So again, should we go after men’s clothing stores and the like? They are denying women the ability to buy the clothes that they need? Or how about the Hare Krishna vegetarian restaurants, should we go after them because they refuse to serve meat, and for religious reasons no less!
The pharmacist is not forbidding women access to contraceptives. Not helping someone do something != forbidding them to do it. It is the government, not the individual pharmacist that forbids anyone getting contraceptives without a pharmacist dispensing it. If one pharmacist refuses to give them then they can go to any number of other pharmacists or convince the government to relax the rules on obtaining contraceptives. One individual pharmacist simply does not have the ability to stop anyone from obtaining contraceptives legally at all. It is silly to suggest that the are.
I just want to add I agree with this. I don’t think that businesses should be made to accommodate pharmacists that refuse to dispense birth control. If they can find an employer that is sympathetic with their objections, all well and good. If not then they should be able to be fired.
That I think is an entirely separate issue to whether it is right for the government, via licensing, to force pharmacists to go against their conscience. This is different to whether it is right for employers, through continuing employment, force pharmacists to go against their conscience.
Neither of those are government restricted sellers of medical supplies. false comparison. Nor are either of them motivated by religious bigotry.
Yes, it is when you are the gatekeeper.
And by the same logic it would be silly to claim that a school that refuses to let black kids attend is denying them an education. Bring back segregation! They can just move to another state, right?
Doesn’t matter. Your argument seems to be that not selling something that someone might want to buy is inherently discriminating. What I am pointing out is that situation is very common across a range of things. Whether or not they are government restricted sellers makes little difference. There are only a finite number of sellers of any individual item anyway. Practically there is a limit to how many places will sell anything.
If the government restricted thing gets you up in arms, what about sellers of alcohol. They too are licensed by the government. Should bars be required to stock every type of alcohol and sell it regardless of what they think since they are the government appointed gatekeepers?
No, because as I keep stating (and you keep ignoring) discriminating on the basis of service offered (selling the pill or not) != discriminating on the basis of people (black or white). If a school chooses to offer educational services then it should offer them to all people equally. If they choose to not offer a service to anyone that is fine too. Would you go into a elementary school and demand that they teach your high-school age children? If they don’t then they are discriminating on the basis of age are they not? Why are you not out there protesting all the ageist schools, especially those that are government run. Won’t someone think of the children!!
You keep talking about discrimination but I don’t think in this case it means what you think it does.
My lazy bad. By condoms, in most cases, I mean all sorts of contraception.
It can confuse the issue. Lazy, lazy me. I will use “contraception” as a generic term and consoms only when specific.
No.
Your mind reading skills are so bad that it is painful to see you writhe in helpless agony, you one-trick pony.
If a pharmacist/owner decided not to carry the pill (et al.) but he did carry the not-yet-invented male pill, THAT would be discrimination. Not dispensing a specific set of medicines to everyone means you treat everyone the same.
I fully support the right of women to choose the way they regulate concpetions in their bodiers.
I fully support the right of people to sell whatever the law allows them to sell.
I wonder…if the pharmacy carried all sorts of contracpetion except condoms…would that discriminate against men (cuz they wouldn’t be handle “protection” by themselves or women (cuz they’d have to always take care of “protection”).
So, women are free to use condoms just like homosexuals are perfectly free to get married as long as they marry someone of the opposite sex. :rolleyes: The people on your side never have any new arguments. The fact is, we are talking about pharmacists refusing to give women contraceptives, not men.
No, you don’t. You just make speeches pretending that you do, while supporting the right of religious bigots to prevent them from doing so.
Of course it would be discrimination against men, but they wouldn’t do that because this is all about the religiously motivated hatred of women, not men.
I saw no “chapter and verse” in your posting, just unspecified references to legal codes. Discuss with particulars.
Please also justify your statement that more states agree with you on this issue than don’t. As noted, the NWLC finds an implicit requirement in the laws of the vast majority of states (in addition to those states that spell it out explicitly) that pharmacies dispense legal prescriptions as written. How do states that don’t have a “religious conscience” clause in their pharmacy regulations magically “agree with” you?
And why exactly is it such a “stretch” for pharmacies to be required to dispense prescriptions properly issued by a physician, in addition to the bevy of pharmacy requirements already set forth in the legal codes of the states? You’ve tried to draw ludicrous equivalencies between the provision of health care and the buying of DVDs and booze - what is it about contraception that sticks so deeply in your craw that you think pharmacies/pharmacists can arbitrarily decide to withhold medications utilized by a large percentage of the populace?
A pharmacist’s license isn’t a license like a liqour license, it is a license like a medical license. The purpose of the licensing isn’t to control the amount of the activity, it is to maintain standards for people who engage in an activity where you handle addictive narcotics and potenitally fatal combinations of medication. If a million pharmacists decided to get licensed in NJ, they would be able to do so.
The profit margin on oral contraception for a pharmacy is like the margin on milk for a grocery store. It pays for its shelf space but you carry it more because of all the business you would lose if you didn’t carry it.
There is little doubt in my mind that a pharmacy can choose not to dispense birth control pills (except for therapeutic purposes) and they certainly can choose not to carry the morning after pill (I am not aware of a therapeutic purpose for the mroning after pill).
The Supreme Court found law restricting the sale of birth control pills unconstitutional (at least with respect to married women) in 1965. The same rule was not extended to unmarried women until 1972. It has been the single most important factor in liberating women that I can think of and I understand why women would want to defend their access to it but there is not a single place in the United States where you cannot get the pill regulrly mailed to you so what is the real issue here?
I think your number includes apspirin etc. Actual pharmacy sales couldn’t possibly be 4 billion. There are between 100K and 200K pharmacists in the country (there are only about 50K pharmacies in the country). Every pharmacy would have to dispense 1,000,000 prescriptions/year or 3,000 prescriptions/day to reach your 40 billion number.
Der Trihs, I can’t decide if you are being intentionally obtuse or inflammatory, or if you’re really incapable of following this argument. Our hypothetical Catholic pharmacist is morally opposed to selling any type of contraception to anyone. A pharmacy opposed to contraception to the point of not filling oral contrception scrips is unlikely to carry condoms either. It’s not the same effect, of course, since you can get condoms in a box of Cracker Jacks, but it has nothing to do with discrimination against women. Of course you are so irrationally embittered against any hint of religion that you’re not happy unless you can call them misogynistic racist anti-semites at every opportunity. I’m pretty confident that even your side in this debate sees how ridiculous your argument of discrimination is. Like I commented above, if you can show me an example of a pharmacist giving birth control to a man but not a women, then you have an argument. Don’t bring blacks or Jews or gays into it; that’s an obviously irrelevent and insincere argument and you only do it to promote your religion-hating agenda, which is not the topic of this thread.
I think just about everyone in this thread agrees with the second part - if your employer asks you to do something legal as part of your job, you do it or find another job. Unless there are states that require the employer to make a “reasonable accomdation” for your religion; I’m not sure if this would fall under that.
I’m not sure there’s much more to argue here. Some people see a compelling state interest in forcing pharmacy owners to compromise their firmly held religious convictions and sell a product abhorrent to them. Others see no compelling reason when the product in question is generally available elsewhere and instead see it as a religious protection issue, not to mention free enterprise. I don’t see anyone’s positions moving.
WAIT A MINUTE. So if I have no problem with contraception but I have a problem with abortion and when I became a pharmacist there was no such thing as a morning after pill, you think my boss should be able to fire me because I refuse to dispense the morning after pill?
Your position seems to be entirely based on private property rights with no cinsideration of first amendment rights.
Good god, you’d think if anyone would want to prevent women from having unwanted pregnancies and possible abortions, it’d be religious fundamentalists. Though I suppose that would require foresight, not their forte. And acknowledging the havoc that can be wreaked on a woman’s body by missing a day (and sometimes even a few hours) of hormonal birth control would require empathy.
The morning after pill is equivalent to taking 8-10 regular birth control pills. Literally. If a woman is lucky enough to have extra packs of the pill (well, most kinds) lying around and no Plan B, she can take 4-5 pills and then another 4-5 12 hours later, with the same effect (a reduced chance of pregnancy, depending on when it’s taken – and again, the closer to sexual activity it’s taken, the more effective, meaning any woman who’s got to race around the city or go to another town to find it has a higher chance of unwanted pregnancy and, therefore, there’s more chance she’ll want/require an abortion. Rather than taking regular birth control).
The Hatch amendment prophibits the government from spending any money on abortion, I think this would probably include the morning after pill. o as long as we are only talking about birth control pills, fine but that government run pharmacy probably can’t sell morning after pills.
“Definitive evidence exists for protection against ovarian and endometrial cancers, benign breast disease, pelvic inflammatory disease requiring hospitalization, ectopic pregnancy, and iron-deficiency anemia. It has also been suggested that oral contraceptives may provide a benefit on bone mineral density, uterine fibroids, toxic shock syndrome, and colorectal cancer. Minimal supportive evidence exists for oral contraceptives protecting against the development of functional ovarian cysts and rheumatoid arthritis. Treatment of medical disorders with oral contraceptives is an “off-label” practice. Dysmenorrhea, irregular or excessive bleeding, acne, hirsutism, and endometriosis-associated pain are common targets for oral contraceptive therapy.”
How indeed is Mr. “Jesus tells me what to dispense” Pharmacist supposed to know what the prescription is for?
If a woman comes in with a prescription for mifepristone, is she using it for emergency contraception, or for other medical indications?
It should not be up to the pharmacy/pharmacist to unilaterally decide what drugs may or may not violate its “moral standards”. They lack the essential knowledge that goes into reasoning behind the issuing of prescriptions. They cannot on the one hand say that they have an important role in health care delivery and accept regulation aimed at the safe and effective provision of such services - and at the same time arbitrarily undercut the providing of services to patients while pretending that a regulation ensuring that they serve everyone is somehow horribly onerous.