Wanna have some fun?

Next time you’re in a pharmacy, ask if they have emergency contraception – aka the morning after pill or Plan B.  If you get some blathering on about “moral objections to filling that prescription” ask if you can get your prescription for antibiotics filled.  Tell them it’s to clear up your gonorrhea.

Get some popcorn, the show should be fun.

If I go to a doctor I expect and should receive the same level of care without regard to my gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, educational background, economic status, physical or mental ability.  If a doctor refused to treat someone because he/she was African American, that doctor would face tough questions from the medical certification board and would have earned public opprobrium.  The same goes for other medical and mental health professionals.

Why are Americans even debating the right of pharmacists to refuse to dispense medication to women?  No man will ever be refused a prescription for emergency contraception.  I have yet to hear of a pharmacist refusing to dispense viagra due to moral objections.  I have never heard of a pharmacist having moral objections to filling prescriptions for the treatment of STI’s.  Or protease inhibitors for the treatment of HIV.  It’s only emergency contraception and other contraception, written exclusively for women and used exclusively by women, to which pharmacists seem to have some objections.

The issue is not the pharmacist and his or her tender conscience.  The issue is the right of people to receive the medical treatment they and their doctors determine is needful and appropriate for them, and the right of women to receive the medical treatment they want and deserve.  Here’s the best part: EC actually prevents conception – it’s not some a chemical abortion despite the misleading rhetoric from anti-choice activists.

Why is it that when some pharmacists refuse to fill legally written prescriptions for FDA approved medication and rather than telling them to do their jobs without prejudice, we as a society even debate the right of women to get their prescriptions filled?  August 23, 2006, the Washington Times reported that four states (AK, GA, MS, SD) have laws allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions.  The net regularly has tales of rape victims denied EC because of “moral objections” by pharmacists.  Maybe we should talk about the moral objection to rape.

I wonder if the fact that the people receiving contraception are women has anything to do with it.  I guess, when the male contraceptive pill is finally available, we’ll find out, won’t we?

In the meantime, we’ll have to wonder: why do these pharmacists with their “moral objections” think their right of refusal is more important their customers right to medical treatment?