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 ...
Okay, please lay off the profanity. This isn't the first post in which you have used a swear word. I know folks are getting on you (with which I do not agree, personal attacks should be off limits), but we can be ladies.
Thank you! We argee on civility! :)
I agree with that. Let the people decide through state judiciaries.
Good one!
I know, it's like a train wreck, I can't stop watching.
*APPLAUSE*
I know, it's fascinating.
No one ever pushed any on me, either.
Now the dealers on 97th street are another matter!
You are right on the money. Folks like this get dems elected.
This doesn't sound malicious, it sounds like maybe he was concerned for your wife. Perhaps she looked a bit pale or tired that particular day. Perhaps your presence at the appointment (rather unusual) gave him concern that there were control issues in the marriage.
I'm sure you are a loving husband and you make sure she has time to herself and to go out with friends. It is so important to do so in order to keep your sanity when spending the day with small children!
Otherwise, he didn't force her into birth control so just let it slide off your back.
Maybe living surrounded by like-thinking folks you have lost a bit of perspective. Always good to meet new people!
(1) We were new to the area, so we didn't know any babysitters.
(2) I was along with her watching the children (also because we only have one car, and I was then driving it to work every day waiting for my office to be moved so I could take the train). How do you think I know what was said?
No the Priest prays that your sins may be forgiven. He doesn't repent for you.
"Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the priests of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick man. And the Lord shall raise him up: and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him." (St. James 5.14-15)
We Catholics tend to take the Bible very literally. The above seems abundantly clear to me. We take this as the Biblical warrant for the Sacrament of Annointing of the Sick or Extreme Unction. The specific prayer of the Sacrament is:
"Through this holy annointing and his most loving mercy may the Lord forgive you of whatever evil you have done."
That is the prayer that we believe effects the sacrament (like the words "I baptize you in the name of the Father, etc." make you bebaptized).
The Priest also prays: "We beeseach you, our Redeemer, by the grace of the Holy Spirit to heal this sick man of the illness that afflicts him. Cure his ailments, forgive his sins; rid him of all pain of mind and body. Mercifcully restore him to full health in body and soul so that, made whole by your goodness, he may again go about his daily life and work."
Normally a person would confess their sins before daring to receive one of the sacraments, but if they are already unconscious, we believe that they certainly should be annointed before they die, and we believe that this will effect the forgiveness of their sins because that is what we believe the Bible says.
Is this sort of like Mormons baptizing dead ancestors by proxy so that they can see those ancestors in heaven?
We don't believe that the dead can benefit from the grace of God anymore since: "it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment" (Hebrews 9.27), so I wouldn't really think of them being similar at all, although I can see where it might seem so from your perspective, since you are condiering the jointly held belief in the working of God's grace from the action itself, rather than from the belief prompting one to the action (i.e. we believe that Baptism itself regenerates the person, not the faith which impelled them to seek out the Sacrament).
Please ping me if you wish to discuss me by name.
Seriously, people like him repulse and frighten me just as much as the Iranian Mullahs (and the only difference between these fanatics, at the end of the day, is whatever religion they declare is "right"). If I could gather all his posts, show them to the mainstream American public, and somehow convince them that this (e.g. not performing therapeutic abortions because women *should* die in childbirth, it's their "nature") was the Republican platform - Hillary would win by the biggest landslide in American history.
I never said that "women should die in childbirth" because it is "their nature". I said that the moral course of action is to not kill the child in order to save the life of the mother. One cannot ever morally justify murdering a child (or any person for that matter) to save another person's life.
The end does not justify the means.
I did say that the nature of being a woman entails certain risks - among them is the mercifully now very, very small risk of dying in childbirth.
It is a sad commentary that this position would be an overwhelmingly losing position in American politics. It goes to show that most Americans, including yourself, are philosophical Marxists.
You believe that the end does justify the means.
Therefore, something as horrible as murder, which is certainly the worst thing one human can do to another, and in this case is done upon a helpless infant, can be justified and given a sheen of morality by claiming it necessary to save a mother's life.
Karl Marx would be proud. Welcome to his company.
Do answer me one thing though, because it has always perplexed me. Why is the mother's life more valuable than the infant's that it is to be preferred to kill the infant to save the mother?
Was your education so poor that you confuse the provision of information with the passing of judgement?
Why are my wife's choices any of his concern? Can't she just state her course of action and be left alone in it? Is she harming someone by not using birth control? Not that we are aware of.
Perhaps your presence at the appointment (rather unusual) gave him concern that there were control issues in the marriage.
(Hypothetical) So what if there were control issues? Why is that his concern? He's a doctor, not a marriage counsellor or a divorce lawyer. Is he a party to our marriage? I don't think so.
Otherwise, he didn't force her into birth control so just let it slide off your back.
But these sort of intrusive suggestions just keep coming. Take too many children to the grocery store, and you get a lecture on birth control and "don't you know where children come from", etc., etc.
Maybe living surrounded by like-thinking folks you have lost a bit of perspective.
We know relatively few people who think like us.
But that isn't true. Usually, this problem occured during childbirth prior to the advent of modern diagnostic technology and the modern C-section procedure. The choice then was to cut open the mother to save the child with great attendant risk to the life of the mother, or to crush the child's skull to kill it and possibly, but not in all circumstances, save the mother. That is the sort of choice I am referring to.
Nowadays, with the ability to naturally accelerate birth at the age of viability, and modern C-section procedures and the like, I can't think of a good reason to go in and directly kill a child to save a mother's life. And by directly kill a child I mean to use an abortion procedure to remove it from the womb, not for it to expire under cancer treatment or from removal of the fallopian tube in a ectopic pregnancy. Can you name a single mecial indication to use a direct abortion to kill an unborn child to save a mother's life?
Would you prefer that both die, rather than just one?
To go back to your different question, I'd say that it is better that two people die naturally then one from a murder. Simple notions of non-Marxian and non-Utilitarian/Consequentialist morality should tell you that.
Look at it this way, if you are standed on a desert island with your son and with no food, and knowing that a ship will come to pick you up in a month, could you licitly kill your child and eat him in order to survive that month? Would you prefer that one die from a murder, or both from starvation, knowing that the one to die is your own flesh and blood?
The way I look at it, how many eggs die with the mother? Her potential to have children in the future is much greater than the fetus'. She has already lived to maturity and has proven fertility. Thus her life trumps the baby's. Add to that the loss to her family if she dies, especially if there are other children.
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