Notes from Evil Bender

Pharmacies to Women:F_ck you. June 16, 2008

Posted by Evil Bender in bigotry, Religion, reproductive rights, wingnuts, Woo.
3 comments

Via Feministing, I learn that some pharmacies, under the banner of Pharmacies for lying against women for Life International have taken it upon themselves to decide what women should be allowed to do with their bodies:

When DMC Pharmacy opens this summer on Route 50 in Chantilly, the shelves will be stocked with allergy remedies, pain relievers, antiseptic ointments and almost everything else sold in any drugstore. But anyone who wants condoms, birth control pills or the Plan B emergency contraceptive will be turned away.

That’s because the drugstore, located in a typical shopping plaza featuring a Ruby Tuesday, a Papa John’s and a Kmart, will be a “pro-life pharmacy” — meaning, among other things, that it will eschew all contraceptives.

The pharmacy is one of a small but growing number of drugstores around the country that have become the latest front in a conflict pitting patients’ rights against those of health-care workers who assert a “right of conscience” to refuse to provide care or products that they find objectionable.

“The United States was founded on the idea that people act on their conscience — that they have a sense of right and wrong and do what they think is right and moral,” said Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel at the Thomas More Society, a Chicago public-interest law firm that is defending a pharmacist who was fined and reprimanded for refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control pills. “Every pharmacist has the right to do the same thing,” Brejcha said.

I do have some sympathy for the idea that people shouldn’t be made to do things that are against their conscience, but let’s be clear what’s being argued here: a woman comes in with a prescription from her doctor or a request for something over-the-counter, like, say, condoms, and the pharmacist has the right to tell her to fuck off. The woman, apparently, has the right to be told to fuck off.

And there’s still no attempt by these people to explain why, if they’re so goddamn opposed to abortion, why they deny contraceptives to women, and thus drastically increase the likelihood of unwanted pregancies.

And it gets worse:

Some pro-life pharmacies are identical to typical drugstores except that they do not stock some or all forms of contraception. Others also refuse to sell tobacco, rolling papers or pornography. Many offer “alternative” products, including individually compounded prescription drugs, as well as vitamins and homeopathic and herbal remedies.

That’s right, folks: they’ll keep you from getting contraceptives, but they’ll be happy to sell you homeopathic products. If your really lucky, maybe your fucking water will “remember” that you don’t want to be pregnant.* And it goes on:

“We try to practice pharmacy in a way that we feel is best to help our community and promote healthy lifestyles,” said Lloyd Duplantis, who owns Lloyd’s Remedies in Gray, La., and is a deacon in his Catholic church. “After researching the science behind steroidal contraceptives, I decided they could hurt the woman and possibly hurt her unborn child. I decided to opt out.”

As Jessica notes, “It’s a good thing that we have random dudes to tell us what medication to take - otherwise women would be left discussing important medical and life decisions with their families and doctors.”

I imagine it’s only a matter of time before pharmacies start refusing to provide help for people who like vaccinations or for gay and unmarried couples. After all, once you start substituting yourself for women and their doctors, why not force your ideas down people’s throats in other areas?

Some critics question how such pharmacies justify carrying drugs, such as Viagra, for male reproductive issues, but not those for women.

“Why do you care about the sexual health of men but not women?” asked Anita L. Nelson, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “If he gets his Viagra, why can’t she get her contraception?”

Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Sex is supposed to be a punishment for women, but we must not interfere with the Mighty Phallus. Somehow I doubt they ask men if they’ve had a vasectomy before they fill a prescription for Viagra.

“Being a faith-based workplace, it’s a logical thing to do,” Semler said.

I honestly don’t know how to respond to the claim that refusing medical care based on one’s religious beliefs is “logical.” Oh, wait, I think I’ve got it: aside from being a classic misuse of the word “logical,” this is just batshit crazy. If you don’t want to fill prescriptions, don’t be a fucking pharmacist. Or, to put it in a more restrained way:

“If you are a health-care professional, you are bound by professional obligations,” said Nancy Berlinger, deputy director of the Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank in Garrison, N.Y. “You can’t say you won’t do part of that profession.”

Well put.

Critics also worry that women might unsuspectingly seek contraceptives at such a store and be humiliated, or that women needing the morning-after pill, which is most effective when used quickly, may waste precious time.

“Rape victims could end up in a pharmacy not understanding this pharmacy will not meet their needs,” Greenberger said. “We’ve seen an alarming development of pharmacists over the last several years refusing to fill prescriptions, and sometimes even taking the prescription from the woman and refusing to give it back to her so she can fill it in another pharmacy.”

Recently I was without my car unexpectedly for one day–just one. I live in suburbia, and getting to any food or a supermarket was a half-hour walk. I’m fortunate, in that there is a pharmacist closer than the supermarket, so if I was ever without a car for a length of time, it would only be a mile round-trip to get a prescription. But if I was seeking emergency contraception or condoms and the pharmacy refused to sell it to me, that would require another long walk. For me, these things are a minor inconvenience: I do have a car, and a decent job, and the pharmacies fill my prescriptions and my partner’s.

But the poorer one is, the fewer options one has, and the more likely it is that someone else’s self-righteous “moral objections” will really fuck you over.

“If I don’t believe something is right, the last thing I want to do is refer to someone else,” said Michael G. Koelzer, who owns Kay Pharmacy in Grand Rapids, Mich. “It’s up to that person to be able to find it.”

In case there was any question this is about making life hard for women, rather than doing what one feels is right, this should answer it: these people don’t want to just be answerable to their conscience; they want to actively make it difficult to women to get access to legal medication.

Fuck them.

*Yes, I realize that lots of mainstream pharmacies sell Woo to gullible patrons, as any trip to a Walgreen’s will indicate. That doesn’t make this group of idiots any less odious, however: they’re refusing to provide real medical care and instead providing useless crap designed to separate fools from their money.