Talibangelists in Northern Virginia certainly hope their plan to create a chain of "pro-life" drugstores is a success. The problem is that is that is blatantly discriminatory, unconstitutional, and against the oath that doctors and pharmacists agree to when they receive their license.
Officials for the DMC pharmacy in Chantilly, Va. said that they will refuse to stock contraceptives of any kind, citing a moral obligation that also appears to run counter to their oath as a health care provider.
According to today's Washington Post:
"The United States was founded on the idea that people act on their conscience -- that they have a sense of right and wrong and do what they think is right and moral," said Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel at the Thomas More Society, a Chicago public-interest law firm that is defending a pharmacist who was fined and reprimanded for refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control pills. "Every pharmacist has the right to do the same thing," Brejcha said.
Except that they don't because of that pesky oath. Nonetheless, both civil libertarians and women's groups said refusing to dispense legitimate, legal prescriptions is a dangerous precedent.
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."
Rob Stein of the Post reports that these pharmacies are emerging at a time when a variety of health-care workers are refusing to perform medical procedures they find objectionable. Fertility doctors have refused to inseminate gay women. Ambulance drivers have refused to transport patients for abortions. Anesthesiologists have refused to assist in sterilizations.
According to Stein, the most common, widely publicized conflicts have involved pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control pills, morning-after pills and other forms of contraception. They say they believe that such methods can cause what amounts to an abortion and that the contraceptives promote promiscuity, divorce, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and other societal woes. The result has been confrontations that have left women traumatized and resulted in pharmacists being fired, fined or reprimanded.
In response, some pharmacists have stopped carrying the products or have opened pharmacies that do not stock any, he wrote.
"This allows a pharmacist who does not wish to be involved in stopping a human life in any way to practice in a way that feels comfortable," said Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life International, which promotes a pharmacist's right to refuse to fill such prescriptions. The group's Web site lists seven pharmacies around the country that have signed a pledge to follow "pro-life" guidelines, but Brauer said there are many others.
"It's just the tip of the iceberg," she said. "And there's new ones happening all the time."
The Post reports that DMC and other pro-life pharmacies are identical to typical drugstores except that they do not stock some or all forms of contraception. Others also refuse to sell tobacco, rolling papers or pornography. Many offer "alternative" products, including individually compounded prescription drugs, as well as vitamins and homeopathic and herbal remedies.
"We try to practice pharmacy in a way that we feel is best to help our community and promote healthy lifestyles," said Lloyd Duplantis, who owns Lloyd's Remedies in Gray, La., and is a deacon in his Catholic church. "After researching the science behind steroidal contraceptives, I decided they could hurt the woman and possibly hurt her unborn child. I decided to opt out."
That has not assuaged critics that point to the GOPocrisy of the same pharmacies also stocking Viagra and similar medications for erectile-challenged men. Many of these pharmacies sell lottery tickets and publications that promote gambling as well.
"Why do you care about the sexual health of men but not women?" asked Anita L. Nelson, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "If he gets his Viagra, why can't she get her contraception?"
DMC, which is scheduled to open this August, is affiliated with a health care organization that "adheres to the teachings of the Catholic Church," offering "natural family planning" instead of contraceptives, sterilization or abortion.
So your choices are the "rhythm method" or nothing for family planning.
Snip.
"We're trying not to leave our faith at the door," said John Bruchalski, who chairs the group's board of directors, noting that one of the organization's major goals is helping needy, uninsured patients obtain health care. "We're trying to create an environment where belief and professionalism come together."
Except of course when one's beliefs run counter to their professional oaths.
Snip.
"If you are a health-care professional, you are bound by professional obligations," said Nancy Berlinger, deputy director of the Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank in Garrison, N.Y. "You can't say you won't do part of that profession."
Stein even finds a "Christian" bioethicist that presents an unbelievably false analogy as if birth control products, both prescription and over the counter items like condoms, are the same as something sold in gas stations, super markets, convenience stores AND pharmacies.
"In general, I think product differentiation expressive of differing values is a very good thing for a free, pluralistic society," said Loren E. Lomasky, a bioethicist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. "If we can have 20 different brands of toothpaste, why not a few different conceptions of how pharmacies ought to operate?"
Four states (California, New Jersey, Illinois and Washington) recently began requiring pharmacies to fill all prescriptions or help women fill them elsewhere, and at least another 10 states are considering such requirements. But some states exempt pharmacies that do not generally stock contraceptives, and it is unclear how other existing rules and laws and those being considered would apply to those pharmacies.
"These are uncharted waters, since the issue of so-called pro-life pharmacies are so new," said Elizabeth Nash, a public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a private, nonprofit organization that researches reproductive issues.
According to the Post, Virginia does not have any laws or regulations that would prohibit a pro-life pharmacy, and is not considering adopting any, said a spokesperson for the Virginia Board of Pharmacy.
Needless to say, the lack of a law or an enormous loophole in the law could have the same effect on a woman that needs the morning-after pill, which is most effective when used quickly.
"Rape victims could end up in a pharmacy not understanding this pharmacy will not meet their needs," Greenberger said. "We've seen an alarming development of pharmacists over the last several years refusing to fill prescriptions, and sometimes even taking the prescription from the woman and refusing to give it back to her so she can fill it in another pharmacy
."
The sanctimonious moralists ateight pro-life drugstores contacted by The Washington Post said they would not actively interfere with a woman trying to fill a prescription elsewhere, but none posts signs announcing restrictions or offers to help women get what they need elsewhere.
"If I don't believe something is right, the last thing I want to do is refer to someone else," said Michael G. Koelzer, who owns Kay Pharmacy in Grand Rapids, Mich. "It's up to that person to be able to find it."
Semler, at DMC Pharmacy, said he does not feel that will be an impediment.
"We just say there are other pharmacies in the area they can go to," he said, noting that the Kmart across the parking lot has a pharmacy and that there are several other national chains nearby. "We're not threatening anybody. We're just trying to serve a niche market of like-minded individuals."
That type of thinking is dangerous for a myriad of reasons. For starters, it can create a de facto situation where contraceptives are legal but unavailable to women in rural areas. Secondly, the slippery slope logic could then be applied to refusing to dispense AZT or similar AIDS medication because some "christian" pharmacist thinks homosexuality is a sin. Thirdly, the niche market of like minded individuals could mean that blacks, muslims, unmarried women and others may be denied service.
"We may find ourselves with whole regions of the country where virtually every pharmacy follows these limiting, discriminatory policies and women are unable to access legal, physician-prescribed medications," said R. Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin lawyer and bioethicist. "We're talking about creating a separate universe of pharmacies that puts women at a disadvantage."
The stupidity, IMO, of these Talibangelists is that this issue has already been decided by the Supreme Court more than 40 years ago in Griswald v. Connecticut (1965) where the court ruled, 7-2, that the state law permitting contraceptives for only married couples was an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.
Griswald was later cited as precedent eight years later in Roe v. Wade.
Of course this is all part of the Talibangelist agenda. They would want to ban all contraceptives, pornography and force us to live as a "christian" nation. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and the rest of the Founding Fathers must be rolling around in their graves about now.
So it goes.