The need you were refering, and I was too, was the need for a hardware store to stock axes, no the customer’s need for one.
Is there any need for the government to decide that hardware store must stock axes?
Why, in detail, should the government interfere with the pharmacist’s right to decide what he wants to sell in this case? We don’t do it for lots and lots of other cases brought up in this thread, what is special about this one? Is it simply because this involves health care? We don’t impose the same restrictions on doctors who can prescribe the birth control. If there’s one doctor in town and he doesn’t prescribe birth control to unmarried women because of his religious beliefs do we pass a law requiring him to do so?
That’s interesting about a doctor. I don’t know enough about medical ethics to answer it, so I would be intrigued to hear a doctor’s viewpoint. What would the AMA’s viewpoint be on a doctor who, for personal ethical reasons, refused to prescribe birth control for an unmarried woman. What would be the ethical considerations if the woman was seeking the birth control for non-contraceptive reasons? Or both reasons?
I know I would have a major issue with a doctor who decided not to prescribe birth control to a woman who needed it for other reasons. I’d have even more of an issue if that doctor didn’t inform the person of its availability elsewhere. If those things aren’t self regulated by the profession, then maybe there is a good case for government regulation there.
The doctors and pharmacists personal beliefs are irrelevant when it comes to the patient and their needs.
I have trouble with it because compared to the other arguments being presented (“but its my body and everyone should be forced to provide me with whatever service I want even if… no… ESPECIALLY if it goes against their religious beliefs”) were so ridiculously easy to overcome…I guess you would say I’ve been spoiled. If you force me into the grey area that therapeutic uses of the pill presents, I think that the state has a good chance of withstanding constitutional challenge. I also think that if a state wanted to allow pharmacists to abide by their religious beliefs, I think that would also survive constitutional challenge. If I was being paid on contingency, I would rather have the case where I was defending a state law that allowed a pharmacist to exercise their religious beliefs than one that restricted it.
Perhaps NJ has a shortage of religious whackos. In fact I suspect most places have a shortage of religious whacko pharmacists and that is why I don’t think there is much harm to be mitigated. If there was a pharmacist that had a deeply held conviction that they shouldn’t distribute the pill, then you have a harm, they don’t have to fill the prescription unless you give them a reason why their first amendment right is overcome.
The question is whether it is more important to force pharmacists to fill prescription against their deeply held religious beliefs so that women don’t have to go down the road to get their prescriptions filled or whether it is more important to allow pharmacists to live according to their religious beliefs even if it means that women will have to go down the street to get their prescriptions filled.
BTW, I think you can probably call them whores out loud, right in front of them, it might be a tort but it is not a crime. Its not nice but the first amendment protects the jerks as much as the saints.
Reasonable accomodation does not mean screwing over all your other employees. At least I don’t think it does.
Religious beliefs aren’t ALWAYS on the winning side. Employers can fire people who’se religious observation interfere with their duties in a way that the employer cannot mitigate with reasoanble accomodation. I know this board generally thinks that religon is for suckers, which would be fine if they didn’t make life so miserable for the rest of us, but at least one of the founding principles of our nation was that people shold be free to follow their conscience even if that poses some inconvenience for the state.
I think it depends on the law, doesn’t it?
(I moved this to the top because I think we misunderstand each other on where we’re coming from so I’d like to clarify first)
Let me break it down so it will be easier. I believe that:
Private pharmacy
- If pharmacy wants to sell and pharmacist refuses to sell = Fired
- If pharmacy doesn’t want to sell and pharmacist doesn’t sell = Not fired
- If pharmacy doesn’t want to sell and pharmacist does = Fired (though why would they carry it if they didn’t want to sell it?)
Non-private pharmacy
4) If pharmacy wants to sell and pharmacist refuses = Fired
5) If pharmacy doesn’t want to sell = Not a pharmacy. Government-owned means you serve everyone
I don’t make any exceptions for undue burden because that hadn’t really been the issue. The discrimination part is the reason why I would like these people fired, but the above shows what I believe should happen given the circumstances.
I, as a private citizen, can and would tell you not to carry weapons on my property. In this case, laws governing property rights and ownership trumps your 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. Don’t like it? I can simply tell you to get the hell off my property if I wanted to. There’s NOTHING you can do about it. You can’t sue me, you can’t make me let you carry guns, you can’t cry to the government to make me either
However, if you were black and I didn’t want to sell my wares to you, you can sue me. You can cry to the government and the government can compel me to sell you to, or stop selling altogether. If you were handicapped, the government can make me put up a ramp. If I didn’t have a license to do my job, the government can force me out of business
These are just a few of the many examples in which governments can and cannot force you to do something regardless of what rights you think you have.
So again, I think the pharmacy issue falls into the latter category. You think it falls into the former. We have a disagreement, that’s fine, but don’t ever say that no analysis have been provided because that is proof right there of the flexibility of this discussion
It does reduce access. You think it doesn’t reduce it enough to be an issue, I disagree since there are timeliness and medical issues that are involved as well. Would I care as much if hardware store owners were refusing to sell nails because they reminded people of Jesus’s death? No, because you hardly ever need a nail right away and if you don’t get one, it isn’t a life-changing event. But with some things, especially concerning safety and medical reasons, the law is a little stricter as it should be
I only want them to carry and dispense the pill if they are not outwardly advertising that they won’t. Like it or not, people expect that a pharmacy will have contraceptives. Again, a hospital run by the Followers of Christ should not be able to call themselves a hospital if they don’t have actual doctors on staff, yet your argument seems to allow that simply because they consider themselves healers and think their quakery works.
And there is harm. Denying people an essential medicine for a condition is harmful, whether or not you think having babies is the greatest thing a woman can do. Some don’t want it, that’s why they want the pill.
That’s not my only argument. As I said, the admitted religious bigotry of the pharmacist plays into it, along with the fact that this is a medical issue as well and not simply ideologues ranting at each other. While you are right that disparate impact is generally an employer/employee dispute, you haven’t said (unless I missed it) whether or not a pharmacy owner can fire his pharmacist if they disagree on this issue. What is your stance on that?
You’re twisting the facts to fit your own personal viewpoint. The women’s rights are being violated not because they should be able to buy whatever the hell they want, but rather because are denied a legal product in which they should be able to buy due to religious bigotry. The same is true for those who discriminated against blacks for racial reasons, not servicing them or offering them lower-quality service for the same price.
Here, let me twist the pharmacist’s views to illustrate: You simply want the pharmacist to be able to sell whatever he wants without establishing whether or not private citizens have the right to sell restricted items whether or not they are qualified to. See what I did there?
Like the above example, I could take your words verbatim, changing only the job title and the group discriminated, and come up with:
“White bus drivers and bus company owners simply want to be able to choose where blacks get to sit on a bus out of their own beliefs. Why should the government force bus drivers to let blacks ride wherever they want on a bus? The blacks aren’t being discriminated against so much as we’re simply protecting the rights of the bus drivers. Why should the blacks be able to sit anywhere on a bus that they don’t own? If they don’t like it, they can walk.”
I don’t believe it’s merely a hint. I disagree with the cavalier attitude you seem to be showing women with a medical condition. You can certainly disagree with my same attitude towards religion, as I have no love for it
I acknowledge that their deeply held religious belief is the basis for this discrimination. Given a competing interest between religious freedom and discrimination, I’d argue that discrimination should take priority. The Bill of Rights doesn’t weigh what right is more important. It weighs what’s more fair. That’s why the 5th Amendment can be invoked to protect yourself from the 6th Amendment, though application differs.
I will acknowledge that the pharmacist does have the religious freedom to not associate himself with birth control if he doesn’t want to. But it is bumping up against Title II of the Civil Rights Act.
Regarding the Hyde Amendment about prohibiting funds for abortion, I think that’s more of a political issue. I personally think it’s discriminatory and should be outlawed due to abortions being legal, but bad politics allows it to happen.
I think begbert explained it better than I could. Denial itself is the harm. We shouldn’t have to show a case where a woman gets pregnant and has her kid in the back of a cab if the rule itself is dicriminatory. The compelling state interest is not allowing one person who has access to restricted items to further restrict it by their own beliefs to a segment of the population. The harm is unwanted babies, denial of care, and religious bigotry. In either case, it is a lesser evil for the pharmacists to get another job or find a private pharmacy that will accommodate their wishes
I’m personally not aware that anyone has ever been killed shouting FIRE! in a crowded theater, but I believe the law is just by making that illegal
Their opinion: they are entitled to. Their harmful actions: no.
It might seem like I’m getting everything I want, but that’s the nature of right and wrong. When one side is wrong, they don’t get what they want.
Dude, I explicitly said otherwise in the post in question. It’s why I said we didn’t need to make a law to make hardware stores stock axes; because anybody can sell them! Pharmacits, of course, are rarer, increasing the societal need for each one of them to play ball.
I don’t know if your reading comprehension is just that low, or if you just feel unconstrained by the need not misrepresent my posts, but either way this is getting really old.
To prevent pharmacists from using their rarefied position as one of a limited source of medical suppliers to sabotage people’s medical treatment. Because there are only so many pharmacists in the area, perhaps only one. No, but the fact it involves health care contributes to raising the stakes enough to make viable a challenge against claimed first amentment protections. If there’s no chance for medical complications, then yes, otherwise no. And before you ask, yes, if there are conflicts with other medicines, the pharmacist can legitimately refuse to fill a prescription.
Actually, it (almost) always does include negative effects for your coworkers, if only based on the differential treatment. Far more usually it means prime shifts going to the person who has a religious, as opposed to other reason for wanting them.
Take Sunday shifts, for example. Why should “I want to go to Church” be preferred over “I want to go to the Packers” or “I want to spend time with my family, and that is there day off” or even “I like Sundays off, and I am senior, and my seniority allows me to pick my shifts.”
Did you even read what I said? Apparently not. And you might want to do some research too, because isn’t it also an important principle of our nation that the government not favor religion over non-religion? Freedom of speech is also guaranteed - why should wearing a crucifix be treated any differently to wearing a swastika?
You have no clue what my religious beliefs are, and I like to keep it that way. My employers similarly have no idea, because they should not treat me any differently than my co-workers based on my beliefs until they affect my ability to perform my job.
Read Employment Division v. Smith, cited to frequently earlier. Then we can talk rationally about this.
If the pill is prescribed to anyone that asks for it, then I think your definition of need is different than mine. But putting that aside, you have yet to prove that anyone is unable to get their contraceptives. You can’t just call something a red herring because your response hurts your argument. If there is absolutely noone in the whole frikking country that has been denied access to birth control because of these religious whacko pharmacists, then how does a state overcome the whacko pharmacists’s first amendment right? Do we simply ignore the right because we don’t like the people caliming protection under the right? That certainly seem to be the overwhelming sentiment here.
You have yet to prove that there is a problem in society. You ceratinly haven’t probven that the problem is sufficient to overcome the first amendment.
Thanks. I would note that you don’t have to reach the level of a “blanket restriction upon their ability to practice their religion” before first amendment protection kicks in and I have already explained that telling them to “switch careers” is not something we require of people who want fist amendment protection, indeed first amendment protections are often sought when people are trying to keep theirn jobs despite their beliefs.
And I think the government cannot act to truncate the first amendment without even showing that there is some actual harm. Just calling it a red herring is really your way of saying, I don’t have an answer that won’t weaken my argument.
I never claimed that the first amendment right was absolute. If you show me that societal need (which is why I keep asking for examples of people who have been unable to obtain birth control pills because of these religious whacko pharmacists) Why do you pretend that my position is that the first amendment is inviolate? I think this is the second time you have put these words in my mouth.
However you seem to think the right to birth control IS in fact inviolate.
How frikking disingenuous can you be? Its not “fer sum jobs” its ONLY FOR THE MILITARY! THE RIGHTS OF MILITARY PERSONNEL ARE A SPECIAL CASE!!! You don’t have the same rights as a soldier as you do as a civilian. A soldier is not allowed to quit, a soldier must go into battle even if he really really doesn’t want to, he can be forced ON PAIN OF DEATH to charge into oncoming fire. You can’t analogize that to this case.
That is your opinion. The constitution disagrees. The patient’s needs amy ultimately be dispositive but the personal beliefs matter.
YogSosoth, if the pharmacy in question is discriminating against women, who is it discriminating in favor of? I mean, your hypothetical bus driver who wants the blacks to sit in the back of the bus is favoring the non-black riders. “Discrimination” implies that one class of people is being treated differently than another. Who is the Jesus pharmacy selling birth control to? Where’s the discrimination?
I disagree that 1, 3 and 4 are true. they MAY be true but unlike you I think an employer has an obligation to make reasonable accomondations and if they cannot eliminate an undue burden thereby, then they may fire the pharmacist. but you can’t short circuit that process.
Do you want them to get fired because you don’t like them or because you think they are doing something illegal and discriminatory even though there is no disciminatory intent (lets just assume there is no disciminatory intent).
OK we agree on at least one thing.
I agree with you again, we’re on a roll.
And this is where I disagree. In every discussion of civil rights, the burden is on the person who wants to truncate those rights to prove that the right should be truncated.
I have no idea how much it is being reduced. At the moment I am left to believe that there are two pharmcists in the entire USA that won’t dispense the pill and that in each case, the pill was received elsewhere.
We’re talking about screwing up your birth control pill cycle here right? Not heart medication right? If I don’t start my birth control pill cycle the day after my prior cycle runs out then what happens? I get pregnant? I die? What?
I don’t see how it reallyhelps a whole lot but I would not have a problem with requiring people who want to express their religious views to express them on the front door as well as the pharmacy counter.
I assume youa re referring to one of the therapeutic uses of the pill when you say “essential medicine ofr a condition” because I don’t know if being a fertile woman is a “condition” I believe there is a constitutional right to the pill and states cannot interfere with that right. The question here is whether states can also force every pharamcist to carry and dispense it.
I think that the employer can fire the eomployee if they cannot eliminate any undue burden with reasonable accomodations. In practice, I think this means that if it affects the employers bottom line, then they can fire them so most cases I think the eomployer could probably fire the pharmacist. After all, the pill is probably the most popular prescription in the country.
Believe it or not, I don’t have a aprticular viewpoint. I might have gotten a bit married to this side of the issue because of the virtiol that seemed to be directed my way when i suggested that the pharmacist might be within their rights but I have no problem with the pill, I’ am pro-choice, I even think that we have to do something about access to abortion in some of the more rural parts of the country. I just can’t see my way to forcing people to do something for a hypotheitcal harm.
I just don’t see why we can force a pharmacist to stock a product they don’t want to sell just because you want to buy it. No matter how much you want to buy it. Even if I don’t stock it because I think all women are whores.
I don’t see the separate but equal effect here but perhaps I am missing something.
I don’t understand.
I understand the desire to analogize this situation with racial bigotry but its not appropriate, I think it is contrived and artifical and frankly dilutes the meaning of discrimination. If a man walked in with a prescription for the pill, these pharmacists would presumably refuse to fill the prescription as well.
I was using your words.
perhaps you could expand on that. I will acknowledge that this practice, this private practice affects women more than it affects men merely because men cannot become pregnant and no amount of "financial responsibility’ or anything else can compare with deciding to abort or carry a pregnancy to term but the whole world does not have to accomodate you.
which part? I am not convinced that disparate impact translates into title 2 discrimination.
It has been tested and found constitutional in a far more liberal legal environment than we have today.
The pharmacist might say the same thing as they shoo you out the door while calling you a painted whore and pressing a bable into your hands.
BULLSHIT. I throw it out because this is a discussion on a message board. We’re not a state legislature, and we’re not a state court. THOSE are the forums which decide whether there’s enough of a problem in the local area to start slinging laws around or not.
Personally, I think it would take only one example - and there’s no reason to wait for the first one. Various legislatures may disagree, demanding more examples, or not accepting there’s a problem even if all pharmacists started doing it. Some nutty leaders may even think that the uppity liberal sluts are being so forceful in their demands for contraception that they might make specific laws to protect the rights of the religious from interference from their employers wanting them to do their jobs. (Crazy, I know.)
But this isn’t a discussion over whether there is currently enough of a problem to force the government to do something about it. Because if it was, it would also be a discussion of whether people actually think the laws where enacted are enough of a violation of first amendment rights to challenge the laws. Do you have cites for that happening? Remember, we want two or three. Or four. Or perhaps fifteen. Better bring those examples, because it’s only your silly opinion that people would consider this law a first amendment violation, and without that evidence your entire position goes down in flames!
Or alternatively you could stop this red herring bullshit and engage in the discussion properly. If you feel like going this route, let me help make it easier for you: from now on you can assume that all pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions based on religious objections. Frame all arguments based on that premise. Go to it.
Blah blah, blah. If there is absolutely noone in any state that has banned religious discrimination on the part of pharmacists that has complained of being denied access to their first amendment rights because of these liberal whacko legislators, then how can you claim the state has overcome the whacko pharmacists’s first amendment right? Do we simply ignore the lack of people claiming protection under the right because we don’t like admitting the inapplicability of the right in this scenario? That certainly seem to be the overwhelming sentiment here.
Or we could just not try to argue from examples, eh?
Have they been? In those states with this law, I mean.
This is just your way of saying that without assuming primacy of the first amendment, you don’t have an argument.
From my prior post:
So yeah. How many examples would you need to consider the first amendment trumped in this case?
And those science teachers. You forgot you conceded that those science teachers can be removed to some other position where their religion isn’t a pain.
You shouldn’t let yourself get so worked up when you’re proven wrong - though I do admit it’s especially annoying when your own words are turned back on you.
The jesus pharmacy is selling everyone all the pills they ask for - except those slutty women. They don’t get everything they ask for. The non-sluts are priviledged with consistently accomodating service.
Out of curiosity: Have there been recorded cases of pharmacists refusing to dispense other medications for personal or religious reasons (especially those whose efficacy relies on timing)? Viagra, maybe? I can’t think of a single medication that could outdo the healing power of prayer…
You said: “The main reason I don’t personally find this compelling is similar to why I don’t think hardware stores should refuse to sell axes”
This means that in your opinion hardaware stores shouldn’t refuse to sell axes. it is not your main argument and I know you don’t want to do it. however, you do think it is a good idea.
You said: “Sure, I might use them to chop up babies. Heck, I’m a liberal, so the hardware story guy might believe I’m a baby-killer. Still though, it’s not his job to be the axe police, and if I do decide to go on a killing spree, he is not an accomplice for selling me the axe.”
This means that you don’t think selling contraception makes you complicit to their contraception. It does. The reasonable use for most contracpetives is, duh, contraception. Even if some are used for other issues (you use the word non-frivolous and I don’t think contraception is frivolous) most wold be used for that. You would be aiding people to do something you think is immoral. The ratio is clearly in favour of contraception.
It’s a bit more like selling Hustler than axes. Maybe the guy likes it fot the jokes and the coupons, but it is clear that most want them for other reasons.
You said: “You don’t need training and a license to sell an axe, so there is considerably less need to make sure that those who can sell it, do.”
This means, and I repeat for your convenience, there is a small need for making sure.
Yep, getting old, even when I’m right.
Here’s the actual post:
Good lord man, have you no shame?
It’s interesting that the only person calling these women sluts and whores are you. Project much? Did you miss the part that they don’t sell them to married women either?
Where did I contradict anything? Where did I misquote?
Where I said I knew it wasn’t your main argument?
Apparently the truth makes you unconfortable.