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Druggists play politics with morning-after pill

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Posted by: JohnnyBz00LS

Here's another issue that burns me.............

Posted on Thu, Apr. 21, 2005

Druggists play politics with morning-after pill

Clarence Page

WASHINGTON – I respect the feelings of those pharmacists who, as a matter of conscience, refuse to sell the new “morning-after” emergency contraception pill. I also respectfully disagree with them.

The issue of “conscientious objections,” as the previously little-known Ohio-based group called Pharmacists for Life International calls it, has bubbled up in recent months with more than a hundred reports of pharmacists who just say no to dispensing the “morning-after pill,” which is also known as Plan B.

About two dozen states have responded with a patchwork of legal and political actions, which probably forecast the state-to-state crazy quilt of abortion laws that would re-emerge if the Supreme Court overturns the Roe v. Wade decision.

For example, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich recently made national headlines by ordering pharmacies, although not all pharmacists, in his state to fill Plan B prescriptions after a downtown Chicago drugstore refused to fill two. The Massachusetts legislature is considering a bill to let pharmacists dispense the pill without a doctor’s prescription and require all hospitals to make it available to all rape victims. A bill in California would require objecting pharmacists to be prepared to make referrals.

Arkansas, South Dakota, Mississippi and Georgia have “conscience clause” laws that let pharmacists refuse to dispense any drugs related to contraception or abortion on moral grounds. In about a dozen other states, including Indiana, Texas and Tennessee, legislators are considering similar bills.

If this issue has not come to your state or town, stay tuned. Who knows how many women and teen girls in distress already have been turned away and been too pained or embarrassed by the experience to go public. How many even would have the fortitude, in such circumstances, to object when a zealous anti-choice pharmacist refuses, in an act of conscience, to refer them to another pharmacy or even to give their prescription back?

Yes, these are the sort of control-freak actions that Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life International, favors. Besides refusing to fill the scrip, she advocates preaching a little morality lecture to the would-be consumer, including erroneously exaggerated claims that Plan B acts like an abortion.

In interviews, Brauer has said that a pharmacist should not only refuse to dispense medication that offends her but also block all future access by that patient to that medication. Referrals, she says, would be like saying, “I don’t kill people myself, but let me tell you about the guy down the street who does.”

Is this, I wonder, the sort of information that major drugstores want their customers to hear when they come in with serious questions?

I like pharmacists, but they are neither doctors nor clergy. Those who want to give moral lectures might try another line of work, especially when their zealotry in the pharmacy only serves to delay something as time-sensitive as emergency contraception.

Unlike the French drug RU-486, Plan B is not an abortion drug. Best taken within 24 hours of unprotected intercourse, the “morning-after pill” mainly works to prevent fertilization. Whether it blocks a fertilized egg from becoming implanted in the uterus has been a matter of fierce debate.

Of course, much of this Plan B dispute would become moot if the Food and Drug Administration approves the morning-after pill for over-the-counter sale by pharmacists. The agency’s scientists and review panels support that move, but abortion politics are blocking it in Washington, where the health care concerns of Congress and the White House appear to begin and end these days with arguments over the handling of the Terri Schiavo case.

While we wait for common sense to invade the nation’s capital again, here’s my suggestion: If druggists want to argue that they have the right to pick and choose which prescriptions they want to sell, they should be required to post their choices at the front door, so customers will know long before they face an embarrassing confrontation.

And, as a matter of gender equity, we need to inconvenience men, too. Stores who refuse to sell Plan B on moral grounds, for example, should be prohibited from selling any male-oriented sex aids, too, including drugs that might give you a four-hour you-know-what.

After all, selling sex-enhancement drugs to men while denying morning-after pills to women dodges moral responsibility, too. It’s sort of like sewing your wild oats on Saturday nights, then praying on Sunday morning for crop failure.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clarence Page is a Chicago Tribune columnist.

If these pharmacists feel obligated to shove their morals down other's throats, GET ANOTHER JOB. I'm suprised that if this happened in a large chain like Walgreens or Wal-Mart, that a pile of lawsuits are not ensuing. Probably NOT though, because the GOP has screwed w/ the laws, thus opening the door for this crap to happen.

Posted by: FreeFaller

It's all about responsibility...you play...you pay. This pill for the large part is all about shirking responsibility.

"Hey...I don't have to worry about anything I do. I don't have to answer for my actions. No responsibilty whatsoever...lifes just one big party!"

Alot of people are far too happy to teach their kids how to get out of things. "Here Bobby...use these condoms and everything will be okay." Instead of "Sex=Kids...can't deal with that risk...can't deal with sex." We're more than happy to show them the bright side of life and never how to handle the bad/hard to deal with... We never tell them " Bobby, sometimes fate just deals you a big sh!t sandwich and you'd better learn how to cowboy the fukk up and deal with it!"

So don't blame the GOP for making people live with their mistakes...it's about time. Because you never know...that single cell organism that you have no problem in killing could have grown up to be the next JFK or FDR...How you like dem apples.

Posted by: JohnnyBz00LS

IS this a FREE country or NOT??

When someone wants to obtain a medically prescribed drug within the bounds of our LAWS, WHO the F%*K is the pharmacist to deny any persons RIGHTS to those drugs because of some religious-based (or WHATEVER) moral conflict?? No one is forcing YOU or YOUR children to do anything against their will, so DON'T stand in MY way to do something that I want to do that is within the bounds of the laws of this country!

Posted by: Kbob

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnnyBz00LS

so DON'T stand in MY way to do something that I want to do that is within the bounds of the laws of this country!

I'm just being argumentative, but throughout history there have been lots of things that were legal but wrong. Being legal in and of itself does not make anything right. You should justify your position by more than that IMO. I'm sure you have other reasons for what you believe.

Posted by: MonsterMark

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kbob

I'm just being argumentative

Me too. Don't like it, go to a pharmacist that will give it to you. It's not like there isn't one or two on almost every street corner. Like you said, it's a free country. Don't like it, go somewhere else.

Posted by: JohnnyBz00LS

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kbob

"Wrong"? By WHO's standards? Laws are made, based on a majority of the people's opinion (by voting for our lawmakers in this great democracy) on what's generally agreed to as what is "right" or "wrong". EVERYONE will NEVER 100% AGREE on EVERYTHING. But that doesn't give anyone the right to break the laws or infringe on other's rights to do anything they wish within those laws. Don't LIKE the laws? VOTE or write your local lawmakers to make changes to those laws. But until a significant number of your fellow countrymen AGREE with you and those laws ARE changed, DEAL WITH IT!

Posted by: JohnnyBz00LS

Quote:

Originally Posted by MonsterMark

Typical GOP response, thinking you can live above the law. I shouldn't HAVE to go somewhere else. I'm sure there are plenty of small towns west of the Mississippi w/ only ONE pharmacy.

Posted by: Kbob

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnnyBz00LS

You asked for it.

So in 1860, slavery was right in the south? Again, it was the right thing to do? And people that broke the law to help runaway slaves, they were wrong? You deal with your own conscious, and I'll deal with mine, thanks. You would not have had any problem being a Nazi in 1942 while the Jews were being systematically robbed and murdered, would you, since it was "lawful". Being in the majority means power in a democracy, but again, it does not mean that you are right. Try again.

Posted by: JohnnyBz00LS

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kbob

This ISN'T the 1860s, and this ISN'T Nazi-Germany. But you make a valid point, laws evolve as the social climate evolves from generation to generation.

C'mon, we're talking about a morning-after pill here, hardly different than birth control pills. If the anti-abortion extremists EVER expect to make any ground changing legislature, they are going to have to work w/ the pro-choice folks to find a happy medium. They will NEVER have it 100% their way!

Personally, I believe that if you have testicles hanging between your thighs, you have ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT to tell ANY WOMAN what she can or cannot do to HER OWN BODY. On the other hand, I would never advocate a late term abortion. So where would I draw the line? At the point the fetus is able to live outside the womb on it's own. However, when that occurs is up for much debate. I'm no medical / birthing expert, so that line is mighty fuzzy IMO. However, WITHOUT A DOUBT, birth-control pills and "morning after" pills are clearly on one side of that line, while late-term abortions are on the other. The THING that frys me about this issue is that some people are so extreme in their thinking that they are un-willing to reach across and work with those on the other side. Denying the prescriptions of birth control and morning-after pills clearly falls into this extremist line of thinking, and I have NO USE for people like that.

Whatever happened to respecting the beliefs of your fellow American, even if those beliefs don't agree with your own? I guess those days are gone in this totalitarian environment of "Patriot Acts", "Faith-based Initiatiaves" and "Terror Alerts".

Posted by: Cubster

The problem with the morning after pill is this in a nut shell, the people who SHOULD be using this pill are exactly the people who WON'T use it, their monthly income won't increase if they use it......... so does it really make a difference whether a pharmacist sells it or not, it is afterall, a free country.

Posted by: Kbob

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnnyBz00LS

Personally, I believe that if you have testicles hanging between your thighs, you have ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT to tell ANY WOMAN what she can or cannot do to HER OWN BODY.

I agree 100% with that statement. Unfortunately, the question is: what is her own body? As you alluded to, at what point does a human being become its own living entity, albeit totally dependent on the mothers body to live?