Posted on 05/03/2005 5:33:17 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
Rebecca Polzin walked into a drugstore in Glencoe, Minn., last month to fill a prescription for birth control. A routine request. Or so she thought.
Minutes later, Polzin left furious and empty-handed. She said the pharmacist on duty refused to help her. "She kept repeating the same line: 'I won't fill it for moral reasons,' " Polzin said.
Earlier this year, Adriane Gilbert called a pharmacy in Richfield to ask if her birth-control prescription was ready. She said the person who answered told her to go elsewhere because he was opposed to contraception. "I was shocked," Gilbert said. "I had no idea what to do."
The two women have become part of an emotional debate emerging across the country: Should a pharmacist's moral views trump a woman's reproductive rights?
No one knows how many pharmacists in Minnesota or nationwide are declining to fill contraceptive prescriptions. But both sides in the debate say they are hearing more reports of such incidents -- and they predict that conflicts at drugstore counters are bound to increase.
"Five years ago, we didn't have evidence of this, and we would have been dumbfounded to see it," said Sarah Stoesz, president of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. "We're not dumbfounded now. We're very concerned about what's happening."
But M. Casey Mattox of the Center for Law and Religious Freedom said it is far more disturbing to see pharmacists under fire for their religious beliefs than it is to have women inconvenienced by taking their prescription to another drugstore. He also said that laws have long shielded doctors opposed to abortion from having to take part in the procedure.
"The principle here is precisely the same," Mattox said.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
What an extremely arrogant thing to say. I guess men also survived just fine before medicine could treat prostate cancer? Attitudes like this will eventually destroy the conservative movement.
That was me, and what you describe can hardly be considered an elective abortion. Neither does it use the methods common in abortion clinics.
It's really a completely different thing and it helps if we are talking about the same thing.
A doctor does not need to learn how to do a dilation and suction abortion or a dilation and extraction in order to know how to do energency ectopic pregnancy surgery.
I wish that poster would address my other point - that the "success with reimplanation" that he trumpets is, in fact, a fraud.
If he got fooled by a google search, I'm sure he'd be the first to admit to it. But if you read him carefully, he is not "trumpeting" that there is widespread reimplantation of ectopic pregnancies. On the contrary, he is lamenting that there is apparently so little effort being put into the subject.
SD
How many prostate cancer medicines bring about the death of unborn children?
SD
"How often does a gun cause the demise of a unique human being?"
My fiancee is Catholic, and she knows that it can cause an abortion. However, her cycles are so irregular without it, that the pain cannot be controlled by simple pain medication and exercise. She also needs it to prevent ovarian cysts. Also, she might not even survive having a child (she has lots of medical problems).
However, she does not use it as birth control. We take other precautions, instead.
Taking BC pills for medical treat is one thing. There are a number of other treatments for cysts, and the problem with using hormonal medicine to regulate cycles is it can mask other major problems. My sister also had similar experience, and very nearly had to have a radical hysterectomy because the pills were hiding the real cause (can't remember the exact problem, I will have to find out).
Basically, be very careful trusting BC to "treat" anything. It is helpful in some ways, but it usually doesn't make anything go away or get better.
What an odd question. Really, really odd. People use guns all the time, for good or evil reasons, to hurt and to kill. That is the intended use.
Now, for your analogy to hold, you would have to ask "how often do people use guns for (doorstops, prying rods, screwdrivers, monkey wrenchs, paperweights, etc.) and cause the demise of a unique human being.
Either you have greatly misunderstood the analogy or you are admitting that birth control pills are tools made for killing people.
If it's the latter, the only question left is "Are you OK with that?"
SD
I'm not a doctor, but your mention of HELLP syndrome (which I'd never heard of, though I have heard of eclampsia) prompted me to look that up.
I found it interesting that on at least this website, the word "abortion" is not mentioned anywhere as a therapeutic measure to be taken for HELLP. Only "delivery" is recommended for worsening cases when treatment has failed. (See especially the flowchart outlining therapeutic measures about halfway down the page.)
(Obviously a child delivered before 22 weeks gestation or so would likely die. But that would not be called an abortion, would it?)
I wonder if this same website might have recommended abortion, say maybe 20 years ago. I.e., is it possible the pro-life movement has been successful enough in re-stigmatizing abortion, that now at least some mainstream websites refrain from recommending it?
Also, how likely is HELLP to occur before the third trimester, when the baby is likely to survive if delivered? (According to the site, HELLP occurs in only about 0.2 to 0.6 percent of all pregnancies.)
Are you referring to all birth control or only the morning after pill? It's unclear.
I'd hope there would be more than one pharmacist, in which case the one who opposed could pass it on to one who didn't.
From what I've read, pregnancies that truly threaten the mother's life are extremely, extremely rare anymore. So rare that your everyday doctor or OB-GYN doesn't need to know how to do it. If it is ever genuinely necessary, that mother can be referred to a specialist.
Even mothers with high blood pressure, diabetes or epilepsy can now almost always be treated successfully without seriously jeopardizing either mother or baby.
Also, I have read that many medical schools are no longer teaching how to perform abortions, to the great chagrin of NARAL, NOW, and Planned [Non-]Parenthood.
Some of those organizations are even trying to get legislation passed that would force those medical schools to teach abortion.
(I'm not talking about instruction on how do perform a D & C following a natural miscarriages --that is still taught everywhere of course. But "abortion," where that means to kill the child first before delivering what remains of him or her, is apparently not a required course at many schools anymore.)
Actually, the pill USUALLY prevents pregnancy by preventing ovulation. It also changes the lining of the wall of uterus to prevent implantation. Occasionally an egg could be released and fertilized then unable to implant.
So yes, the pill can cause abortion. But not every month. Different pills work in different ways, as well.
I have no problem with individual pharmacists refusing on moral grounds. They could pass the prescription on to another pharmacist or hand it back to the patient.
I have a problem with outlawing birth control pills entirely.
As another posted stated, some are morally opposed to alcohol and Playboy. I applaud their choice not to sell them, or carry them in their store. But I do not want to see the government outlaw them.
They could also be presciptions for bc pills, packaged for morning after use.
No business man has to carry anything he doesn't want to sell for whatever reason he choses not to sell it.
You must not be in business for yourself, or else you'd understand what is already obvious to most business owners.
I suppose you'd also tell an obstetrician who refuses to perform abortions to "find a different line of work" too, because he's interfering with reproductive "rights?"
Maybe more on your brain level, by your same logic convenience store owners must also be forced to sell skin mags, cigs, and condoms, because others do, and if they won't, you think you are in some position to tell them to "find a different line of work."
In my store you're one of the easiest kinds of customers for me to handle. I'd just tell you to get out of my store and don't come back. Your business wouldn't be missed.
Actually, I don't have a problem with the ma pill for rape victims but I also don't have a problem with this physician refusing to, though I would hope he would hand the chart off to someone else.
I just don't want the government involved. They shouldn't require him to prescribe, nor outlaw the prescription.
I'm with you. It really seems like a cop out to say you can chose not to have children, but you can only do it one way. (Putting aside the pill as abortificant issue.)
If you only have sex when you are not fertile, you are not open to a child. Just because there is a failure rate doesn't change that. There's a failure rate with condoms, too.
What about the changes in the uterine wall to prevent implantation? I think different pill formulas act differently, do they not?
I'm taking advantage of your medical training here, feel free to tell me you're a heart surgeon and have no idea!
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