I’m a liberal and I think that if that means sometimes defnding the opinions and rights of people I don’t agree with, then so be it. Begbert’s view is not liberal, if he were liberal, he wouldn’t be so flip about dismissing people’s first amendment rights.
Nobody said inaction can’t be regulated, it clearly can be. It was someone on YOUR side of the argument that said something about swinging arms and punching noses. Geez talk about spin.
Nah, both are fun. :dubious:
You need to bronze some of these arguments for posterity.
You do realise those phrases have not been said or even implied in this debate, don’t you? Yet, you keep saying them. Are you trying to get a response?
Or maybe, and that’s your plan, you want to catch us unpreprared, break character and shout “yeah, keep the bitches pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen, that’s our plan, they are all cunts that need to be restrained!!!”
If it is, it is very sad.
Unless that’s how you actually feel about women and it is you who’s playing the high-minded liberal…nah, it is all part of your single-proficiency small-equinesness.
Cite that they are not following government regulations?
One is “attempted murder”, and the other is “depraved indifference to human life”? And both are disgusting.
The contempt you show for the rights and needs of women certainly implies them, Mister “Pregnancy Isn’t A Real Medical Issue”. I would not be at all surprised if you refer to women that way off of a public forum like this one.
That’s not the point and I expect you know it since its been made before. The government puts them in a position of privilege, lets them distribute products others can’t. That means they aren’t just random private citizens anymore.
The refusal for medical reasons is actually required of them, even if the doctor gets on the phone and yells at the pharmacist, I believe the pharmacist is supposed to yell back and call the doctor an idiot.
OK then if you were king for a day, one of the things you might do is require all pharmacies to carry and dispense the pill unless there is a medical reason not to? The problem I see in this attitude is that one day someone like George Bush might become king for a day and if we have already thrown the first amendment under the bus because we didn’t like how it protected the religious whackos or how it premitted the KKK to march down main street, then how will it protect us when the shoe is on the other foot.
Maybe I am not readin this correctly but what does the likelihood of “a” pharmacist objecting have to do with the first amendment analysis? If a pharmacist genuinely has a religious objection then the state can’t force him unless there is a good reason and as far as I can tell the ONLY good reasons might be that the act is so pervasive that is restricts access to the pill (that and the fact that the pill is also used for therapeutic reasons).
I don’t know if hypothetical barriers to access (like driving 4 miles IF the local pharmacist doesn’t want to fill the prescription) is enoug to overcome the first amendment. I always thought of the first amendment as being more robust than that.
Actually, if the end results of action or inaction are the same, and you could reasonably foresee that, the law doesn’t really treat it all that differently. In your drowning baby example, you’d probably still be going to trial for your role in the baby’s death, it’s just a matter of whether you were charged with murder or depraved indifference manslaughter. Hell, in some jurisdictions I think the charge can actually be bumped up to murder in depraved indifference cases.
And surely you’re not arguing that every inaction is right and just and morally acceptable. Just because you didn’t actively engage in harming the baby, that doesn’t make it okay to watch it crawl off the pier to its death.
That is a very good analogy. I will pick a few nits before I address it. Refusing to participate in scheduled surgery is a bit different than refusing to carry or sell sometrhing when someone walks in the door and drops a prescription on your counter. I assume you know what kind of surgery is scheduled with sufficient advance notice to switch out, in that case I think you can get fired and be sued for the cost of rescheduling.
If the nurse said they didn’t want to do it well in advance of surgery for religious reasons, do you think they could get fired or sued?
Cite please? I’d like to see where a doctor has to do anything of the sort when it comes to prescribing birth control pills for a non-therapeutic use.
Please cite a few cases where someone was unable to get the pill because of a refusal to prescribe or dispense.
And do you think that position is supported by the first amendment?
You have an overly broad view of what constitutes discrimination. Sure there is a doctrine of discriminatory impact but this is not that.
What does frequency have to do with whether or not its discriminatory? The burden.
Once again, please cite a few cases where women have been unable to get the pill because of some pharmacist’s refusal to dispense.
The pharmacist is forcing women to carry unwanted babies to term?
Its not discrimination just because it affects one group. discriminnion usually has an intent element to it. Disparate impact is something that has really only been applied to emplyers and state actors, I am not aware of any theory under which you could apply it to this case.
I do, and many agree with me. Many also don’t, which is why we’re having this discussion. I’ve laid out why I think so already.
I disagree
You’re going to have to explain to me exactly what you mean by that
The fact that discrmination goes on and you ask me to provide examples where it was widespread is irrelevent. Those women should never have been denied in the first place. It matters little if they walked across the street the next minute and got a year’s supply of the stuff. The fact is the pharmacy, or the pharmacist, was not upfront about his religious bigotry and through this caused the woman undue burden. You wouldn’t be speaking the same way if a black guy was refused service by a white pharmacist even if he could have gotten the drugs somwhere else. It was wrong to deny care and it’s wrong to suggest that it’s ok because it wasn’t too much of a burden
By the same token, I’ve already said that I’m fine with pharmacies displaying the fact that they dont’ carry certain products openly, to let the customer decide whether or not to patronize the store. I don’t consider such openness to be discrimination. I consider getting up to the counter and being refused service discrimination. The KKK can open a store, they should just be open about it
Or forcing them to get pregnant by refusing them contraceptives.
Despite what the religious claim, there’s no inherent wrongness in having sex and using contraceptives. If he forces that change in the woman’s behavior, then it is he who has intruded into her life. Her use of contraceptives has no impact on his life whatsoever, and he should stay out of it
The intent is to prevent woman from having sex and not getting pregnant, and the motive of that is religious bigotry. That’s a pretty clear case of discrimination right there.
I said they shouldn’t be able to refuse to prescribe the pill for religious reasons. Your response is talking about something completely different and irrelevent to that point; why did you say it?
So your point is, that if we compell all the Jesus pharmacists* to quit retail out of protest for selling the pill, we’re not even forcing them out their field? Great! So what’s the problem?
So stop spinning. Putting aside how worthlessly pathetic and pedantic the ‘arguments’ against that have been, it was a frikking quip! Are you that desperate for things to hang arguments on?
I’ve yet to see an argument that the pharmacists aren’t themselves directly violating the first amendment by using their government-liscenced position to enforce their religiously-motivated lifestyle of “don’t use contraception” on others. I would see restricting such behavior on the pharmacists’ part as enforcing the first amendment, not dismissing it; in fact, why are you dismissing the customers’ first amendment rights?
I’m not kidding. Make an argument here.
And would requiring him to sell you those pills violate his first amendment rights?
I don’t see how.
Seriously! The catholic church requires that their priests do caholic priestish things. Is that a violation of their first amendment right to be an atheist? No, because nobody’s forcing them to be a priest, but if they become a priest, then being religious is part of the job - or at least they have to act that way while on the job.
I think that acting like an atheist (or at least making decisions like an atheist - ie based on a scientifically supportable rationalist basis) could very easily be considered part of the job description of a pharmacist. They don’t have to actually be an atheist, mind you - but no slipping frog spleens into the pill mixes for their chakra-aligning value, or whatever. The saving grace here on a constitutional front is that nobody’s forcing a person to be a pharmacist.
It was the gist of the discussion on the subject when my husband was taking medical ethics classes in med school. The thing about medical ethics is this: your first priority is supposed to be the patient’s best interests. If there is a medical reason you can argue that providing a treatment (and yes, contraception is considered a medical treatment) is not in the patient’s best interests (and this includes the fact that something just plain isn’t effective), you have no ethical obligation to provide the treatment or a referral to someone who will. If there is no evidence the treatment is not in the patient’s best interests, but it’s not something you’re trained to do or is outside your scope of practice, it’s a bit of a gray area, but most people agree you have an obligation to provide a referral.
But if something is within your scope of practice and you’re qualified to do it, and there is no evidence-based reason not to provide the service, the onus is on you to either provide the treatment or supply a prompt referral to someone who will. Your patient’s well-being is supposed to trump your personal beliefs.
One of the analogies I’ve heard used when doctors discuss this issue is that of a patient wanting counseling to “cure” homosexuality. There are reasons you can refuse to provide this service and fall within ethical guidelines–because you are not qualified to provide such counseling because of your scope of practice or lack of training in this treatment, or because the literature shows that such treatment is ineffective. You can refuse to write a referral and stay on the right side of ethical guidelines, because the evidence shows such treatment is ineffective and thus isn’t in the patient’s best interest. But it’s generally considered ethically questionable to say to someone, “No, I don’t like the idea of such counseling, so I’m not going to write the referral.” And it’s ethically right out to say, “I’m trained to do ex-gay counseling, and it’s effective, but I don’t like it so I’m not going to help you and I’m not going to refer you to anyone else who will.”
(This is, incidentally, part of the reason learning to perform an abortion isn’t a standard part of your ob/gyn rotations in an American medical school. Actually, it’s not a mandatory part of doing an ob/gyn residency, either, AFAIK. It’s just easier, ethically speaking, to withhold an effective treatment because it’s outside your scope of practice/training.)
Prescribing birth control pills is something that every single person who has managed to drag themselves through a medical school is trained and qualified to do. It is an effective treatment for the prevention of unwanted pregnancy and for various minor to major gynecological unpleasantries, which is in the patient’s best interest. So, barring any medical contraindications like blood pressure or clotting problems or drug interactions…yes, the general agreement among doctors is that you have an ethical obligation to either write for the pill or provide a referral for same.
I don’t think it matters how stupid or idiotic someone’s religious convictions seem to you, if they are genuinely held religious beliefs, I am still trying to figure out how you overcome the first amendment absent a compelling state interest where there is no actual harm (or at least noone has been able to provide a cite to a case where a woman has not been able to reasonably access the pill because of this).
I also find this “life begins when the sperm penetrates the eggs” notion really wierd (I mean it is a single cell isn’t it? Sure it has human genetic material but so does my spit. Sure it can potentially become a human being but if science ever advances where they can clone a human being from any cell in my body has every cell in my body become a human being?), but if its a deeply held belief and there is no actual barrier to the pill, don’t we have to experience at least some level of inaccessibility before we push aside the first amendment?
Cite that I said “Pregnancy isn’t a Real medical issue”? (Hint: I didn’t)
Of course they are not random and they have a position of privilege.
You should also know that I said that I expect the pharmacist to follow the law, that is, if the law says “fill every fucking prescrition and screw your idiotic beliefs”, I say he has to follow the law. I also said that the attendant serves at the pleasure of the owner and the law and for the convenience of the customers. If he’s uncomfortable with being ordered to sell any product, he should get another job.
However, if the law allows the owner to stock whatever he wants, he should be allowed to follow it. The owner can run his shop at his pleasure within the law.
You are not treating pregnancy when you are prescribed the pill. It is a contraceptive.
You said this to me before on this subject:
, but I still don’t understand - I still don’t understand what your position is. It seems to be that you accept that there is some level of interference pharmacists could present that would justify tabling first amendment rights* - perhaps if 100% of pharmacists worldwide stood up and said that nobody could have contraceptives, and by the way you have to be baptised before they’ll sell you asprin, or something like that. Thing is, though, if in that circumstance it would be justified, then you’re saying that the first amendment is fundamentally trumped* by the need to have pharmaceutical services available. In other words we’ve already established what you are, and now we’re only haggling about the price, so to speak.
The thing is, though, wether a law is morally/legally/ethically justifiable has nothing to do with how many people’s behavior would be changed by it; wrong is wrong, right is right, and constitutionally permissible is constitutionally permissible. Sure, we often don’t bother to write a law if everyone’s already complying with what it says, but that doesn’t mean we can’t. So, showing that this is a problem in the real world would be helpful in getting the law passed by an actual governing body…but is pretty much completely irrelevent in an abstract discussion on a message board.
That’s the way I see it, anyway. At what point does your thinking diverge with mine on this specific line of argument?
- putting aside for a moment that no such thing is occuring