Seriously? You’re comparing having an extra days jock itch to a raped woman becoming pregnant? An inventory shortfall to a deliberate ‘political statement’. Running out of a stocked item is not analogous with judging another’s morality.
If Walmart has a problem they can make a contract with someone else, their choice. This would be a stronger position, for pharmacists, if they had ever, ever expressed moral outrage at what amounts to an epidemic of prescription drug abuse in the country.
They are the ones politicizing the act of dispensing. Do they get to pass moral judgment on drugs Dr’s prescribe. Can they refuse to fill the script for the painkillers, a woman receives, for after her abortion? They aren’t being paid to make a moral judgment, they are being paid to dispense as per the Dr’s direction. If you have a deep moral objection, to nudity it behooves you not to become a waiter at a nudist colony.
So then a pharmacist who believed that interracial sex was a sin would have the right to refuse to provide birth control to white women with black boyfriends since that would be enabling said sinning?
Are you doing this on purpose, or can’t you help it? The pharmacy is not discriminating against its customers. It is only discriminating between products that it does and does not sell.
People are insisting that Pharmacists should be allowed to refuse to sell birth control because they think it’s sinful to use and they don’t want to contribute to the sin.
By that same token, pharmacists who object to interracial sex for religious reasons should also be allowed to refuse to give birth control to white women with black boyfriends because they would be enabling something they see as a sin.
All opposition to contraception is rooted in discrimination against women; the only question at hand is how much of said discrimination should be legally permissible when balanced with the interests of property rights and freedom of religion.
You’re not allowed to treat the customer differently on the basis of their membership of a protected class. That is the legal principle that actually exists. If a pharmacist refuses to provide birth control to interracial couples and chooses to do so by not stocking birth control at all, that is a closer approximation to the reality of this case than your shoddy attempt.
A pharmacist decides not to dispense legal, doctor-prescribed medicine for ‘slutty’ women who have gotten themselves knocked up.
A pharmacist decides not to dispense legal, doctor-prescribed medicine for ‘uppity’ Negros who have gotten cancer by smoking those menthol cigarettes that ‘all them darkies like’.
A pharmacist decides not to dispense legal, doctor-prescribed medicine medicine for “sinful” women who are engaging in behavior he doesn’t like.
A pharmacist decides not to dispense legal, doctor-prescribed medicine medicine for “race traitor” women who sleep with people outside their race.
Really? Why don’t you give us a bunch of examples of how regulations can be subverted trivially. And the method I suggest could be used indefinitely. Or, are we going down the path that the government will not only tell us what we must sell but what price we must charge for it?
If you’re in a business that relies on government sanction for the right to operate, why shouldn’t the government enforce what can and can not be sold, and what reasonable prices are for items deemed necessary for the public good? The government monopolizes the licensing of pharmacists, why shouldn’t it also be able to establish a basic code of conduct and professional ethics?
You cannot sell heroin, you must sell Plan B.
You cannot sell to anybody without a valid prescription, you must sell to anybody with a valid prescription.
They’re not medieval apothecaries, they’re government licensed and regulated servants of the public good.
And no, Gruman, “handwaved” is not equivalent to “explained”. “Sluts” are not a protected class, “race traitors” are not a protected class. “Uppity” folks are not a protected class. “Sinful” women are not a protected class.
Besides which, your rationalization fails on basic logical grounds; a pharmacist thinks that blacks should “know their place” and decides not to stock Hydroxyurea since, after all, sickle cell is a curse from God for their uppityness. But hey, he’s not stocking it for everybody so that’s cool.
Of course they are - you’re trying to obfuscate with adjectives, but the fact that you saw fit to include race and sex as part of the reasoning proves you wrong.
See, that’s a good counter-argument. Why couldn’t you have just done that in the first place instead of all that other garbage?
Very good, so you agree that pharmacists refusing to stock a type of medicine that will be used by “slutty” women are just trying to obfuscate and they’re discriminating against a protected class. Glad we’re on the same page here.
No, I’m wondering how you could possibly enforce this requirement that if a pharmacy does not sell a particular medication, they must post it on a billboard in front.
Is this law ONLY for Plan B or for all medication? I’m sure that there are thousands of Eastern remedies not available in the pharmacy.
So, let’s assume that since Plan B is special in the hearts of liberals that only it’s availability must be advertised. Does it have to be advertised when the pharmacy is simply out of stock versus refuses to stock it?
How do you make sure that the pharmacy isn’t simply “out of stock” all of the time?
Second, I wonder how big of a problem this “raped woman” scenario is that needs to be solved. In other words, by your estimation, how many women in this country in the last year were:
Raped
Became pregnant
Went to a drug store to get Plan B
Ran into a born again Christian pharmacist who refused to stock it.
Did not have another pharmacy within close proximity.
Had no way of getting to another pharmacy, a doctor, or a hospital.
and was thereby forced to get a conventional abortion or carry the child to term?
How many in the whole of the U.S. last year? My guess: zero.
This is no more than a veiled attempt to enforce their morality on others. If they want to play politics then they should be willing to own it. A sign on the door saying “For moral/political/religious reasons we do not dispense PlanB.” I say, own up, or shut up.
If my abortion leaves me requiring pain meds do they get to refuse to dispense those? They are supposed to dispense, not pass judgment on my morality.
The recent Tylenol fiasco is an excellent example. Rules were averted… for a time. Then there was hell to pay. Our society is based on the premise that people are basically good. We check up on them to make sure, though. But we don’t put chips in their head and cameras in their house. You can cheat welfare or disability trivially… for a time. But someone will find out. This aspect of modern living is so apparent to me I really am having a hard time understanding why you don’t see this.
Are you kidding me or something? How do you think any law is enforced? It is trivial to rob a bank. That doesn’t mean you are going to get away with it. Sometimes a robber will get away with a lot of robberies. This is life.
I don’t care about having them declare their “reasoning” on the issue.
Simply require that a mechanism be in place for filling the prescription in a timely manner at another pharmacy and getting it rushed to your shop for pickup by the patient at your expense. That way, there’s no requirement that you agonize over what the medication is being used for, and you don’t have to risk dirtying your nice, pink clean conscience by actually filling the prescription yourself. End result - the patient gets the medication she needs.
My understanding of the suggestion was that the billboard or sign would state that the business had decided to invoke a ‘matter of conscience exception’ to not stock the particular item or items. The expectation was that social and economic pressure would be brought to bear by, presumably, women deciding not to trade with that store for *any *items as a protest of the ‘matter of conscience’ decision.
I’ll offer a WAG that it could indeed apply to all ‘matter of conscience’ drugs or products. But probably not to products not stocked due to questions of safety or efficacy, like many “Eastern remedies”.
Fine. But to steal from John Mace above, let’s say that the pharmacist claims that he has no moral problem at all with selling Plan B, so no sign is necessary. It just so happens that he forgets to re-order it almost every time and when he does his idiot clerk puts a $10,000 price tag per dose. Still a need for a sign?
Obviously those are ridiculous exaggerations, but let’s say it’s always in stock but his price is triple his competitors? Double? What if he keeps them behind locked glass and when a customer asks for it, an all-page goes over the store’s loudspeaker, “Associate with keys needed at the abortion medication counter. REPEAT: Associate with keys needed at the pharmacy to assist customer in procuring her abortion medication!!!” Then the associate takes 25 minutes to show up with the wrong keys by “mistake.” Then, when paying, the clerk starts reciting Bible verses.
In other words, what we are trying to say is that if you force people either to sell it or put a sign up saying that they are assholes for not selling it, they will fight back in a thousand passive-aggressive ways. And yes, we can fight back. But why? This myth of a pharmacy as an oasis in the middle of the desert is not true for 99+ percent of the population and within a 60 mile drive for the one example we have in the thread.
It’s a solution in search of a problem, and an unworkable, expensive solution for no other purpose than to have the state say “fuck you” to pharmacists who don’t want to sell Plan B. I don’t see the need.
Missed the edit window: And there is no evidence that the ONE 60 mile away pharmacy doesn’t stock Plan B.
So, I am wondering what is the longest distance any women has to travel in this country because of a pharmacy’s refusal to stock Plan B. Then, how many of those women that fit the criteria in my above post are unable to make that travel (which we have established is, at most, 30 miles).
Once we have those numbers, then we can determine how much the strong arm of the state needs to act to correct this injustice that affects, what I am guessing, is ZERO people in a country of 300 Million.