JohnnyBz00LS
Dedicated LVC Member
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. :Bang
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. :Bang
