Explain to me how this is different to what anyone else is saying…
I believe a self-employed pharmacist’s job is whatever he or she wants it to be, subject to applicable laws and regulations. And that one of the applicable laws and regulations is that his or her own prejudices should not impact the provision of prescribed medication to his or her patients.
You seem to think that his or her political beliefs should not be allowed to impact that standard of care, but that his or her religious beliefs should be. I find that a truly odd dividing line to draw. Or, to make it even more bizarre, you think that some of his or her religious beliefs should be allowed to impact the standard of care (i.e. whether he or she thinks God doesn’t approve of contraceptives) but not other, potentially equally strongly held religious beliefs (i.e. whether he or she thinks God doesn’t want black people to have medicine).
That you think you are saying something fundamentally different here is absolutely mindboggling.
COnsidering that you think starting your responses with words like “garbage” and “nonsense” because you disagree, I will do the same.
I don’t think you understand the meaning of the word persecution.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. If the idea was merely to persecute or subjugate women then there are a million better ways to do it than to it. If you can’t see how anyone could see abortion (particularly elective abortions after the first trimester) as something that at least approaches murder then you aren’t even within shouting distance of the reasonable.
nonsense. This isn’t anywhere near the same thing and your attempts to cloak yourself in the mantle of a civil rights activist and to characterize your opponents as something close to the KKK is just crap.
This is exactly what I am talking about. You basically think pharmacists are vending machines that can check for harmful drug interactions. The first amendment protects people even people who disagree with you. The fact that you find the first amendment inconvenient right now doesn’t make it go away and the application of the first amendment doesn’t change just because it is the KKK that wants to march down main street instead of the women’s suffrage movement.
I’ll grant you that prostitution is prosecuted in an anti-woman fashion so maybe it wasn’t a really good example but you are smart enough to get the point.
There is a difference between something that “affects” women and something that “targets” women. ANYTHING having to do with reproduction is going to have more of an impact on women than men, men don’t get pregnant. Objection to things like birth control (while stupid) are not targetted at women in anywhere near the same way that segregation and Jim Crow laws were targetted at blacks.
Exactly, you think pharmacists are basically just vending machines and any refusal to dispense birth control pills is just the manifestation of hatred towards women. Utter nonsense.
I take the position that even an employee pharmacist might have some first amendment rights to refuse to dispense birth control pills (they cannot keep the script) especially when there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that there is inadequate access to birth control pills. You take the position that even a pharmacist that owns her own pharmacy must stock and sell birth control pills to anyone with a prescription regardless of what they believe so they might as well be vending machines (and we might get there yet). You have basically elevated the right to birth control above first amendment rights without even examining the issue. Like it or not, this country (in fact almost every free democratic country) recognizes religion as something more than barbarian superstition and hatred towards women. Have you ever wondered if you haven’t gone off the deep end in your characterizations and opinions because it is pretty clear to me that you have.
That’s only the law in a few states, and I’m arguing it’s a bad law.
I’m not sure where you get that. I don’t really think the source of the belief is relevant. The fact that it’s religious is interesting in that it adds a religous protection element to the debate, but if a phamacy owner does not want to carry BC pills because he doesn’t like the color of them I’m fine with that too.
Well that’s a bit of a strawman, since I know of no religion that withholds medicine from black people. But regardless, we have anti-discrimination laws in this country (the whole country, not just a few states) and I have no quarrel with the fact that it’s in the government’s interest to prevent racial discrimination.
Different from what? From what you’re saying or from the racial strawman you set up? I’m equally boggled by your comment so at least we’re on equal footing.
I believe the morning after pill is available over the counter. Perhaps sporadic surges in progesterone don’t create a risk while long term consumption of birth control pills over a period of years does.
Where I get that is you seem completely fine with a person’s expressions of their political beliefs being contrary to the law, but not a person’s expressions of their religious beliefs. And that is where the race issue comes in… If a person has political reasons not to want to fill a prescription for a black person, you think this is unnacceptable.
You only think that certain expressions of First Amendment protected belief should be protected.
Yes, we have anti-discrimination laws. Which kind of go to show that First Amendment protected beliefs can have their expression controlled. And the fact you don’t know a religion that withholds medicine from black people doesn’t make it a strawman. All it means is that you place religious beliefs you recognize, or think have a degree of validity, above those you don’t recognize. And that is a very dangerous thing for the government to get involved in doing.
You said that pharmacists should be free to do what they want, subject to laws and regulations. That is what everyone thinks. I think it, you think it, every participant in the thread thinks it. It was a crass, meaningless platitude on your part.
Not their feelings. Their beliefs. There are two scenarios as far as I can tell. Phamacist A owns their own pharmacy but does not stock birth control pills because of a religious conviction. Phamacist B works at a Rite Aid and will not dispense birth control pills because of a religious conviction.
Can pharmacist A do what they want with their own pharmacy or does the fact that the state has given them a license mean that they have to stock and sell something that conflicts with their religious beliefs if the state so requires?
Can pharmacist B refuse to dispense a drug and keep her job because of the first amendment?
The only issues here are the right of the state to regulate so that pharmcies have to carry birth control pills and whether an employee pharmacist is protected by the first amendment.
Considering the fact that we do not have inadequate access to birth control pills (I have yet to see a cite that such a lack of access exists anywhere in the country), there is no question about the rights of the consumer. If birth control pills were only available in seedy run down pharmacies in crappy neighborhoods or something like that then get back to me but until then, I just don’t see enough of a harm to consumers to give them any standing in this debate.
The American Pharmacists’ Association (the pharmacy world’s AMA) says “…APhA’s policy supports the ability of a pharmacist to opt out of dispensing a prescription or providing a service for personal reasons and also supports the establishment of systems so that the patient’s access to appropriate health care is not disrupted.”
Yes but that protection only extends to protection from government action. The government cannot make laws that inhibit access to birth control but there is no constitutional madate on a private scitizen to provide you with that access. Just as states cannot criminalize abortions but you cannot force doctors to perform them, it is a fairly analogous analysis.
What reason can you have for not going to another pharmacy (beside the pharmacist stealing your script, which is probably criminal, but even then you can get another prescription from your doctor called into a pharmacy).
I assume everything on the major interaction list is prescription only (I assume this because I cannot pronounce them), but it seems to me that there are a lot of things on the moderate list that are not prescription. Couldn’t we make the least ineractive pill otc and put big warnings on them saying no to eat licorice or Paclitaxel Protein-Bound?
In 2004, the New England Journal of Medicine published this paper, “The Limits of Conscientious Objection — May Pharmacists Refuse to Fill Prescriptions for Emergency Contraception?”
Although it’s over six years old, and the regulatory landscape has changed a bit, I think they do a good job of balancing the issues. Their take:
Sounds reasonable to me.
(on edit) “They” and “their” refers to the paper’s authors, not the NEJM publishers.
If discriminating doctor is the alternative, then yes, I’d rather have more mechanics.
It unfairly affects the availability of contraceptives sold in pharmacies. There is no “oh it’s just a little discriminations, it’s all good” attitude that I can hold in regards to this.
Here’s a story from Vancouver regarding a seeing-eye dog. A blog citing multiple instances although the first link to New Orleans is broken. The second link, citing a case in Cincinnati, also relates to a seeing-eye dog. The blog also has numerous recounts of stories and cites of instances more recent and in places in addition to America. I find these kinds of things to be equally distasteful as religious pharmacists, but with such cites it’s much easier to get American conservatives to agree that religion has no place at work. Usually this works if I mention the Muslims first, get them to react, then ask them about pharmacists. Their opinions turn around so fast it’ll make your head spin
Its actually a hstorical relic. When jelly beans were first invented society was significantly more male dominated than it is today and while they were able to predict the invention of the pill (and the moderate drug interaction) they ingored it they formulate licorice and the moderate interaction continues to exist today despite the changes in societal attitudes about a woman’s right to eat licorice. Some more progressive licorice manufacturers have reformulated their licorice to be realtively inert in fact some of these licorice manufacturers are owned and operated by women but there arestill vestigial chemicals that they can’t seem to get rid of that make licorice offensive to some women who can recognize the signs of indifference to women that existed when licorice was first invented. These women mostly eat mounds without almonds.
When you go to a deli, you think of cold cuts. When you think of cold cuts, ham is probably one of the things you think of. Ever been to a Jewish Deli? They are all over NYC and I haven’t found ham in any of them.
Buddhism, Hindusim, Islam, Judaism, mormonism, I mean name any religion more than 1000 years old (heck name one more than 200 years old) and I can show you that sort of things that upset you.
I am not fine with a person’s expression of political or religious belief being contrary to law. I believe, broadly speaking, the law should be followed. Where there is a crisis on conscience that requires breaking the law, the individual should fully expect to be punished as the law allows. What I’m saying is that laws that force pharmacy owners to carry pharmaceuticals that they don’t want to carry (for any reason) are bad laws, and thankfully there are only a few of them.
There is a difference between not carrying a drug, and providing it discriminately. If a pharmacist sold a paticular drug to white people but not black people? Discrimination; it is (and should be) against the law. But: say a pharmacy did not want to give BC to black people and therefore did not provide it to anyone: not discriminatory. I find that kind of icky but not something that should be disallowed, because it’s the pharmacy’s choice whether or not to stock particular items, regardless of the reason.
I don’t see it as a primarily religious issue. If the pharmacist wants to not carry BC because he believes the Earth is woefully underpopulated, that’s fine. Yes, the First Amendment rights can be curtailed if there is overriding state interest. Nobody has shown such an overriding interest here.
OK, so in most states, where there is no law to the contrary, you are fine with pharmacists refusing to provide birth control? I didn’t realize we were that close to agreeing.
Wow, I find that article very helpful and on-point, and very reasonable. I have no problem with their suggestions.
That paper is talking about emergency contraception. At the time it was written, there was some evidence that emergency contraception might have an abortifacient effect when taken by a patient who had already conceived.
Obviously, a pharmacist’s belief that he might be assisting or facilitating an abortion deserves special consideration, but that is not an issue with ordinary birth control.