Advertisement
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream; a dream you dream together is reality.” — Yoko Ono
Mar
19
“Conscience” has nothing to do with it
Filed Under anti-choice extremism, class and economics, courts, discrimination, human rights, misogyny, patriarchy, rape and sexual assault, reproductive justice, slut-shaming, women’s health | Posted by Cara |
Yet again, an Illinois court is hearing a case about the state’s requirement that all pharmacies dispense emergency contraception. This time it’s in the Illinois Supreme Court hearing the same old tired crap about how requiring a person whose job is to provide medical care to actually provide medical care is somehow breaching their rights.
The rule doesn’t require pharmacies to stock Plan B, but it does require pharmacies to order the medicine if a patient requests it.
The patients whose prescriptions were returned by Vander Bleek and Kosirog’s pharmacies didn’t ask that the medicine be ordered when told that the businesses didn’t stock Plan B. But if asked, the pharmacies would refuse to order Plan B. That could result in suspension of their licenses to operate, Rienzi said.
Okay. Good. I actually doubt that the state would have the nerve to suspend their license, but if they did? Good. They should. I don’t think I’ve made it any big secret that I absolutely do not believe pharmacists should have the right to refuse to dispense EC. While pharmacies are indeed private businesses, they also happen to provide a public service. Refusing medical care is not okay.
Everyone has a right to religious freedom. But we often forget that while religious freedom means not restricting anyone’s right to worship in their chosen way, it also means that no one has the right to significantly impact your life due to religious views with which you do not agree. A person’s right to religious freedom ends where another person’s right to religious freedom begins. That’s why, if human sacrifice actually existed to any significant degree, it would be illegal. It’s also why the Catholic Church has failed to make everything from abortion to condoms illegal . . . at least in this country.
Personally, I take the generally unpopular view that a Catholic hospital which refuses certain medical procedures due to religious beliefs really shouldn’t be allowed to exist. A doctor can invoke a conscience clause, yes. And I don’t exactly want to force anyone to perform an abortion despite a moral conflict. But in such cases — which include a lot more than abortion — another person must be readily available to provide those services. The end. Many people only have access to one hospital. And even more so than pharmacists, hospitals provide an absolutely vital pubic service. If they can’t manage provide that service with integrity, they shouldn’t be allowed to pretend that they do.
But I digress. I’ve said all of this before, as have others. What really caught my eye here was this bullshit:
Vander Bleek and Kosirog say pharmacies are protected by the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act. State officials contend that pharmacies and pharmacists aren’t covered by the act, even though U.S. District Court Judge Jeanne Scott, in a related case, ruled last summer that pharmacists are, in fact, covered by the act.
Striking down the rule wouldn’t necessarily result in women being denied Plan B, Rienzi said outside the courtroom.
“If the state wants to make it more available … the state could give it out for free,” he said. “The state could keep a database so that every customer would know exactly which pharmacies carry it and which do not.”
The government providing EC? I’m definitely on board with that!
And yet, Rienzi fails to note how the government providing free EC would solve the problem at hand. It would solve the cost issue, but unless we were to take Brazil’s lead and sell EC at places other than pharmacies and clinics, it utterly fails to address the problem of availability. But wait, I’ve forgotten the rest of his wise advice, spoken like someone who does not have a vagina and has never spent a single second contemplating what having one would actually be like.
Keeping a database. Because you know what women want to do right after they’ve been raped? Log onto the internet and find out who will be willing to treat them! And when the condom breaks, so you run down to the all-night pharmacy in a panic? Sorry, sweetheart, you should have checked the database! Tsk tsk, I guess that would be double irresponsibility, now wouldn’t it? If you can’t be bothered to use a government database that you may or may not have access to, depending on whether or not you can actually afford a computer/internet connection, I guess you just don’t deserve to be treated like the rest of us humans.
Please. Let the government throw EC to citizens from the rooftops. A lovely idea, albeit one that I’ll probably never live to see. But let’s not use support for an actually noble cause as a defense for an action that is anything but moral.
Pharmacists may be allowed to legally refuse EC access due to a conscience clause, but “conscience” has nothing to do with it. The woman may have been raped — no pharmacist can tell, and the ones who refuse to dispense EC clearly don’t care. Where, exactly, is a “conscience” there? And what about the rest of those women who need EC due to consensual sex? Did I miss the Biblical footnote where Jesus said that on second thought, you actually can cast stones at people you think are beneath you? Breaking your promise to provide equal and nonjudgmental medical care to the desperate fellow-human standing in front of you is nothing to be proud of. If that’s what we call a “conscience” these days, I’m not at all ashamed to say that I don’t have one.
Comments
14 Comments so far
Subscribe to The Curvature
“Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” — Susan B. Anthony
I thought that a pharmacist’s job was to fill prescriptions as written by an MD. I didn’t realize that their job included deciding whether or not God would want the patient to take a particular drug.
If you can’t fulfill the requirements of your job without violating your conscience, get another job.
If I go into a restaurant and order a rare porterhouse, and my waiter is vegan becuse he believes eating animal flesh is a sin, does he have the right to refuse to take my order or serve me my steak? Does he have the right to preach to me at the table on the evils of a carnivorous diet? Not if he wants to keep his job.
Another good idea on the EC front would be for American women to have EC on hand before rape/condom breaking. You don’t have to prove you need it at the time of purchase. You can just have it for EMERGENCIES. Of course, you’d have to buy a dose every year and a half or so and throw the old one out (or, for women living in dorms/communally, you could share the cost and purchase one for the house and whoever needs it, uses it). I used EC in college–back before over the counter options were available; I went to planned parenthood and it cost $40, which was a lot to me at the time. You can get it at some online drug stores cheaper than that, but its still not something that (as the fundies would like us to believe) most women could use as their birth-control because of cost and because of the side-effects (nausea in my case).
Also, in terms of analogies, these conscious clauses are only used to limit women’s reproductive rights. No pharmacist who finds fat people an affront to “God’s Temple” refuses to fill diabetes medication. Its patriarchal nonsense masked as “religion” or “ethics.” It should not be indulged in our law-codes.
Agreed; keeping EC on hand is highly advisable for all women of child-bearing age. Of course, not everyone can afford to pay for it “just in case” and even if they could and didn’t, that’s no reason to deny them EC when they need it. I know that you weren’t suggesting this — but I absolutely can see some asshole making that kind of argument. Or maybe I’m just paranoid after seeing one too many reasonable feminist arguments idiotically twisted around by misogynists as excuses to harm women.
I know that this doesn’t quite work as an equivalent, but I can’t help wondering if these invokers of the “conscience clause” also refues to fill scripts for viagra without a marraige license and a nte from the wife.
Just for clarification, I don’t think that doing so would validate their interference with women’s right to medical care.
It might be helpful here to point out workarounds for women who need EC now. For example, just Google “plan b online” or “online pharmacy”.
Law will always follow technology.
I believe feminists should pay more attention to technology than law. Because once the technological “Pandora’s box” is opened, it’s not going to be closed. Women who know about such technology WILL use it regardless of its legality.
“Everyone has a right to religious freedom. But we often forget that while religious freedom means not restricting anyone’s right to worship in their chosen way, it also means that no one has the right to significantly impact your life due to religious views with which you do not agree. A person’s right to religious freedom ends where another person’s right to religious freedom begins.”
Bravo. Thanks for articulating so concisely what I was unable to pin point myself for so long.
I dont agree with this thread. The government should not be in the business of FORCING someone to provide a service they dont want to provide, unless its based on racial discrimination.
If we force pharmacists to dispense EC, then the next step is to force doctors to provide abortions. One of the posters above said forcing doctors to provide abortions is different than forcing pharmacists to dispense EC, but thats not true. Please explain to me how they are different. Both are performing a service, and hte pharmacist is NOT BOUND BY LAW to dispense whatever the doctor orders.
I think abortion should be safe, available, and legal but I think it would be highly inappropriate for the govt to mandate that all doctors have to provide abortions to any woman who requests one.
The government should not be in the business of FORCING someone to provide a service they dont want to provide, unless its based on racial discrimination.
1. No one is forcing anyone to provide a service. If you don’t want to be a pharmacist, don’t be a pharmacist. I used to want to be a lawyer. Then I realized that as a prosecutor, I would have to bring cases against people I thought were innocent or as a defense attorney, defend people I thought were guilty. This conflicted with my personal moral beliefs, so you know what I did? I didn’t become a lawyer.
2. Why the hell, in absolutely any understanding of right and wrong, should the government prevent someone from refusing a service because of racial discrimination but not because of gender discrimination?
If we force pharmacists to dispense EC, then the next step is to force doctors to provide abortions. One of the posters above said forcing doctors to provide abortions is different than forcing pharmacists to dispense EC, but thats not true. Please explain to me how they are different.
The difference? Firstly, EC is time sensitive. If a woman is standing in front of a doctor hemorrhaging and needs an abortion to save her life or prevent a serious medical problem, do I think that the doctor should be legally obligated to perform that abortion rather than telling her tough shit? You bet your fucking ass I do. Secondly, though I strongly disagree with arguments against abortion, you can make a semi-rational argument based on conscience against it. Though any doctor should be intelligent enough to know that a heartbeat alone does not equal life (otherwise organ transplants would be outrageously unethical), at least they have that much in their favor. Opponents of EC have an argument that a sperm that has not yet met an egg equals life. There is no rational argument, it is not even remotely scientifically based, and yes, I do believe that medical professionals should be required to provide care based on science. Thirdly, EC is birth control. No, not in the sense that abortion is technically birth control because it controls whether or not one gives birth, but because it’s actually birth control. EC is a high concentration of BC pills. You actually can use normal BC as EC, and Planned Parenthood’s website gives instructions on how for a whole slew of brands. They are essentially refusing to dispense one of the most common and popular drugs in the world based on an assumption about when the patient/customer had sex. That is discrimination plain and simple. There is no ethical, rational and non-discriminatory argument for selling me birth control pills and then refusing the woman behind me in line EC pills. None.
1. No one is forcing anyone to provide a service. If you don’t want to be a pharmacist, don’t be a pharmacist. I used to want to be a lawyer. Then I realized that as a prosecutor, I would have to bring cases against people I thought were innocent or as a defense attorney, defend people I thought were guilty. This conflicted with my personal moral beliefs, so you know what I did? I didn’t become a lawyer.
Yes you are invoking a forced service. You are essentially claiming that once you become a pharmacist that you have no right to decide your scope of practice and have to provide a particular service that falls under the purview of a pharmacist.
The difference between your example and the pharmacist/abortion doctor thing is that the requirement for providing service is based upon the EMPLOYER, not the government.
If I try to get a job at McDonalds they have every right to say “you have to work the drive thru window.” But the govt has no right to say “every McDonalds employee must work the drive thru window.”
If Walgreens has a policy that requires all of their pharmacists to dispense EC, thats great and I hope they do that. But the govt should not be in the business of mandating INDIVIDUAL PHARMACISTS to provide these services.
Again, I’m not against EC, I’m against the principle of govt mandating job activities. I think that EC and OCPs in general should be over the counter with no doctor’s script and no pharmacist dispensal required.
I think that EC and OCPs in general should be over the counter with no doctor’s script and no pharmacist dispensal required.
You’re certainly not going to get any argument from me, there, but we have to work with what we have right now in addition to working towards that goal.
I mean no denigration to fast food workers, and don’t think I imply any, when I point out that the difference between the two is that fast food work is not a public service. As I’ve stated in the post, I believe that health care providers perform a necessary public service that is a part of basic human rights. The difference is that no innocent party is going to have their life significantly and dramatically effected by the government failing to decide that fast food workers must all work the drive thru lane. The lawyer example is one that I think is particularly relevant, because acting as either a prosecutor or a public defender is also a public service that caters to basic human rights — the right to have justice sought in your name when you’re the victim of a crime, and the right to a fair defense when you stand accused. Again, I never sought out a legal career because I did not believe that I would be able to perform the duties in an ethical way that upheld human rights and also aligned with my personal ethics.
Also, if we were to take the McDonalds example, we should make it a more accurate one. I would expect the government to legislate against McDonalds, the chain or one specific franchise, from refusing to provide a certain kind of burger to only one particular group of people. This doesn’t quite fit in situations where the pharmacy simply refuses to stock EC, but it does fit situations where the pharmacy has EC in stock and yet the pharmacist on duty refuses to dispense it. And in any case, I think it’s the closest that we’re going to get.
“Also, if we were to take the McDonalds example, we should make it a more accurate one. I would expect the government to legislate against McDonalds, the chain or one specific franchise, from refusing to provide a certain kind of burger to only one particular group of people.”
Actually, it’s more like one McDonald’s employee refusing to serve Big Mac’s because he’s vegetarian, and feels that gives him the right to deny meat (or the McDonald’s equivalent of meat) to everyone else.
Bottom line, dispensing prescriptions as written by the doctor is a pharmacist’s job. If you can’t do that job with a clear conscience, find another job.
“The difference between your example and the pharmacist/abortion doctor thing is that the requirement for providing service is based upon the EMPLOYER, not the government.”
Are pharmacists shop assistants, or are they providing professional healthcare services? If they’re providing professional healthcare services (as seems to be essential to their claim) to paying customers – the customer can be considered to be the employer.
There are no rational safety reasons to refuse EC, so let’s throw that right out to start with. Refusal to provide EC, a basic and medically extremely straightforward facet of medical and pharmaceutical care, could also be considered to be discriminatory on the grounds of gender, marital status (in some cases), sexuality, or religious belief, all of which are illegal in my country.
Even if you do accept all the pharmacists’ and doctors’ arguments about how they shouldn’t be fooooorced by teh oppressive atheists to provide care that goes against their precious godbag beliefs, there is absolutely. no. way. around the ethical obligation to be sure that the person has access to timely alternative care. None. None AT ALL. Professionals who claim this should be deregistered right fucking now, no correspondence entered into.
There are no rational safety reasons to refuse EC, so let’s throw that right out to start with.
thats not entirely true. I can imagine an example where it could be severely threatening to health.
Say for example a woman comes in and she’s smoking a cigarette and asks for EC. Its well known that smoking + hormone contraceptives greatly increases the risk of a DVT and a pulmonary embolism (blood clot to the lungs) which could be fatal.
Now I dont think that risk outweighs the benefit of getting the EC, but reasonable people can disagree and I think a reasonable case can be made that ECs should not be given to smokers.
Sara, what if that female smoker has a condition which makes pregnancy even more dangerous than the combination of smoking and hormone contraceptives? Does the pharmacist get to decide for her that she has to take the risks of a possible pregnancy? Doesn’t a woman have the right to decide which health risks she’s willing to take with a medication that’s so safe it doesn’t require a prescription?
Pharmacists aren’t in the business of deciding which medication is appropriate, unless someone asks for advice. That’s for doctors when it comes to prescriptions, and with OTC medicine, I only expect to be warned of risks, not required to justify my request.