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 you STILL don't get the point? What does that say?
(Shrug) Every society kills people. It's just a question of how many and why.
Again, you start from the assumption that the amount of sexual activity undertaken is not affected at all by the availability of contraceptives. There is more sex with more contraceptives. So more failures occur so more unwanted pregnancies occur so more abortions happen.
SD
But you think it is right for the gov't to prohibit theft and murder?
SD
I never said any one mentioned boycotting. For that matter, I never mentioned or posted to that person. But, it still seems logical{based on the premise that the pill kills babies}, that a person who believed that, would not support the manufacturer. And feeling guilty is relative to the individual. Maybe someone would feel guilty, if they knew. Maybe they should? Personally, it doesn't bother me at all because I don't have a problem with birth control or liquor.
Sure. Why wouldn't I?
This [non]argument so often insinuated by those who are "pro-choice" --namely that "pro-lifers" don't care about babies after they're born-- is a straw man. And false.
I've never seen any people more active in their communities than pro-life people.
I see pro-lifers volunteering their time and money for homes for unwed mothers, post-birth, trying to help them get their lives in order.
I see them volunteering for athletic youth leagues and church activities for teens, to try to help fatherless kids have a good role model.
I see them making financial sacrifices so that one parent can stay home to raise their own children properly; and oftentimes homeschooling them so they are kept away from the cesspool many of our public schools have become.
It's also true that sometimes pro-lifers understand that make a better world, we have to first concentrate our energies in our own homes. It makes no sense to be like Dickens's Mrs. Jellyby -- who devoted so much of her considerable energy to saving the poor starving children of Africa, while her own children at home in England suffered from neglect.
So yes, there ARE "many ways we can witness for Christ." And pro-lifers do all of them.
ROFLMAO!!!!
Oh...that makes it okay, then.
Yes, where possible and practical. But I don't expect my little daughter to go without fever medicine cause every pharmaceutical maker offers some version of birth control.
SD
Sure. Why wouldn't I?
Then you shouldn't really have any problem with Christians who want to prohibit murder in all cases.
SD
That makes it the real world. We make political compromises in a democracy that end up killing people. That's just the way it is. We have decided that sexual freedom, contraception and abortion are more important than what some consider to be human life (and others don't).
How much does your hand know about your uterus? With your attitude, it must be the only thing that's ever come close to it.
If I keep a gun for self-defense, am I contributing to make guns widespread and available for those who wish to use them for murder?
In all cases? Killing someone in self-defense is technically murder, but we have decided to remove such killing from the legal definition.
In the case of abortion, there is the added argument of whether or not a fetus is a human being.
If you want to be an absolutist on murder, I have no problem with that. But you aren't. You draw the line at a different place than people who are pro-choice, but you draw the line nonetheless.
Yes, exactly. I may not agree with you about many things, but you do not equivocate.
Those of us on the others side want to have society honestly address whether this apparent decision undertaken was for the better or the worse.
SD
So, so wrong. But so, so funny.
False. The purpose of the birth control pill is to control birth, not to regulate cycles. Cycle regulation is a side effect. The inhospitable endometrium is main effect (as well as preventing ovulation, and changing the viscosity of cervical mucus).
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