NO. Epic fail. No community will stand for a total lack of all pills, so there will be an avenue to get pills. If it’s mandated that this avenue must supply birth control, then there will also be an avenue to get birth control. But if the only thing that the “jesus has a government liscence not to distribute” pharmacists is blocking is birth control, then the community might tolerate this just fine, because only the sluts will suffer, and who cares about them? (Presuming a community with a lower percentage of sluts than average - or at least, presuming they’re not influential sluts.)
This shouldn’t require explanation.
Probably, because everyone would be bothered if I didn’t sell pain pills. Now, suppose that you had a medical problem that nobody else had. And I decide that I can’t support treating people who have your medical problem - perhaps my religion says that people with your medical problem should die as quiclky and painfully as possible. If everybody else is satisfied with my service to them, what makes you think you’ll be able to find somebody else to sell you your special pill?
You forgot to mention overlap between those two categories.
In the end, I think this issue of the Prescription-Denying Jesus Pharmacist is going to have minimal impact. A few proselytizing types will take advantage of legal protections in a handful of states to preen on their righteousness. Access to contraceptive medications could be limited in rare cases, i.e. in small towns where not everyone has Internet access to order drugs online (larger towns and cities have enough competition to make the problem little more than a temporary annoyance).
I’d be surprised if a large percentage of the Christian-drug-only “pharmacies” hadn’t gone out of business within a short time. Pissing off a large percentage of your clientele is a lousy business model. And most of the people who’d seek out such a “pharmacy” will probably stay loyal only as long as it takes to find out that CVS has the supplies they need for less (Xtian drug emporiums will charge more to make up for lower volume thanks to boycotts and the loss of oral contraceptive business). Bricker will lose interest in his latest cause celebre and start plowing spare cash back into casino gambling again.
There are plenty of small towns in this country where people might not have access to numerous pharmacists. These small towns are also more likely to have the kind of demographic where a pharmacist refusing to sell birth control would be present.
I think your analogy to poll taxes and gay marriaage is a bit off. There was a discriminatory intent behind poll taxes, some people just assume a discrimintory intent here because anything having to do with reproduction is likely to have a disprortionate effect on women not because someone is trying to screw over women. Gay marriage is probably a case where discrimination is being cloaked in religion (or perhaps the religion drives the discrimination) but I fail to see how a law that seems to specifically target gay couples is similar to the refusal to stock and sell the pill.
Then the first amendment doesn’t apply and states can enforce regulation. There are plenty of rules that have caveats for people whose religious conviction will not allow them to comply with those rules and there is usually some sort of work around. Sometimes there isn’t and if the state interest is strong enough then tough noogies.
If the pharmacist is an employee then there is very little doubt that he can be disciplined or fired. If the pharmacist owns his own pharmancy and there isn’t a regulation requireing him to carry and sell viagra then I think its entirely up to him.
Yeah, suuuure. It’s just a coincidence that women are the ones being targeted by this. By a religion that has a long, long history of being hostile to them. No connection there at all.
Because the pill is for women just as same sex marriage is for same sex couples; both are something that specifically impacts the hated group. And in both cases it is blatantly and solely a matter of bigotry, while people desperately try to pretend otherwise. And because in both cases the motive and behavior is the same; indulging religiously driven hatred by forbidding people something they want or need. And because in both cases there is no valid reason to do so. And no, religion is not a valid reason.
You don’t think there is a difference between prescribing a drug for lifestyle purposes and prescribing a drug for therapeutic purposes? I can’t support doctors that refuse to prescribe birth control pills when they know its medically necessary but I still have trouble shoving this sort of thing down people’s throats.
BTW,plenty of pharmacists do things other than retail. I have four pharmacists in the family and none of them are in retail pharmacy. One is a pharmacy sales rep, one is a director at an insurance company setting up formularies (or something like that), one teaches, and the last one could get a job outside of retail so she went to med school, they are all women, they are all Christian and they all dispensed the pill at some point in their career.
Sure, if you explain to me why the anology between prescribing and dispensing is irrelevant.
How is a doctor refusing to prescribe the piull for religious reasons any different than a pharmacist refusing to dispense the pill for religious reasons (I guess the difference might be tha the doctor is in a better position to know if the pill is medically necessary or simply being used as a contraceptive so can make a more informed decision to exercise his religious zealotry).
I can think of at least two occassions where my pharmacist has called the doctor and gotten them to switch the prescription.
How does the doctor’s role make it any less offensive to you that they are refusing to prescribe the pill for religious reasons (its not like he’s exercising his diagnostic skills or his medical expertise)?
That’s not remotely proximate to the issue unless you are saying that anyone that gets a license must stand ready to do everything that the license allows.
Its more than a nice try, its right on target. If you want to force pharmacists to dispense the pill, you are going to have to come up with something better than “he’s hurting me by not selling the pill” He’s doing nothing of the sort. He’s just not selling the pill. I want to get my medicine on Sunday but the pharmacist is hurting me by closing on sunday and going to church. As a licensed pharmacist, he should be open sundays so that I can buy my drugs from him (sure I could go to the pharmacy right across the street but that’s like telling me that I have to go to a different lunch counter).
No that’s not even close. You don’t truncate first amendment rights unless base don some hypothetical harm that might occur if the whole world just went nuts and you just couldn’t get the pill because every pharmacist in your area is a religious whacko. Before you truncate first amendment rights you should really have a reason other than “I really don’t even want one pharmacist to make any professional decisions based on religious conviction because I think religious whackos don’t deserve rights”
Isn’t something that just happens to screw over one specific population consistently just a little troubling to you? I mean sure, I’m just a woman, and these are just my, um, lifestyle choices. Me with the not-wanting-to-have-a-child-or-an-abortion lifestyle.
I am pretty sure the law distinguishes between action and inaction. Don’t you see a difference between throwing a baby into a lake and watching that baby crawl off a pier into the lake?
