New arena for birth-control battle

Star Tribune ^ | May 3, 2005 | Rene Sanchez

[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.

[Nowhere Man]

It's the new moral paradigm: Your vocation trumps your principles. That is why lawyers, journalists, and politicians can be lying scumbags while claiming to be moral people. The company needs you to fudge some numbers? Impugn someone's record to make them easier to fire? Tell a few lies to employees and customers? Don't worry, you won't be held accountable, it's your job.

I can add hitmen to the list. I remember when I was in college, we did a study on hitmen in sociology class. Basically even though their line of work was sickening morally, they do lead normal (well as normal as can be) home lives, have families, and the like.

There was a time that even someone with authority over you telling you to do a wrong thing did not remove your responsibility to do what was right. But now anyone, even a total stranger, can command your moral principles to suit themselves and you aren't responsible.

Sort of like a reverse Nuremburg Trials in a way, "I vas just vollowing orders!" B-P

[SoothingDave]

A simple example is when a pregnancy is in the fallopian tubes. Can't save the baby there, but the mother will die without the abortion.

This requires emergency surgery, yes you are correct. But the surgery is not any of the procedures known as "abortion." It is, instead, a normal surgical procedure that any surgeon should know how to do.

This is not abortion. Nobody goes to a clinic to have an abortion and has this procedure done.

So tell me again what type of abortion procedure all OBs must know how to do for emergency purposes?

(And morally speaking, removing a fallopian tube before it ruptures and kills a woman is not an elective abortion. The fetus may die because of the action taken, but the intent is not to kill it.)

SD

[redgolum]

So if you use it for 20 years of marriage, and have 12 ovulations per year, you will be responsible for 12 murders in your lifetime.

Assuming that during each ovulation you have sex and fertilize an egg, then yes.

The problem with setting a percentage is that it is not very easy to track when break though ovulation takes place with a woman on the pill. Not to many researches want to, well go through the evidence, to confirm it.

I know that some studies have been done.

[Alberta's Child]

You're right on all counts. I should have been more clear in my posts -- I'm specifically referring to a self-employed pharmacist, not an employee who refuses to do his job for some "moral concerns" over one of his job tasks.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

By having a blanket 'no abortion at any time or any circumstance' is cruel and foolish. It would condemn women to death.

Allowing any abortions condemns little children to death. Where is the moral difference?

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Do you even care about women's health issues at all or do you sincerely believe that women should suffer unnecessarily when there is medication available to help them because you believe that it is immoral and wish to dictate how others live?

I believe birth control pills should again be made illegal, as they were under the US Code of Law until 1971 under the Hatch Act.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

A simple example is when a pregnancy is in the fallopian tubes.

An ectopic pregnancy does not require an abortion - it generally requires removal of the diseased part of the fallopian tube. The death of the child is an unfortunate side-affect, not the intended result.

Can't save the baby there, but the mother will die without the abortion.

Actually, the baby could be saved, but modern medical science has seen fit to focus much of its energy on new and better ways of killing unborn children instead of trying to save them. Nonetheless, there have been instances of successful reimplantation of ectopic embryos, and you will find a bit of information by googling "reimplanting ectopic pregnancy". The first hit is:

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/talks/fraudcardiff/tsld006.htm

"August 1996: a major breakthrough - Worldwide media coverage of doctors in London reimplanting an ectopic pregnancy and a baby being born - Doctors had been trying to do this for a century. It was a huge achievement"

If the woman is unaware of this type of pregnancy (heck, some women even give birth without knowing they are pregnant!), and it goes far enough along, it does become an emergency situation.

Some women do not give birth without knowing they are pregnant. They may claim this, but it is obviously not so if you have ever been around a pregnant woman. What these women really are is in denial, and hoping that if they ignore the "problem" long enough, it will just go away.

[Quick1]

You would condemn millions of women to horrible pains? There are plenty of medical reasons that a woman should be taking the pill to regulate her cycles. I'd rather that it be kept legal.

[Quick1]

You would condemn millions of women to horrible pains? There are plenty of medical reasons that a woman should be taking the pill to regulate her cycles. I'd rather that it be kept legal.

[rzeznikj at stout]

Excellent Points!

[leprechaun9]

You vill do as you are told. The Fehurer orders it. We will bring Judge Greer in here from Florida, he is one of us!

[Hermann the Cherusker]

What is your position when the woman has eclampsia? Delivering the baby so early can be a death sentence, but otherwise both mother and baby will die.

It is the moral and legal obligation of the doctor to attempt to treat both patients (mother and child) to the best of his ability. The child should be kept in the mother as long as possible to enable it to get stronger and more likely to survive, and should be delivered when necessary for the mother despite whatever risks it may face, including possible death from prematurity.

In this case, the point of the treatment is not the direct destruction of the child, but an attempt to save both mother and child, even if the chances for the child are slim.

Some other maternal health problems that may be indications for abortion: cardiac disease with cardiac decompensation, and certain malignancies. I'm curious - where do you draw the line?

All direct abortion (surgical operations performed with the first intended purpose of killing the child) is immoral and should be illegal. For example, it is not immoral for a pregnant woman with cancer to take medicines to treat the cancer, even if it may prove harmful to the child. The intent here is not the harm of the child, although that might be an undesired side-effect but the cure of the woman. Many women have praiseworthily taken it upon themselves to delay their treatment in order to give their child a chance to be born prematurely with a chance to live - in this day and age, this sort of delay would generally average out no more than 2-3 months.

I've become especially curious about this after an incident with a nurse in an ER I worked at. She had an ectopic pregnancy. Her husband, a minister, encouraged her not to have treatment. She was fortunate - she passed out in the ER and had immediate surgery and survived. I had to question the morality of a husband who would encourage his wife to do something very likely to lead to her death.

Well, that is just plain dumb. An ectopic pregancy requires removal of the diseased portion of the fallopian tube. The death of the child is an unfortunate side-effect, and not the directly willed result of the operation. The operation is not an abortion procedure aimed at destroying the child, but a surgery aimed at removing a diseased part of the woman.

Because of an amazing lack of interest for the most part by medical science, few attempts have been made at reimplantation of the child during this procedure, although it has been done successfully on occasion. One would think in a world obsessed with in vitro fertilization and the like that this sort of reimplantation would be made routine by modern medical technology and knowledge.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

You would condemn millions of women to horrible pains? There are plenty of medical reasons that a woman should be taking the pill to regulate her cycles. I'd rather that it be kept legal.

No, I would prevent millions of children from being chemically aborted, and millions of women from poisoning themselves.

The pain is a natural part of being a woman. There are plenty of over-the-counter painkillers that can be used that don't cause abortions if one wishes to be rid of it.

[redgolum]

At what cost to an unborn child? Many prolife women, when they find out the abortioafact property of BC pills, are horrified.

My wife has extreme cramping from her cycle. I hate it. But she can handle it with pain killers, exercise, and other treatments.

Possibly killing an unborn child for convenience sake is not moral.

[SoothingDave]

I think you are working hard to characterize this in a way that supports your position, but it's semantics as to whether the fallopian tube is 'diseased,' and removing that portion of the tube is a last resort, much less common than it used to be. The problem is the embryo - it has implanted in the wall of the tube. No embryo, no problem. Removing the embryo is curative.

In current practice, early ectopic pregnancies can often be treated without surgery. The patient is given medication, most commonly methotrexate, which kills the embryo. When surgery is needed, if at all possible surgeons don't remove the tube, in order to preserve future fertility for the woman. The surgeon will remove only the embryo and spare the fallopian tube.

It's not just semantics, it goes to the question of intent. The intent is not to kill the embryo, the intent is to save the life of the mother.

This can not be classified as an elective abortion, which is always immoral and never justified.

There is a vast difference between killing an embryo because you want to, and killing it in what is an act of self-defense. In the case where the only alternative is the death of both parties, it is justifiable to save the one by terminating the other.

SD

[pa mom]

bump