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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bravo. Thanks for articulating so concisely what I was unable to pin point myself for so long.

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.