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Pro Life Drug Stores
Posted by Raven on June 17th, 2008
Drug stores are slowly standing up for the rights of pharmacists and others who are pro life…who object to filling prescriptions for drugs that terminate pregnancies, and even birth control. This is surely going to be controversial.
When DMC Pharmacy opens this summer on Route 50 in Chantilly, the shelves will be stocked with allergy remedies, pain relievers, antiseptic ointments and almost everything else sold in any drugstore. But anyone who wants condoms, birth control pills or the Plan B emergency contraceptive will be turned away.
Can we hear the Women’s Rights’ groups screaming already? Using the false idea of such pharmacies denying women their right…to…health…care….
That’s because the drugstore, located in a typical shopping plaza featuring a Ruby Tuesday, a Papa John’s and a Kmart, will be a “pro-life pharmacy” — meaning, among other things, that it will eschew all contraceptives.
The pharmacy is one of a small but growing number of drugstores around the country that have become the latest front in a conflict pitting patients’ rights against those of health-care workers who assert a “right of conscience” to refuse to provide care or products that they find objectionable.
Medical people have rights. Pharmacists are no exception. We don’t hear women demanding their primary care doctors perform abortions, right? So why should we demand our pharmacist provide drugs that they object to?
But critics say the stores could create dangerous obstacles for women seeking legal, safe and widely used birth control methods.
“I’m very, very troubled by this,” said Marcia Greenberger of the National Women’s Law Center, a Washington advocacy group. “Contraception is essential for women’s health. A pharmacy like this is walling off an essential part of health care. That could endanger women’s health.”
Choice my dear. Women have choices. There’s always another drug store in the region, often right up the road, that will sell the drugs wanted. SO get off your bullshit claims here, that women’s health is at risk.
:roll:
The free markets allow this to happen. Businesses should not be forced to sell products they do not wish to be associated with. Drug stores, pharmacies, are businesses, that sell drugs and many other items. It is all about choice. I don’t agree with these drug stores- I think birth control is a good thing. I have choices as to where I can purchase my medications though. There is no danger to women’s health.
June 19th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
One key issue is that since the number of pharmacists is restricted via government licensing, then pharmacists cannot use their licensing power to utterly deny women legal medications. However, the rise of the internet should offer a reasonable bypass to local pharmacists with respect to maintaining access to non-emergency medicines, such as contraceptives and birth control.
Emergency prescriptions are a thornier matter, and that is where the area pharmacists have to communicate among themselves in some manner to ensure that emergency access is available somewhere in the “local” vicinity. In this case, the pharmacists’ government-regulated license privilege constrains their individual freedom of choice. One solution might be that prescribing doctors could carry a supply of medicine in their offices to cover emergency needs.
On the other hand, where there are feasible alternatives, like mail-order/internet, then pharmacies should be free to choose their product lines, since they will face the financial consequences of these choices in terms how customers respond to their business choices (such as customers deciding to shop elsewhere, for instance).