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 ...
In current practice, early ectopic pregnancies can often be treated without surgery. The patient is given medication, most commonly methotrexate, which kills the embryo. When surgery is needed, if at all possible surgeons don't remove the tube, in order to preserve future fertility for the woman. The surgeon will remove only the embryo and spare the fallopian tube.
I'm aware of the different "solutions" to the ectopic pregnancy problem. The Catholic Church condemns these type of procedures as immoral. All direct killing of other people, including misimplanted embryos, is wrong. The end does not justify the means - we are not Marxists. Nor does it matter that the end result of all curative procedures for ectopic pregnancies is a dead embryo - one must choose the moral method of dealing with the problem because we don't base moral decisions on consequences of actions, but upon the licity of the action itself.
You repeat this - did you see my post #269? The article you cited was part of a presentation about fraudulent articles.
Yes I saw that, but hadn't had time to respond or search elsewhere. I do have to work for a living. I provided a number of references to this many moons ago. Its unfortunate that was the first one that came up this time.
No SD, you are misspeaking. The Church condemns all procedures which directly take the life of the child, inlcuding the use of methotrexate and the direct removal of the embryo. The Church's concern is the morality of actions, not the consequences of the actions, because we believe that it is our actions and intentions by which we will be judged, not the outcome of the actions. Its the difference between being prosecuted for murder for accidentally shooting someone and the prosecutor stating it was obviously an accident and unitended.
You cannot licitly directly kill an unborn child to save the life of the mother, even if the only other possible result is that both die. Life is risky, and we should be prepared to move on when the risks go against us, not committing murder to extend it.
There is the additional consideration in the case of ectopic pregnancies that the embryo should be baptised if at all possible once removed with the pathological part of the fallopian tube.
What is getting you confused is that you are not considering the principal of double effect. Namely, if an action has two results, one good and one bad, the good result can justify the action if it is the intended and normal outcome of the action, even if the bad result shoudl also follow.
So, a woman may have her ovaries removed to cure ovarian cancer even though it is also a procedure of sterilization. Likewise, a ectopic pregnancy may be removed inside the fallopian tube even though the child will die. The bad result is a consequence of the good (curative) medical action, not the intended result.
The way you are looking at it, the good result, the cure of the woman's ectopic pregnancy, is the end of a bad action, the murder of an unborn child. That is obviously wrong. The end (cure of the woman) does not justify the means (murder of the child).
Prostate cancer kills. Menstruation is uncomforatble. The cure of menstrual discomforts need not be the use of chemical abortofacient medicines.
Moral confusion like that has already killed the conservative movement. Most conservatives here on FR obviously are not. They are very willing to dictate what one can buy and sell, would definitely allow some murders of unborn children, etc. You are obviously living in a fantasy land if you believe what you are saying is conservative. Murder to avoid menstrual discomfort is not a conservative value.
I cannot tell you specifically what procedure was used, only that both docs described the procedure as an abortion. I believe that one was at about the 18-19 week point and the other might have been earlier, and due to kidney damage resulting from a previous HELLP pregnancy.
The context of the discussion was that they both had serious moral concerns about the procedure. One said he would do the same in the same situation and the other said he would refer the patient to someone else. They have both been in practice for about 10 years and each has only had to handle one of these cases, so its likely your comment about it being rare is accurate.
Interesting point is that one prescribes the pill and the morning after pill without any concern and the other will only prescibe the pill for reasons other than birth control. He says that he cautions his patient to use an alternate method for BC purposes. There seems to be some conflicting ideas--even within the medical community, on how these two forms of contraception actually work.
There are certainly other methods to treat these problems.
However, she does not use it as birth control. We take other precautions, instead.
Oh, wonderful. So she is on the pill, you are both unmarried and apparently having sex, and you are using other forms of birth control.
Three strikes and you are out in my book. Does your fiancee really consider herself Catholic? I sure don't, because for starters she is most likely under an automatic excommunication for procuring an abortion through use of the pill.
An abortion is a procedure with the direct intent of killing the child. Delivering a child prematurely is not an intent to kill it, especially if one intends this to baptise a child which might otherwise die.
Don't we have a right to self-defense? Including the taking of another's life who is a direct threat? (Obviously if less-than-lethal methods are available, we would choose them.)
SD
This is total BS. My wife recently had a miscarriage where the fetus was not expelled. Her hospital referred her to an abortionist for removal of the child, and the abortionist was then kind enough to reccomend that she undergo a normal induced delivery of the dead child, since we wished to bury it, not slice and dice it into a puree.
You don't need an abortion for any of these conditions. You don't treat cervical or ovarian cancer by first having an abortion. That is pure propaganda of Planned Barrenhood and their allies in the death movement. You are simply yet another who has fallen for justifications for murdering innocent unborn children. Maybe you'd murder fewer of them than some extremist liberal, but you'd still support some level of murder.
There is no moral difference between your position and the abortion-on-demand position. You both are in favor of murdering innocent humans in unfortaunte circumstances.
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.
Birth control pills cause a murder, as you state in #290. Alcohol doesn't kill anyone directly unless you drown in a vat at a brewery or drink an entire fifth yourself in one sitting. As to Playboy, the opposition is not to publishing a men's magazine, but to the exploitation and hyper-sexualization and objectification of women through nude photographic publishing. No one would care much abotu Playboy if they had no nude pictures. Of course, few people would "read" it either.
Thanks!
We just believe life begins at different times.
And it clears up acne and makes you dance like a ballerina.
Oh yeah, it also murders unborn children.
Firing a machine gun wildly in a crowd on New Year's day is (a) fun, (b) makes a lot of celebratory noise, (c) makes pretty fireworks type of light, (d) looks really cool, (e) occasionally kills people. So can I do it?
You are talking to just such a one. I'd love to see the pill outlawed.
True. I believe it begins when the gametes meet and form a new unique individual with a distinct DNA code.
You believe it begins?
SD
I very much doubt you can find me a citation anywhere that says that. But please do go ahead and try.
So you are in the business of throwing out customers because you do not like their opinions or you refuse to do business because you disagree with their needs? Assuming this was a pharmacy, if you were to throw me out, make sure that I would not be the only customer you lost. I'd make sure your reputation, based on my experience, would be ruined and find ways of having your pharmacy liscence revoked. It would make you divert time and energy away from you operations, regardless of its success. The pharmacists is there to serve patients, not evangelizr their morality on others.
What else is it? A monkey? A fish? A "blob of maternal tissue"?
Pharmacists who can't give out pills they don't agree with need to get out of the profession of pharmacy. It's simply not their job.
The unborn child is not "threatening" the mother. If the mother's life is at risk, it is not because she is pregnant, but because of complications arising from the pregnancy or other external factors. The complications and external factors need to be treated, and not by attacking the child, as if it is an agressor. No one ever died from simply being pregnant.
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