The Star's view: A patient with a legal prescription should not have to worry that her doctor's orders will become subject to her druggist's conscience.

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.25.2005

If one more group assumes moral responsibility for what is allowed in the United States, the nation may soon sink under the weight of its superfluous righteousness. A debate over the ethical implications posed by the morning after pill are a case in point.
A story in Sunday's Star illustrated the perils of allowing pharmacists to refuse to dispense the "morning after" pill if they have moral or religious objections to doing so. The article described what happens when a pharmacist's personal beliefs create a barrier between a doctor and a patient in need of medicine.
The particular incident reported in the story was alarming - a rape victim goes to a pharmacy with a prescription for an emergency contraception drug, the so-called morning after pill, and the pharmacist refuses to fill it - but the broader implications of this case should send shock waves throughout society.
The medicine in question "prevents pregnancy by stopping ovulation, fertilization or implantation of a fertilized egg," according to Sunday's story. Religious conservatives and others opposed to abortion object to the use of the pill on grounds that it is essentially a nonsurgical abortion.
That a person has such objections and acts upon them is a personal choice. A pharmacist who objects to the morning after pill is certainly entitled to his or her opinion. But that person should not be making decisions for the rest of us.
Sunday's story noted that pharmacy chains have policies that, at least in theory, respect the pharmacists' personal principles while at the same time taking care of a customer's needs. The policies say that a pharmacist who refuses to dispense the morning after pill is obligated to find the consumer another pharmacist who will fill the prescription.
As the story in Sunday's Star illustrates, such a policy is bogus. When the rape victim called the pharmacy at Fry's, the pharmacist told her he'd fill her prescription if she got to the store before his shift ended, in 10 minutes. That was impossible because of where she lived, which left her in the position of having to wait until the pharmacist coming on duty, who would not dispense the pill, had finished his shift. Or she could find a different pharmacy.
Delays are important. Experts say the pill must be taken within three to five days after having unprotected sex, but the sooner it is taken after intercourse the more effective it is.
Finding another store that stocks the emergency contraceptive is not simple. A survey of 900 Arizona pharmacies last year found that that less than half of them stock the drug. A friend of the rape victim profiled on Sunday said she called nearly 50 pharmacies in Tucson before she located two that stocked the drug and were willing to dispense it.
Availability is clearly a major problem, but it's a problem compounded by pharmacists imposing their value judgments on women who may ultimately be in a life-or-death situation. It is not illegal for pharmacists to refuse to fill a valid prescription, but it should be.
Employers should require that pharmacists park their personal religious beliefs at the door when dealing with consumers. A woman with a legal prescription is not a criminal.
We do not suggest that a person abdicates moral responsibility when he or she goes to work for someone else. But if pharmacists are allowed to create a firewall between doctor and patient with respect to one drug, where will that end?
We may someday end up with pharmacists refusing to dispense antidepressants or blood pressure medicines because they believe prayer and meditation are solutions more compatible with their religious beliefs.
Pharmacies should fill prescriptions and leave the proselytizing to the person in the pulpit.
- S.N.

Orig. Story: http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/opinion/99299.php

Fuck you christian neo-cons, and fuck the moderator. Fuck, fuckity fuck fuck!! It's just a word, baby.

A while back, there was some not-so-brilliant rumblings from the christian coalition here about the justification of pharmacists to not distribute birth control. Balderdash! I have here a brilliant commentary by Bill Maher:

New Rule: Pharmacists have to fill prescriptions. As our audience seems to already know, more and more American pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control because of their personal moral objections. Hey, you know what would really teach us a lesson? If you took off your pretend doctor jacket and got another job.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe cutting off the pill doesn't even go far enough. Yeah, it's high time activist drugstores stopped coddling sluts on every aisle. Let's not sell any more makeup either. A good woman doesn't paint herself. And no more deodorant. You should smell bad. Keep the boys from getting ideas. And no suntan lotion. I've seen what happens at the MTV Beach House, you whore. You want to avoid melanoma, buy a veil.

Why is this country becoming Utah?! You know, I know the conservatives are always saying that the coastal elites don't really get it about them because we just fly over. Okay, maybe. But, you know what? You guys don't get us either. We need to fuck. Refusal to provide birth control threatens our economy and our very way of life here in Southern California. There's a lot of hot chicks out here, man. We need birth control! I mean, seriously, how do you think movies get made?

Now, of course, I know the other side is saying, yes, but this is a moral issue. Yeah, but the problem is, not everyone gets their morals from the same book. You go by the book that says slavery is okay but sex is wrong until after marriage, at which point it becomes a blessed sacrament between a husband and the wife who is withholding it.

In conclusion, let me say to all the activist pharmacists out there, the ones who think sex is bad probably because sex with them always is. Fellas, a pharmacist is not a law-giver, not even a doctor. In the medical pecking order, you rank somewhere in between a chiropractor and a tree surgeon.

You don't answer to a law above the laws of men. You work for Sav-On. The doctors are the ones who make medical decisions because they went to medical school, whereas you were transferred from the counter where people drop off film.

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In conclusion, you can't stop people from fucking. Let's at least help them be responsible about it, eh? Cause "let me tell you, there is a lot worse things than teenagers having sex. Namely, teenagers not having sex. Here is something you'll never hear: "That suicide bomber blew himself up because he was having too much sex. Sex, sex, sex, nonstop, all that crazy Arab ever had was sex, and look what happened." But among the puritans here of the 21st century, the less said to kids about sex, the better. Because people who talk about peepees are "potty-mouths."" So, arm yourselves with your limited knowledge that sex is the filthy, dirty vessel to puritanistic hell. Oh by the way, it's time to head to the abortion clinic because some jerkoff in a lab coat wouldn't give that fine girl her birth control. Yowzer!

Today was the day that every athlete works for. The day when nothing can go wrong. In basketball you have the day you can't miss. In baseball, everything the pitcher throws looks like a big, fat beachball. In football you put in a hattrick. In hockey, the goal is ten feet wide. In cycling, you have no chain and the roads all slope downhill. Today was that day. But in the world of cycling there are no screaming crowds, there is only the endless road and the battle against yourself to obtain the finish. It all started modestly enough, with a ten minute warmup. The road then slopes away toward the lake, 18 miles in the distance. They slip by, one by one. Each one faster than the one before it. You spy a fellow cyclist in the distance, and know he must be laid waste beside the tarmac. You pound the pedals in fury, alight in the churning winged shoes of an angry, belated Mercury. You take solace from the obvious struggle in his face as you glide by. Down, down to the lake. The almighty has decided to challenge you with a blustering headwind, and the heat of 106 degrees. You stride forward, smirking that she has found it necessary to challenge you so. Flats take great effort, as you slog forward into the wind. Your thighs scream for mercy as they reach their lactic threshold. You dole out no pity and press onward. You turn 90 degrees and enter the steamy shade of the woods, and still the wind blows in your face. Such a trickster, she is. The rolling scenery up from the lake flashes by. Fields of sunflowers bloom, where months earlier an old woman toiled to surprise you so. You reach the Chatham County line. This paved road is somethin you imagine is only rivaled by the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix. As you shake your way forward, your calves scream for relief. Onward, onward. You reach Le Mur. A brilliant 18% descent into a 16% climb. Faster, you race down the hill. 42, 43, 44.6 mph! A new personal best! Up, up to home. 11 miles to go. You pound the final hills and turn into home. Suddenly your right leg explodes in pain as it locks up. Quads, groin, calf all laugh at you in protest as they refuse to make the return stroke. You step calmly from the saddle and wait for them to finish. Each step excruciating. Long. You hop back on, and finish the final hill to home. Completely spent, yet knowing it was your best. You had no more left to give. Today's total: 53.7 miles. 3:03.27. There is no maillot jaune. There is only you and the road. Today, you won.

Funny how people change, and nothing stays the same.
We continue to go by exactly the same name.
Moments seem different when looking back,
some find us wishing we had more tact;
The past is stone,
the future unkown.
So few know what they really need
while erecting a facade of greed.
It's the means to an end why we all slave -
In the pools of repentence the fools all bathe.