A friend of mine sent me this story, and it has absolutely infuriated me:
‘Pro-Life’ Drugstores Market Beliefs
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. “Every pharmacist has the right to do the same thing,” Brejcha said.
“I’m very, very troubled by this,” said Marcia Greenberger of the National Women’s Law Center, a Washington advocacy group. “Contraception is essential for women’s health. A pharmacy like this is walling off an essential part of health care. That could endanger women’s health.”
(full article here)
Now, I am ALL FOR pharmacists having the freedom to open their own “thou shalt not do whatever we don’t like” pharmacies, if only because of my loathing for censorship and a belief in freedom of choice.
What I cannot fathom is the mentality behind the statement made above, that “all pharmacists have the right to do the same.”
Pharmacists in Wal-Mart have the “right” to tell a customer that they will not fill their medication, no matter how many times it has been prescribed, if that individual pharmacist has a theological objection. We’re not just talking morning-after pills here, folks, they can refuse to fill scripts for anything from birth control to acne medications such as Accutane (due to its high probability of birth defects and a mandatory birth-control-use clause.)
Why do holier-than-thou Bible-thumpers go into medicine? To play God, naturally . . . even though their most vehement argument against contraceptives and the like centers around people using medication to play God themselves. You know, because if God wants you to get pregnant, by golly you should. No matter what!
Just ask the Duggars.
It simply pushes me past my boiling point when I read yet another story about a person in power using their personal religious beliefs to control the lives of others. The phrase “separation of church and state” hasn’t held water, holy or not, for many moons now. When are we going to begin insisting that those pesky little pieces of paper called the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, be upheld?
If I ever go to a priest for migraine medication or birth control pills, then I’ll deserve the religious lecture I’d likely receive. Until that day comes, keep the church out of my medicine cabinet, will you?
I second that! Do you think if the pharmacist wants to open their own shop and sell what they want – then they should be able to? But still – such a power trip – we look up to our health care professionals – they can’t possibly put in their own “religious” beliefs into their jobs – they are supposed to be medical scientists…
My sense of fair play says that if they want to fund their own private places, then they do have the right to do so. But anyone working in a franchise pharmacy should *not* be allowed to do such a thing. Unfortunately, many people think their religion belongs in every aspect of life—their lives AND everyone else’s!
head, meet desk. BAM!
Your avid reader reads.
I was looking for a prescription site when I came across your post in a google search. I agree you with your post completely. Couldn’t of said it better myself.