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 ...
And I would argue that the loosening of morals led to more contraceptive availability. That is there was a market first, then the products.
Besides location (implanted or not implanted) you tell me the difference between an EMBRYO (fertilized egg) that's a new life with all it's genetics mapped out-eye color, personality, skin tone and a non-person.
And the availability of contraceptives allowed women to space, delay or limit children, leading to women able to have careers outside the home. But I guess that's not a good thing.
Although the prescription kills innocent people? It should be legal?
Successful, highly-educated woman speaking: I don't need abortion or abortive drugs to control my life. I CONTROL MY LIFE. My career is great, thank-you-very-much.
If you aren't sexually active, you don't have to worry about the abortificant side of them. But if you can find other ways to treat your symptoms, great. The less medicine the better, I think.
No- he's presenting the facts that women that go to lengths to prevent pregnancy logically do to lengths to END pregnancy. Abortion logically follows birth control. You just don't want to think that because you use it, and evidently conveinent and consquence-free sex takes priority of the fact that the pill could kill your babies.
Like Hell am I giving money to a company that makes abortives! And I don't want to take a human pesticide regardless.
I'm certain you can alternatives. It's about having priorities.
Yes.
Why do you call estrogen and progestone (sic?) a human pesticide? You already have them in your body.
Yes, there is a single alternative: a hysterectomy. She's stated she isn't ready for that yet.
It regulates a woman's hormones and consequently kills unborn children- therefore, it is a human pesticide.
I sometimes take morphine for my female pain. Yes, there are other treatments. You just didn't have incentive to look harder for the other treatments. I was told endometriosis had no other treatment. I just refused to accept that and hunted down a Catholic ob-gyn (I'm not Catholic, but that's where I had to go).
That's because you are unmarried. If we followed Catholic teaching, which is where this discussion began eons ago, we could never work because we would be having children. It is sinful to deny the possibility of conception except under grave reasons, under Catholic teaching.
If I followed that, I would never be able to work until at least 6 years after menopause. (That's roughly when my last child would be going to school.)
If you aren't Catholic, this is moot.
I'm not denying that the pill can and does act as an abortificant in some cases. The numbers vary, but it does.
She doesn't have endo. We've gone to multiple doctors, and all have agreed. Her body simply does not regulate itself, and needs to be forced into regulating.
I'm glad you found an alternative, but for some people there is none, and that's why it should remain legal.
Find a Catholic doctor.
In case you didn't notice, I am not saying that you should use hormonal BC.
:)
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