I was sort of questioning if I should say anything because
a) Huffington does have a liberal bias (that’s why I liker her, but still…)
b) Yesterday was All Fools Day.
But it does seem to be for real.
OK. So as long as they provide a referral, they can refuse, right? I never said the first amendment is absolute. Will they lose their license if they refuse to provide that referral?
They don’t have a first amendment right to be a bad pharmacist.
I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be an ad-hominem - apparently a double-duty one, since you’re apparently insulting both me and republicans each by association with the other! That’s actually kind of commendible, in its own way.
They don’t have a first amendment right to use their government liscence as a platform to force other people to comply with their own religious beliefs. The first amendment is against them, not supporting them. There is only one difference between this and cops manually forcing you to go to church: the cops are fully employed by the state, and the pharmacists are merely licencsed by the state. Unless you can show that this difference is significant, then we have a textbook cut-and-dried unambiguous case of first amendment violation, as sure as if the president declared Catholicism to be the state religion. So you better focus on that arguement right quick, because until you can show that the pharmacists aren’t acting as agents of the state in any way, your arguments from the first amendment are laughable, ignorant, and self-sabotaging. There is literally nothing to take seriously there until you can show that the pharmacists are the victims, and not the problem.
This whiney crap asking for examples is red herring horseshit. You don’t have an argument so you’re hiding behind requests for unnecessary examples to dodge having to admit that these pharmacists don’t have the right to be allowed the opportunity to become a threat to the distribution of contraceptives.
Seriously. This is complete bullshit. Here’s how it could go down if I gave you examples:
Case 1:
You: Show me examples!
Me: Here are examples!
You: Okay you’re right I concede, because the pharmacists don’t have a right to block contraception distribution and should be stopped.
Case 2:
You: Show me examples!
Me: Here are examples!
You: I see your examples and don’t care about them because because the pharmacists do have a right to block contraception distribution! Ha!
See the commonality between the cases? The presence of the examples doesn’t do shit for the argument. Either they have the right to do it or they don’t, and that’s the determining factor. Whether they are, at the moment, engaging in the activity is completely irrelevent.
I’m tired of the bullshit. Pretend there are examples and move on to the actual argument you want to make, if any. Quit stalling.
Abortions are special cases. (Was it you who admitted that, or somebody else? I forget.) Try again.
And stop pulling this bullshit about examples. This whole discussion is hypothetical. Unless you’re a legislator or something, preparing to make an acutal law?
You’re joking about that, right?
Provided their refusal doesn’t put an undue burden on the patient, yes. Definitions of undue burden vary–it’s usually considered in terms of how far away from the next nearest provider the patient is.
AFAIK you won’t lose your license, but I don’t know of any state that protects your job if you refuse to provide treatment within your expertise and in accordance with the standards of care for personal reasons. And the patient is, of course, within his or her rights to file a complaint with your state’s medical board, which may or may not lead to varying levels of censure short of revoking your license, depending on the specifics of the case. If your refusal to provide care results in what they call “negative patient outcomes” you can also find yourself looking at a lawsuit, which looks good neither to future employers nor the carrier of your malpractice insurance.
There is one other situation in which you may refuse care that I forgot to mention earlier–when a patient has been dismissed from the practice for behavioral reasons such as being verbally abusive, physically threatening, or otherwise generally disruptive.
He’s not particularly old. He was licensed in Florida in 1985. You can see his picture here if you enter his first and last name - I can’t link directly to his physician profile, unfortunately. Full head of apparently natural black hair.
His practice is in Mount Dora, Florida - a Tea Party kind of town. If there are more than a dozen Democratic voters in the whole town I’d be surprised. There are four other urology practices 10 miles away, though no others in the same town.
No.
What is (theoretically) happening here is that the pharmacists are using their position of authority to control the behavior of the hoi polloi to make the hoi polloi act in a manner consistent with the pharmacist’s beliefs. The pharmacists’s aren’t satisfied with not using contraception themselves; they want to stop other people from using contraception too, for personal religious reason.
If a cop was rounding people up and locking them in the church, they’d be similarly using their position of authority to control the behavior of the hoi polloi to make the hoi polloi act in a manner consistent with their (the cops’) beliefs.
The difference here, of course, is that the cops are agents of the state, and the pharmacists aren’t…maybe. If they’re not, then they’re not bound by the first amendment, and may legally abuse their pharmaceutical authority to tyrannize the populace as they wish - and their choice to tyrannize is protected by the first amendment. To they degree they do weild governmental authority, though, they cannot play tinpot theological dictator.
So it comes down to which side of the first amendment they’re on. There has been a rampant assumption that they’re the victims; that government laws made regarding them would be first amendment violation. But if their liscensing status draws authority from the state, then the fact that they’re operating under a liscence may mean that they’re drawing authority from the government - that the government is ‘respecting’ their establishment of pharmacy. Which means that they goverment is bound to make sure that pharmaceutical establishment is not a religious establishment too.
I’m tired of this assumption that the pharmacists are the victims here. I want to see arguments for their separation from the state before I accept it.
I started a separate thread (in the Pit) about the doctor with the anti-Obama sign here.
No, that is not IMO a correct interpretation of events. The pharmacist doesn’t want to be involved in an action that is prohibited by his religious beliefs. He’s not controling the behavior of the public since they can get their birth control elsewhere, he just doesn’t want to be involved in the process himself. If they were taking steps to prevent customers from getting the pills elsewhere then you might have a point, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
There IS a compelling state interest; protecting women from persecution at the hands of religious bigots. The law has caved in to the woman haters but that doesn’t make it right. And just like you want to have happen with contraception, the result with abortion has been to make it very hard and more expensive for many women to get abortions. But then, they aren’t really people now, are they? Their rights don’t matter at all; only the rights of Christian bigots matter.
A doctor or pharmacist should be required to do his job right, even if his self indulgent fantasies demand otherwise. If he is unwilling to place scientific facts and professionalism above religion, then he is unqualified for the job.
Oh, please, you did, and three different people called you on it; you just studiously ignored all three of us.
It’s at least one case:
You don’t know their intent. And I think it’s ridiculous to assume that no theistic people have a desire to control the behavior of others. That’s contrary to all evidence!
On the other hand, am I assuming that all pharmacists who might theoretically refuse to sell contraceptions are doing it for the sole purpose of controlling the behavior of others? Nope - I’m speaking to the general case, and we’re still deeply lodged in theoretical-land. The issue isn’t wether there are cases of malicious pharmacists trying to control others; it’s whether they have the right to turn their establishment into one that limits its customers to a catholic contraception regimen. And if they’re agents of the government, they don’t. Religion can’t dictate their behavior at all, in that case.
So yeah. I’m not interested in being sidetracked by the theoretical Jesus pharmacist who hands the scrip back with a polite reccomendation that the customer take it to Pagan Pills next door. I want to address the question of whether they have the right to first-amendment protection at all - to either shut down the distracting claims they do, or to definitively end the debate in their favor.
You’re wrong. Check your own quote.
That’s it, carefully…one letter at a time…you can do it.
Check the bloody names in your own bloody quotes.
Don’t gotta thank me.
Uh, I think I HAVE and you simply disagree with it. Don’t pretend that just because you don’t support my arguments that I haven’t made any. We can force a pharmacist to stock and sell the pill because his refusal also interferences with the buyer’s rights, it’s also discriminatory, and the government doesn’t like that. Therefore, my argument is, he should be forced to stock and sell those items. The hurdle you speak of, that you think is a problem, is an obstacle only because you ignore the woman’s rights to not be discriminated against. You may not think that’s discrimination, but I do, and I have good reason to do so.
Again, don’t say that you don’t think anyone has provided analysis. I have, many others have, you don’t agree with it and that’s fine but don’t pretend analysis hasn’t been given
I do not agree that my definition is overly broad.
In an employment setting, it most certainly has been applied to either force a private party to do something they find morally reprehensible. The army forces you to kill sometimes and even though we have consciencious objectors, it’s not that easy to simply say you’re against killing and leave it at that. The reason we don’t have MORE examples is because most people don’t object to something they signed up for. It’s only recently that pharmacists decided to take this stance.
The effect of pharmacists being able to refuse certain types of medication that is used by certain populations doesn’t hint at a slight intrusion into the realm of discrimination to you, really? I know you want it to be solely about the first amendment, and I’ll agree that it’s a part of the issue, but you and I differ in that you see no discrimination and I see some.
The real world effect of the pharmacists is that women, not men, are being forced to either not engage in a behavior, or do it and take a chance on the consequences.
And if I agree to only limit this to first amendment, then what? All religious persons should be given special leeway in their jobs to follow whatever doctrine their religion demands? If Catholic doctors and nurses refuse to perform an abortion when a woman is rushed to the emergency room and it’s a life or death situation, that’s ok? Or let me use a more extreme religious example:
There are some extremists who do not believe in modern medicine and instead use pray to achieve health. Many kids have died to these parents. You want precedent? These people were sent to prison or will shortly be sentenced. They did not get off scot free. Their religion did not save them. At the bottom, the article cited another case, that of the Worthingtons. Raylene was aquitted but Carl was convicted. Yes, the conviction was of a lesser sentence, but if you read the article, it was because they were able to convince the jury that they thought their kid had a cold. They did not use the defense that their religion allows them to kill their kid. In fact, in that same article, it says that “The trial was the first under a 10-year-old Oregon law that bars legal defenses based on religious practices in most abuse cases.” The first amendment doesn’t cover these idiots because they tend to keep killing until someone forces them to stop.
The article mentions that this church, the Followers of Christ, had killed before. So I did a little digging. Turns out, they may have killed over a dozen kids. And that’s only the ones they know of.
Fuck the pharmacists. If your religion is affecting other people at your job, then you quit, no exceptions. Don’t take the job if you don’t want to do the job.
I used that as an extreme example of what you would allow to happen. I’m unaware of it ever happening, only that the women were denied medication. Doesn’t mean anything to me though, if someone denied me the right to buy something because of religion, they’re wrong, plain and simple
It is forcing them to change their behavior due to religious bigotry. It doesn’t matter if it’s something big like getting pregnant, or something small like having to walk across the street. It is wrong
Hell if I know, maybe it’s got something to do with auras or something mumble mumble.
I think for that, he should lose his license, at least. It’s one thing to refuse to fill the prescription and give a referral. It’s a whole “nother thing” to confiscate or “not transfer” that prescription. I think whatever side of the argument people are on, we should agree he crossed the line. Big Time.
As a pharmacist (to be), this is going over the line. I don’t care what your beliefs are, you don’t want to fill something, fine, I can accept that. What I can’t accept is not agreeing to transfer a script to a different pharmacy. As far as I’m aware, there are no laws protecting him from this… At least, there isn’t in Georgia.
There is no reason a floater pharmacist should refuse to transfer a script. For this, I do hope he gets censured by his state board of pharmacy.
ETA: I agree with SteveG1, for that, he did cross the line, and that’s coming from a pharmacist (to be).
He did, though he didn’t lose his license… Can’t figure out whether he was forced to pay $20,000 in costs as originally ordered by the state licensing board.
His Facebook page is the fourth or fifth hit if you Google his name. I was tempted to message him, but didn’t.
I think we have indeed been talking about the pharmacist who says “I’m sorry, I don’t carry this. Here is your prescription; you can get it filled at the CVS down the street.” ISTM this is the more common scenario.
The example you gave of the pharmacist who refused to return or transfer the script crossed the line. I still wouldn’t liken him to cops who force you from going to church, but at that point he has interfered with the customer’s right to obtain birth control. Someone who just does not stock or sell it has not interfered with the customer’s right to obtain them, nor has the pharmacist attempted to do so.
Absolutely.
THIS is a situation which fits the “right to swing ends at your nose” model perfectly. His right to swing ended at refusing to fill. When he confiscated the prescription, his fist impacted the nose. So to speak.
Reprehensible.