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 ...
I'm not sure what you think "hypocrisy" means. We've got a consistent philosophy.
I was expecting a line like "if that's the way your were born then that was God's plan for you" type of statement.
Maybe when you think about our consistent philosophy it will all make sense.
Because obviously you don't want to stop God's natural process when it comes to birth control, so why would it be ok to interfere in the other case?
When someone cuts their arm and it bleeds all over the place, we don't let it go cause that is "natural." No, we sew it up and stop the bleeding.
If someone is born with asthma, we don't say "tough luck, you were born with crappy lungs." No, we adminster medicine.
We have this idea, this consistent philosophy about how the body is supposed to work. When it malfunctions, we fix it, to the best of our ability. When it is working normally, we leave it alone.
Can you apply these principles and see how they cause my answers?
Fertility is not a disease that requires medication to counteract it. So trying to control conception by chemical means is not "medicine." It is not curing a malfunction of the body.
On the other hand, if a woman is having difficulty getting or staying pregnant because of some malfunction, then it is perfectly licit to give her hormones or medicines to help her body work the way it is supposed to.
See how it all makes sense?
SD
The birth control pill prevents ovulation. There is no conception because there is no ovulation. The birth control pill is NOT abortion.
The morning after pill prevents a fertilized egg from implanting. It destroys a new life, AFTER conception. It, like RU486, is an agent of abortion.
I understand your point.
It's ok to alter nature when it helps to save lives, but it's not ok to alter nature to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Notice I said "prevent", not "end".
What would you say in the case of my wife and I, where she needs birth control pills to regulate her cycle and lessen the effects of PCOS?
Start with Genesis and God's command to 'be fruitful.' Then go to the 10 Commandments which regulate sexual behavior. Finally go to Onan's story, which demonstrates that God does not approve of 'birth control' which is artificial, as it was in the case of Onan. I don't think we want to get into details here.
The understanding of the prohibition is enhanced with an understanding of nature. As JPII pointed out, the procreative and unitive aspects of intercourse are inseparable. If we understand Genesis' "...He saw that it was good..." correctly, we also understand that the way we are assembled is precisely the way God wanted it.
Re-arranging the assembly, chemically or mechanically, denies the truth of the OEM, thus lacks integrity.
The difference you articulate is exactly correct--and is shown by your language.
"Prevent" is not the same as "maintain." The first is negative, the second is positive.
Your instinct is dead-on.
That's basically it. There's nothing wrong with a normal healthy female's body which require monkeying around with her hormones.
What would you say in the case of my wife and I, where she needs birth control pills to regulate her cycle and lessen the effects of PCOS?
I'm not sure what PCOS is, If there are legitimate medical reasons for taking the medication, then it is truly medication. There is nothing wrong with that. It probably would not be a bad idea to refrain during the fertile period to ensure that no possible eggs are fertilized and then lost.
SD
IF the patient is morally oposed to going to another pharmacy they won't get it filled. Screw the physician and his orders - they can take them elsewhere.
Why not? You obviously expect to impose your "morality" on them.
I am not catholic and I don't agree with catholics on many things. But labeling them as "fanatics" is the sort of wild-eyed extremism that reveals you to be far more fanatical than they are.
I'm not sure I follow you.
http://www.pcosupport.org/medical/whatis.php
Our first child came before my wife found out that she had this, so he was 100% natural. However, our second child needed the help of fertility drugs. This is when she found out about the PCOS.
Infertility + birth control pills = only intervention from the supreme being himself is how she would get pregnant.
By PCOS, the egg never leaves the ovary due to the cysts.
"Save...lives" is a POSITIVE phrasing and your instinctive use of the term contrasts with "prevent...pregnancies," a negative phrasing.
Of course, preservation of life is a positive--foiling the creation of life is a negative.
Your instinctual use of the language is precisely correct.
Polycystic ovaries. OK. I'd never seen it abbreviated.
What kind of drugs were used to help you get pregnant? Clomid?
I'm certainly not going to condemn someone for trying to get their body to function properly. It's when people hyper stimulate, do in vitro, implant multiples and then selectively reduce them that we are into the realm of going above and beyond nature's normal function.
"A person does not check her moral beliefs at the door just because someone finances their education. That's called "selling out"."
Then I suppose you'd be the first person to support male muslim doctors who might refuse to treat women bcse it violates their religious beliefs? And you'll be the first person to send your best wishes to the first muslim on-call surgeon who asserts he had a moral obligation to refuse surgery to that female accident victim who died at 3 am while they scrambled to find someone else to operate? His religious obligation not to look upon a naked woman would trump her need to not be dead. Any other position would be "selling out" his faith right? That is, afterall, the logical extension of your position.
PS - I don't know what's more obscene: your refusal to provide needed treatment to rape victims or the pride you seem to take in it.
All businesses operate with some form of government interference. It's called regulation. Differnet businesses operate under different levels of regulation and liscencing. Doctors and pharmacists must be liscenced to practice in their respective states. If the regulations state how a prescription is to be filled, the pharmacist must follow the regulations or risk losing their liscence. Based on your arguement, that businesses should be free from government interference means that you are advocating that doctors and pharmacists do not need to meet any requirements to practice their profession. They do not need to go to school. They do not need to pass state liscencing exams in order to prove they are competent. You are technically advocating anarchy in the profesisonal realm where anyone can hagn up a shingle and do business. That would be a very scarey place to live.
Follistim.
Clomid, according to her doctor, would have a greater chance of releasing more than 1 or 2 eggs. As it was the Follistim also had the chance of releasing multiple eggs too. If there would've been more than one fertizilized we would've had the chance to remove the number that we chose.
If it would've happened that way, we would've reduced it to just 1 for medical reasons.
If this didn't work, the next step would've been In Vitro.
This is not what I have been told and I am not sure it is accurate. Based upon previous discussion on this thread it seems that: the birth control pill does prevent ovulation in most cases. However, in some cases, (3-5% per another poster on this thread) the egg is released and fertilized. The fertilized egg cannot attach to the uterus because of the birth control pill, which is an early abortion. Same for the morning after pill. It works to prevent ovulation as well, but like the birth control pill it can prevent a fertilized egg from attaching. I will try to find some more scientific evidence and I will post it but this seems to be the consensus so far.
Controlled substances have a high level of government scrutiny and the pharmacist can get in big trouble with the DEA if he or she sells narcotics to someone they suspect to be an addict. Ask Jeb Bush's daughter. That's how she was busted - by an observant pharmacist that saw the prescription fraud.
I would never have put myself in that position.
SD
It's not something that we wanted to do because it would've increased the chances that you would lose the ones that you left there.
Luckily we didn't have to make that choice.
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