Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what '80s movie that pharmacist-delivered line is from.
Anyway, I guess it's a good thing these assholes weren't around when my friend Louden got crabs our junior year:
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.
It's a long article, filled with the usual bilge about how these noble beacons of moral supereminence are simply following the hallowed American tradition of "following their conscience." I'd encourage you to read the whole thing, but I'm just going to quote a few choice (har) bits:
The pharmacies are emerging at a time when a variety of health-care workers are refusing to perform medical procedures they find objectionable. Fertility doctors have refused to inseminate gay women. Ambulance drivers have refused to transport patients for abortions. Anesthesiologists have refused to assist in sterilizations.
Then fire them. I'm sure it varies, but aren't health care workers in a state-regulated system required to provide treatment when the prescription/diagnosis is legitimate? Take any of these homunculoids who refuse to provide the services they've been licensed for and shitcan them so they'll be free to preach their 17th century gibberish in whatever ratholes these people inhabit.
"This allows a pharmacist who does not wish to be involved in stopping a human life in any way to practice in a way that feels comfortable," said Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life International, which promotes a pharmacist's right to refuse to fill such prescriptions. The group's Web site lists seven pharmacies around the country that have signed a pledge to follow "pro-life" guidelines, but Brauer said there are many others.
I'm not linking the web site, but here's a list of the pharmacies:
- David's Pharmacy, Cartaya, David and Carmen RPhs - 2302 W Martin Luther King Blvd, Tampa, FL
- Andrew Eells, BSP, Greta Pharmacy, 1475 W Okeechobee Rd, Ste 5, Hialeah, FL
- Richmond Apothecary, Rokosz, David RPh 1626 East Main Street - Richmond, IN
- DuPlantis, Lloyd J, PD , Lloyd's Remedies, PO Box 1780, 3696 W Main St, Gray, LA
- Koelzer, Michael G, RPh Kay Pharmacy and Home Medical Equipment, 2178 Plainfield Rd NE, Grand Rapids, MI
- Superior Pharmacy, Lane L Hawley, RPh 348 N Central Ave, Superior, NE
Alternatives are probably easy to find in places like Tampa, Hialeah, and Grand Rapids. But tough shit for the woman who needs Plan B in Gray, LA (50 miles from New Orleans) or Superior, NE (75 miles from Lincoln). Or the out-of-towner who loses their birth control pills in Richmond, IN. And I guess it never occurs to these people that The Pill and other contraceptives are often prescribed for uses other than legitimizing those pagan orgies Bauer and her ilk see lurking behind every script for Ortho-Novum.
"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."
Some critics question how such pharmacies justify carrying drugs, such as Viagra, for male reproductive issues, but not those for women.
Yeah.
This is the standard fallback, that these maladroits somehow care about women's issues in a way that those who dedicate their entire lives and careers to women's health somehow don't understand. It's beyond disingenuous: it's bullshit. Any pharmacist that refuses to fill legitimate prescriptions or stock contraceptives yet have no problem doling out boner pills has shown their true self: not a concerned practitioner bravely standing up for his individual rights, but rather a delusional misogynist whose attitude towards health care has more in common with Theodoric of York than any human being educated in the last 50 years.
Excellent use of an overused word: misogynist.
Kudos.
That’s too easy Peter. It’s The Last American Virgin. What disturbs me is the line “eschew all contraceptives”. Eschew???? Now there’s a word!
The quote? The Last American Virgin, I think. I’ve been on an ’80s kick this past week and a half.
I’ll grant you that these guys are misguided.
But isn’t it their own business to decide what they are going to sell?
Peenman, pharmacists are licensed by the state. The same reasons that justify the state having an interest in licensing them justify the state having an interest in what pharmaceuticals they do or do not sell.
Some states permit “right of conscience” to pharmacists (as well as doctors and nurses); others view pharmacy as essential ministerial, with the pharmacist having little discretion, the discretion being vested in the prescribing doctor. I generally favor the latter approach, if only so that another layer of asshattery isn’t thrown in the path of people trying to get appropriate medical care.
Greg, your comment is well reasoned and insightful.
Thus, it took me a long time to read it. I speak mostly snark.
And I get what you’re saying if you’re talking pencillin or even Valtrex.
But if you tried to apply the “A pharmacies *entire* inventory is to be determined by the state because the state is the liscensor (word?)” logic to condoms, RU-486, and even Viagra, I would think you would be having a tought time making it fly.
You need a food liscence to operate a restaurant, right? But they don’t all have to serve cheesesteaks. And I don’t get to cry discrimination if they don’t have a kosher menu.
These people are still dipshits for thinking that they are reducing abortion by limiting access to birth control. People, even unmarried Christians, are going to have sex. If birth control is relatively convenient, people will use it.
Don’t get me started on this.
A girl gets raped in Lubbock, Texas. First the ER doctor won’t provide emergency contraception at the hospital (a state supported hospital). He’ll give her drugs to prevent STIs, but no birth control. Personal choice. However, and I still can’t figure this, he will write her a prescription to be filled at her friendly neighborhood pharmacy. Maybe it’s because he knows it’s the middle of the night and the only 24-hour pharmacy is a CVS that doesn’t fill prescriptions for birth control. What’s a girl to do? Don’t anyone challenge me on this. I was the Rape Crisis worker on the case. I had to practically get down on my knees and beg another ER doc to provide the medication.
I don’t agree with pharmacies that take this antediluvian stance, but in some sort of lopsided way,I can see why they “think” they’re right. But what about the idiot doctor? What happened to “First do no harm?” And why in God’s name, if you want to pick and choose your patients, do you go to work in an emergency room?
See, I said, don’t get me started.
Gran
Gran, I admire you tremendously, and we’ve only just met.
Peen, I get you. I just think that there a serious balance of equities issue here in the pharmacist’s right to refuse to carry drug alpha and the patient’s need (possibly emergency) for drug alpha. That justifies the state making a policy choice, either to permit the right of conscience or to require the pharmacist to carry and dispense alpha. That’s all I’m really saying, is that there is a legitimate justification for the state interfering in the pharmacy’s commercial decisions. My opinion, of course, is that anyone who refuses to help a rape victim ought to get their ass kicked, or at least fired
(The state has the same justification for getting involved in a doctor’s right of conscience, too. IMO, emergency docs should have much less discretion in refusing care than Gran reports, because patients have much less opportunity to seek alternate care.)
This is pretty much like those Muslim cabdrivers in Minnesota - the ones who were refusing to transport passengers who had alcohol in their possession, whether those passengers were Muslim or not.
Fuck that, I say.
And fuck those pharmacists. Let ‘em get jobs at McDonald’s.
Funny, I never hear of Jewish McDonald’s workers refusing to serve customers: “I’m sorry, that hamburger violates God’s law - it has bacon on it.” They’d be fired in a New York minute.
Having been born and raised in Florida, I remember that the only thing the majority of Hialeah was good for was driving through it to get to the racetrack.
Thank God I wasn’t born in any of the ass-backwards parts of that state.