(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

More evidence that the Chaliban's anti-choice movement is about punishing women for having sex instead of protecting life:

Cedar River Clinics, a women's health and abortion provider with facilities in Renton, Tacoma, and Yakima, filed a complaint with the Washington State Department of Health this week alleging three instances where pharmacists raising moral objections refused to fill prescriptions for Cedar River clients. The complaint includes one incident at the Swedish Medical Center outpatient pharmacy in Seattle. According to the complaint, someone at the Swedish pharmacy said she was "morally unable" to fill a Cedar River patient's prescription for abortion-related antibiotics. Cedar River's complaint quotes its Renton clinic manager's May 17, 2005, e-mail account: "Today, one of our clients asked us to call in her prescription... to Swedish outpatient pharmacy. [We] called the prescription in... and spoke with an efficient staff person who took down the prescription. A few minutes later, this pharmacy person called us back and told us she had found out who we were and she morally was unable to fill the prescription." (Cedar River thinks their client eventually got her prescription filled.)

from Bitter Pill: Women's Health Clinic Files Complaint Against Swedish Medical Center Pharmacy (emphasis added) (thanks to mom2boysbh for the link)

Comments

[stacymckenna.livejournal.com]

Gah, this is so frustrating - "I want to help people be healthy, but only in ways I think are morally upstanding". What is WRONG with people?! Are they going to start refusing treatments for STDs because it must imply the patient had sex with more than the virgin they married? If you don't like treating certain things, work for a religiously based facility that refuses to treat such things. If you want to force everyone around you to follow the same moral conduct as you, start by working somewhere that upholds the moral code you follow. Otherwise, dispense the damn prescriptions! So infuriating.

I also wonder how many of these pharmacies have only one pharmacist - what prevents these prescriptions from being filled by another pharmacist on staff? I wish these clinics could have their own in-house pharmacies and avoid the whole mess.

[idunn.livejournal.com]

And you know, the same people who refuse to sell pills, or abortion-related medecine, would be the first to be outraged if a vegetarian cashier refused to sell someone a chicken or an anti-gun clerk refused to sell a firearm.

But these are probably the same people who decry homosexuality because "it's in the Bible!" and don't follow anything else in Leviticus.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

I think it should be perfectly legal to beat the living crap out of phamacists who refuse to fill birth control perescriptions.

[pretzelsalt.livejournal.com]

and then deny them wet wipes or band-aids for philosophical reasons.

[kumbunny.livejournal.com]

I agree. I prefer a drowning device that can be attached to the back of a hearse.

[c3fyn.livejournal.com]

Sign me up! We can start some kind of group analogous to the Guardian Angels...the Prophylactic Prophets?

And people look at me all funny when I talk of emigrating. I would honestly rather deal with sociopolitical chaos elsewhere in the civilized world than face what is obviously a tidal wave of fundamentalism here in the hinterlands.

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

And to zap them with cattle prods!

[neitherday.livejournal.com]

While I am not currently employed, I did a number of legal tasks that I morally objected to in my days of employment. I would venture to say the majority of people have. There are precious few jobs that don't have some morally ambiguous component. If you are being paid to do a job, then you are generally expected to preform any tasks which are legal and required of that job. You don't get to pick and choose what tasks you feel like doing.

Gender Wars

[nebris.livejournal.com]

Maybe if a few of these pharmacists got an IRA Six Pack* and their houses were firebombed, this shit might stop. Disclaimer: not that I'm advocating that. *smirk*

~M~

*shot once in each elbow, each kneecap, each ankle

Re: Gender Wars

[c3fyn.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I thought of the same thing.

Re: Gender Wars

[nebris.livejournal.com]

Believe me, I will come to that.

~M~

[hearthstone.livejournal.com]

Wait a minute, a pharmacist refused to give this person antibiotics because they didn't approve of the reason she might need them? Seems to me that this would be questionable even given the "ethics" of these folks--it's not preventive, it's punitive.

[archanglrobriel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pretty much totally punitive from my perspective.
It's not like the pharmacist is doing anything at all with regard to the woman having or getting an abortion, they're just refusing to supply her with the prescribed medicine that keeps her from dying of the after effects. So it's got nothing at all to do with their stance about "protecting the life of the fetus" and everything to do with punishing those they feel deserve punishing for their "sinful" ways.
The way these wingnuts are going, it's only a matter of time before some pharmacists start saying "Yeah, we've decided that since we're against homosexuality, we're not -morally comfortable- with filling these prescriptions for anti-HIV drugs anymore. Go off somewhere and die, you diseased sodomite."

[serise.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the people who refused to fill the prescriptions were forced to do their job, would some of them turn vigilante and give a placebo instead? I think it's highly possible especially if there were no checks and balances for the pharmacy.