the death of the woman.
Would you support a court clerk refusing to file a case because the case related to a woman having an abortion? Just come back tomorrow and have a different clerk do it?
*"In 2004, a Texas pharmacist refused to provide emergency contraceptives to a rape victim. In 2006, a Northern California pharmacist refused to provide emergency contraceptives to the mother of a newborn baby after she and her husband had experienced birth-control failure. During the same year, a Washington pharmacist refused emergency contraceptives to a woman who had also experienced birth-control failure.
The pharmacists in these examples from California and Washington were unwilling to assist in transferring the prescriptions, and the Washington pharmacist would only direct the woman to another pharmacy after she insisted repeatedly. Other pharmacists have even gone as far as berating patients for attempting to “kill the baby” or misinforming them that birth control is “dangerous” or “causes cancer.”*
Not surprisingly, both California and Washington enacted laws to protect patients. California’s requires a Conscience Pharmacist’s employer to approve of their behavior, and for prescriptions to be filled in a “timely” manner. Washington enacted a duty-to-dispense law that did not allow for the druggist to block prescriptions on personal moral/religious grounds. That law got suspended on appeal to a federal judge (not sure how that squares with Bricker’s “The People’s Will Decides All” argument).
One curious thing about the people fervently supporting these “conscience” laws who claim that hey, it’s no biggie, no one is being prevented from getting their prescriptions, there are no victims blah blah blah. If such laws are so ineffective, why the big push to get them passed? Just to keep a few pharmacists’ consciences squeaky-clean? The answer is that proponents are hopeful that they will prevent applications of emergency contraception (as well as contraceptive use in general). They obviously believe such laws will work in their favor.
An interesting passage in the abcnews.com article I cited provides an additional explanation of why some pharmacists’ advocates like these laws.
*"While many (pharmacists) agree that legally prescribed and clinically viable prescriptions should be filled regardless of personal religious stances, they are wary of laws that would require them to dispense. To some, a legal mandate would turn them into nothing more than prescription vending machines.
“You don’t need a pharmacist at all if you’re going to just require them to dispense medications. That takes away their clinical role,” said Susan Winckler, vice president of policy and communications for the America Pharmacists Association, which counts about 200,000 pharmacists as members."*
That comment indicates a focus on preserving the power and image of pharmacists, rather than serving the needs of patients. It’s not enough to have a significant clinical role in assuring that prescriptions are safely and accurately delivered - you’ve got to be able to play God as well.
You mean, how I pointed out that it was completely undefined and your claimed interpretation was gainsaid by what the law actually said? That you were simply wrong when you claimed that the law said pharmacists have to dispense the medicines that they’re refusing to dispense if it’s a life-threatening situation when in fact it said the exact opposite?
If you want to hang your hat on that as the reason you won’t retract your errors, okay.
No, seriously, this has already been dealt with: I’m getting used to the word-games you folks are using in this discussion. “Absurd hypothetical” evidently means “What the law actually says and explicitly allows, but I’d rather handwave away, if at all possible.”
So if the blacks just had to leave the Woolworth’s lunch counter and walk a few more blocks, it’d be okay?
So if, instead, we instituted a law that said that pharmacists could refuse to serve black people, but all other areas of discrimination were forbidden, that too would be okay?
You do realize that you still haven’t offered a position as to why allowing pharmacists to discriminate against women who (may) have had abortions is good but allowing pharmacists to discriminate against blacks is bad, as long as we confine that discrimination to pharmacy service?
Please don’t use the dodge “Well, one would happen more than the other”. We’re discussing the principles involved. Unless you honestly want to champion the principle that discrimination is acceptable as long as it’s not too frequent.
Again, would you support having your right to free speech taken away since, after all, it’d only effect an infinitesimally small fraction of Americans? Or maybe just a law that said your free speech could be taken away if we felt like it, and then after all although the law allowed it to happen it hadn’t yet, and besides, it’s not like there are many Brickers in the US, so who cares?
No, it’s easily dismissible because it’s a dodge. It’s the same exact dodge that could have been used during Jim Crow. “Well, that’s the law, tough shit, hippie!” The fact that something is the law means only that it’s the law, not that it’s justice and certainly not that we have to accept it as a good law. Falling back on “but… it’s the law” indicates that you’ve run out of actual arguments.
The person struggling with the concept is you. There’s absolutely no daylight between agreeing that something is the law, and arguing that it’s a bad law.
And we’re right back to the same tactics someone would use to support Jim Crow. Your pretense that people are simply saying that their views are the “correct” ones is also more than a little disingenuous. We’ve been giving reasons and arguing for why the law is a bad one. Which is why “But… it’s the law” is not only non-responsive, it’s a dodge.
Do you actually intended to Debate, in a somewhat Great fashion, whether or not these laws should be in place and why they’re good laws? Or is this really a LiveJournal post where all that you’re prepared to back up is “Hey, here’s the law. Suck it, pro choice hippies!”
Why is it an “argument” when you invoke Jim Crow laws but an “assertion” when I do it?
Not really. Jim Crow laws specifically grew out of the vacuum that followed the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. When slavery was extant, Jim Crow laws did not exist, or need to.
When you consider slavery as part of the Jim Crow universe, as it certainly was in spirit, then you’re quite wrong: overall, the laws permitting discrimination against blacks was at an all-time high when slavery was extant, and then trended generally downwards until 1964.
Well, the courts merely say the law is permissible. The legislature says the practice is legal. (I know, I know – you have so long depended on courts to write the laws for you that this is probably an understandable mistake).
I’ve given my argument for why the law is generally a good one: in this country, we intrude on personal freedom only when the alternative is worse. When we balance a pharmacist’s right to not dispense medications that offend his conscience with the “right” of a patient not to walk a few blocks, the answer is obvious.
You don’t agree with that balancing. That’s fine. How are we to resolve this basic disagreement?
And how many blocks do you have to walk if your prescription is denied in Athol, Idaho? Blanchard? Spirit Lake? Hayden Lake? State Line?
BTW, thanks for doing your part in turning “personal freedom” into as ugly a euphamism as “states rights”.
So it would be okay for restaurants, and only restaurants, to refuse service to blacks? After all, they’d only have to walk a few blocks.
Or maybe only pharmacies can do that to blacks?
You’re also being phenomenally disingenuous when you pretend that it’s an issue of “walking a few blocks”. To begin with, there is no such provision in the law that would prevent every single pharmacist in a town from refusing to dispense medications that are legally prescribed. Yes, your traditional dodge is that it’s unlikely, but it’s explicitly allowed under the laws in question, unless you can find a geographic-proximity provision? Likewise, you are deliberately ignoring the fact that not every location in the country has another pharmacy “a few blocks” away, that not everybody has access to reliable transportation, etc…
This is pretty unconscionable. I don’t see how you can justify not providing therapeutic drugs AFTER the abortion. The law permitting this sort of behaviour seems too broad.