Jezebel 
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New York, 9:13 PM
Fri Dec 18
73 posts in the last 24 hours
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However, I DO NOT think that individual pharmacist should be able to invoke conscience justifications (unless they happen to own the joint). Your boss tells you to do a job, and you either do it or quit. The end. Your job should not be safe because you have this conscience issue.
Permit me an analogy: you are a vegetarian. You get a job at a steakhouse and promptly refuse to serve anyone who orders a slab o' meat, because it's against your conscience to do so. You are fired. That's ok.
But you know what you can do? You can open a vegan steakhouse that serves nothing but tofu and tempeh, and you can lecture and cajole any unwitting carnivore who stumbles into your cafe.
That's my $0.02
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@babyruthless: If you truly believe in so-called Free Market Capitalism, then you must agree that these business-owners and pharmacists have full autonomy to choose other professions and livelihoods. Women who are facing the possibility of an unplanned pregnancy and need access to medical services and/or drugs who are denied that access DO find their choices limited or even eliminated, especially for those women who cannot easily access other service-providers (such as those who live in very small towns or rural areas).
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There is a rift in the medical community about Lyme disease. A number of research doctors who have patents related to the organism itself and to a failed vaccine, claim that Lyme can never become a chronic infection. Doctors show practice is primarily Lyme patients sometimes are taken before the medical review board, and the complaints are often brought by the insurance companies who are not happy with the high cost of treatment - for a person with serious neurological Lyme, the treatment is often IV antibiotics which can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
07/06/09
And here are some excerpts about the controversy:
+ Watch video
+ Watch video
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If you pay to train a gynecologist and then pay him out of taxpayer funds, it is a lot easier to mandate that gynecologist provide specific services. But when people paid for their own education and are not paid by the government, its a lot harder to mandate that they do anything.
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And similarly, it is their right not to get punched in the face by a stranger, and I disagree with that.
Fairness! I think I finally understand!
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I think the thing that really gets me about the "conscience provision" for pharmacists is that their moral objections to Plan B are absolute BS. They believe it does something that it simply does not do (i.e. cause abortions). The whole basis for their moral stance is predicated upon something that is clearly disproved by science.
Though I am passionately pro-choice, I understand how some may view (particularly late-term) abotion as morally objectionable. It, after all, does terminate a pregnancy and the existence of a fetus. And one may or may not have a moral opposition to that termination. Plan B does not do this and for educated, trained medical professionals to willfully deny this fact BOGGLES MY MIND. It just vividly exposes their real motivations, which is controlling the sexual activity and health of women.
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But if your doctor just won't give you one because she doesn't like them, that's a really good reason to find a different doctor.
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Honestly, unless you're in the boondock backwoods you shouldn't have any problem finding someone within a short drive to sell it. Just make sure you have your ID ready.
Note: I know I've been lucky having only had a mild negative experience acquiring it, but in general if you stay out of the very rural areas and go to a chain store (not Wal-Mart!) it shouldn't take you more than one or two tries to get a box of it.
07/06/09
And thanks, to both you and Zombie-lady up in there.
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@Zombie MissSkittles is not your kind of lady: Yeah, and even if the US was a neo-con minefield (which I know it isn't), I'd sooner pay 900 euros for a quickie abortion return flight back home than have a baby.
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This is just the most fucking ridiculous thing I've even heard of. I'm way to the left of my pharmacist, but I cannot imagine her denying me Plan B. Where are these people graduating from? Will I then have a right to know what school my pharmacist came from, so I can leave the CVS that has "Jane Doe, Liberty University Class of 2010" behind the counter?
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- fatties
- skinnies
- regularies
- tallies
- shorties
- averageies
I refuse to treat all of you fucking jerks. My conscience forbids it.
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It's Carrie Prejean logic.
07/06/09
I think what fuels a lot of this is the self-righteous assumption that, NO DUH, Christian Science is not a legitimate reason to invoke the 'conscience clause', but anti-choice beliefs are just common sense--there is no need to validate it because everyone agrees with you.
I'm not sure I'm articulating this well--do you get what I mean?
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But the people who get all defensive and say that these conscience clauses are necessary. They defend the Christian Scientist analogy as silly, because OF COURSE no one should deny chemo to anyone, but that abortion and birth control are different, and people should be able to deny service.
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@queenieinmanhattan: I guess they could do orthopedics? I think that'd be about it though
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Sorry that's mostly more speculation....
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Science and Health, the secondary text for Christian Science was written in the 1800's, and since there aren't any priests or preachers or sermons, all of the church teachings come from either the bible or science and health, which means obviously there are a lot of elements of medicine that there's no direct church advice on-- I've heard people say it's OK to treat symptoms, but not causes, so like advil or nyquil would be OK, but antibiotics or chemo wouldn't. In any case, the threat is not one of church punishment, but that if you truly believe in the religion, you're making yourself sicker by treating the illness. It just seems very unlikely that someone who believed any of this would become a doctor.
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There are a lot of examples of people being cured through prayer, whether you want to call them miracles or anomolies or some kind of placebo effect, but I was never able to get a satisfactory explanation for why some people had these miracale recoveries and others didn't, which is one of many reasons why I grew up to be an agnostic. I should ask my little cousins, who go to christian science boarding school, if there's any non religious accident protocol at the school. In daily life, I think most of the christian scientists I know would go to a hospital in an emergency situation, but I don't know if they would say, call an ambulance, if a kid got injured at the school.
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