And it's getting worse.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was startled this March to hear that a Texas pharmacist refused to fill a prescription for birth control pills. Another Texas pharmacist earlier in the year had refused to fill a rape victim's prescription for emergency contraception (the so-called "morning-after pill").
Many of us, I'm sure, were thinking something along the lines of "It's only Texas. We're OK if we live in the real world."
That comfortable certainty developed a considerable crack this evening when I sat down to dinner and switched on the BBC World News. A BBC reporter was talking to a female family physician in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Dr. Cynthia Jones-Nosacek. Dr. Jones-Nosacek refuses to prescribe the pill, which she opposes on moral grounds, arguing it is a form of abortion.
The contraceptive pill doesn't always prevent ovulation. As often as 30% of the time, ovulation may occur and if that happens, fertilisation may occur.
Dr. Jones-Nosacek has a point. And the action of the pill after that point is to prevent implantation of the fertilized ovum in the uterine wall.
But given that 10 to 15 percent of all pregnancies result in spontaneous abortions (cf. The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, 15th edition, p. 1759), the pill's effect is roughly on a par with the normal course of nature. I'm not seeing the moral equivalency here, but I recognize that reasonable people can differ on the issue.
Adding to my concern is this fact:
This year 12 states took steps to try to introduce so-called conscience clauses. They allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense drugs, including the Pill, on moral grounds, without losing their jobs.
I am not unsympathetic to the problems involved in forcing someone to act in a manner that violates his/her conscience. However, I also believe that any individual who is legally compos mentis is capable of making his/her own decisions about medical treatment, and those decisions are best made in free and open consultation with a qualified medical practitioner, and once those decisions have been made, no outside entity or individual has any business mucking around with them. A pharmacist who has problems selling birth control pills should seriously consider getting out of the pharmaceutical business, and a doctor who has a problem with prescribing them should probably not be considering family practice or gynecology as a specialty, unless they are willing and able to limit their practice to those persons who agree with their views. And I absolutely, positively do not want the government being the one to decide what my doctor may tell me, when it comes to my health, or what my pharmacist may, or may not dispense to me after my physician has prescribed it.
Looks like we've got another thing to watch out for. And reason no. 440,695 to vote Kerry/Edwards.