Posted on 04/12/2005 7:41:07 AM PDT by marshmallow
Both sides are preparing for what may turn into a legal battle over Gov. Blagojevich's order that pharmacists dispense contraceptives, even those that some pharmacists say kill embryos.
The Illinois Pharmacists Association asked Blagojevich to rescind his order. State Rep. Ron Stephens, a Downstate pharmacist, said, "I will not abide by it." The conservative Family PAC is urging pharmacists to ignore the order. And Catholic Bishop Thomas Paprocki implored Blagojevich from the pulpit to rescind the order.
The governor is standing firm.
On Monday, he warned Family PAC Director Paul Caprio the state would impose "significant penalties" on any pharmacy that ignores the order.
"In your call to pharmacists urging them to violate the emergency rule I issued, you neglected to remind them of the penalties their employers will face if they deny a woman her right to health care," Blagojevich wrote Caprio. Those penalties range from fines to losing their licenses, Blagojevich said.
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
We were not talking abortions were we.
You all know my position. I am not going to get into a flame war with half of FR. I am poofing from this thread.
When ever their conscience dictates such to them. Show us where by statute they are required to fill ALL prescriptions(other than the kook governor's exec. order.
Guess if the pharmacist did not believe in antibiotics, he/she could refuse to sell those as well.
Yep, and you are more than free to spend your hard earned $$ at any one of dozens of other pharmacies that will sell it to you.
If pharmacists can withold treatment they deem wrong, can nurse do the same? Hospice workers? Withhold anti-psychotics? Withhold dextrose and saline? Withhold anti-coagulants?
Would it also be ok for pharmacists to replace birth control pills with a placebo?
Fine and dandy if you live in place with several pharmacies. If not, well, what?
Pharmacists are private citizens involved in private businesses; therefore they should be allowed to choose which legal drugs they wish to sell or not sell. If you don't like it find another pharmacy. If these pharmacists were government employees, then they would be obligated to sell what their employer dictates. Health care workers participate in purely moral decisions every single day.
It's like living in a place with one restaurant or one gas station. If they won't sell you what you want to buy, you better look somewhere else, or learn to do without.
This idea that every consumer has the inalienable right to convenient medication from the nearest private supplier...where did this kind of socialist thinking come from?
Prescription medications aren't the equivalent of a chicken fried steak. And I take it you've never been to west Texas.
The medicines and "treatments" in question are not for illnesses, they are purely elective and are rarely sought as a life saving matter. Should all doctors be required to perform liposuction just because a patient asks for it?
The internet is full of sites that will sell you what you require. If there is only one doctor in town, should he or she be required to do breast implants and liposuction because you find it inconvenient to travel to another town? Doctors refuse to do elective procedures all the time, pharmacists should be allowed the same right.
Says you. Can you explain why they're NOT precisely the same from a rights point of view?
And I take it you've never been to west Texas.
If you want the best surgery, you go to where the best surgery is available, be it Mayo, Johns Hopkins, Duke Medical Center, or where have you...you do not insist that the surgeon come to you. If the latest and greatest can't be had locally, well, that's the price you pay for living where you live. If you want blue-state health care, move to a blue state.
As for me, no, I've never been to West Texas...but you can rest assured that if I ever go, and a pharmacist in Odessa doesn't have something I'm looking for, I won't hold it against him.
This issue is not about birth control pills; they are available at every single county health department in the country, even in west Texas. If you are aware of a county where they are not sold, please let me know, for I would love to open a pharmacy there and make a ton of money. This issue is about morning-after abortion pills which many people have a big problem with.
If you are the only GP in Two Trees, Texas and your patient is suffering from severe menstrual cramping, I suppose you could just shrug your shoulders and tell her to get in the pick-up and head for Dallas.
Pretty bloody callous, but we have our morals to protect, and we have to stand our ground "from a rights point of view," don't we?
Fine -- revoke their government-granted privileges (i.e. let anyone sell pharmaceuticals subject to the same fraud and misrepresenation laws as any other goods) and let the market sort it out.
Not a solution they'd accept, methinks....
Yes, as a matter of fact, we do.
And if I'm the only GP in Two Trees, Texas and my patient is suffering from severe menstrual cramping, I can prescribe her any of a number of painkillers up to and including Demerol that will keep her pain-free until someone can get to the nearest pharmacy that carries her godawful must-have morning-after pill...and you can bet it'll be closer than Dallas.
It ain't as extreme a point of view as you're making out, and the solution I outline above is hardly callous...but I don't expect you to concede that. We quit really listening to each other about three posts ago, if we were ever paying attention to one another even then.
My best suggestion to you is to head over to DU, where you'll find others like yourself.
Surgeons can decide what procedures they'll perform. Why is it tantamount to fascism to permit pharmacists the same degree of leeway with regard to the medications they dispense?
You've got to either answer that question, or agree that all OB-GYNs be legally mandated to perform abortions. There's really no middle ground.
I'm glad you are not a doctor or a pharmacist (and I trust that you are neither).
Your run-of-the-mill rescue squad can have a supply of this drug as part of its rape kits without causing anyone any particular inconvenience. From the pharmacist's point of view, on the other hand, it likely doesn't matter why the new life was brought into being...it's still wrong to kill it.
Don't forget food and water is now medical treatment and it seems to be a good thing to withhold that lately.
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