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 ...
You put yourself into a situation where you might have had to make such a decision. I don't know how you can't want a baby so bad and at the same time view them as expendable.
SD
Nevertheless your initial comment was a distortion and confused Moral concerns with Professional concerns.
If it would've happened naturally, we would have had to find a way to deal with it. But we both felt that since it was started by artificial means, we then had control and the choice.
We fought with it, but in the end we realized that we wanted another child and if there were more than two then we would remove the rest.
It's not that we didn't want them, it was that we did/do not have the means right now to properly provide for that many children.
Most "Catholics" do not act in such a manner. In fact, within the city of Chicago they probably make up the majority of pharmacists. Nice try at putting words within my mouth though.
If I am prescribed a pain killer is some nutcase going to tell me pain is the "Lord's way", refuse to give it to me and have you applauding his "right" to do so?
Or have a Christian Scientist refuse to give me an antibiotic because his "morality" doesn't believe in them?
I rather see a woman taking birth control to prevent pregnancy that to get pregnant and have an abortion!
That's chilling. That's all I'm gonna say. That and be thankful that you did not have to follow through on your contingency plans. Though you have still basically committed the act in your hearts.
SD
You've missed my point. As a person in private industry, I have the right to do business with anyone I wish, and no government has the right to tell me that I must sell a product or service to anyone.
A pharmacist working for another is required to fill all legal prescriptions given them. Your other analogies are just as mistaken. A zygote is not a baby in any case.
As far as my screename goes look up the word "ironic" in a dictionary. Your screename means you want President Bush to be president for life?
This case would not have a prayer in court. It is open and shut.
Where does one find this "requirement"?
SD
In any given chain pharmacy, there are pharmacists who will issue the contraceptives if some other pharmacist has moral objection. This is about forcing secular beliefs upon someone with religious convictions, plain and simple, and the stink is just getting started in this planned campaign of forced secularization of America via judicial strong-arm tactics.
My morality has nothing to do with this. Your inability to understand the difference between my opinion of this person's actions and those actions has you very confused.
I said nothing about Catholics either. As I said in another post the majority of pharmacists in Chicago are likely Catholic (since the majority of Chicagoans are) and they don't believe they must jam their religious concerns down the throats of customers. Such a belief is indeed fanaticism.
Of course that goes without saying. But it has no bearing on this case.
ping
Job descriptions.
You know this for a fact, or are you just making stuff up?
Remember, you made a very general statement.
SD
There are only two issues in a case like this -- 1) the relationship between an employer and an employee who has a "moral objection" to doing what he is told, and 2) the ability of a government to mandate business practices for private industry.
Issue #1 is clear. If the employee objects to part of his work, he should go work somewhere else.
Issue #2 does not apply in this specific case, but I brought it up because it is lurking behind all of these cases -- to the extent that the state of Illinois recently passed a law REQUIRING all pharmacies to fill prescriptions for any FDA-approved contraceptive.
Well I no that most major chains or organizations have very explict job descriptions and that goes for pharmacists. And I know WHAT a pharmacist is hired to do and what they are trained to do. It really is not difficult to figure this out.
Never heard of Job Descriptions?
I'm sure you "no" a lot of things. But I don't think it is as cut-and-dried as you might wish it to be. A Pharmacist is not a robot who is to do anything that is "legal." if he suspects someone wants medications for improper reasons he can refuse to fill it.
I've already stated my positions above. I don't think most employers have difficulty making accomodations for their employees who have scruples. It certainly isn't something the gov't needs to mandate.
SD
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