Remember that 'Seinfeld' episode where
Elaine buys a whole case of Today sponges because they've been taken off the market?
Well, if the right-wing "Christian" sex police gets its way, women all over America may have to start hoarding their favorite contraceptive before they can't get it at their neighborhood pharmacy anymore:
Some pharmacists across the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and morning-after pills, saying that dispensing the medications violates their personal moral or religious beliefs.
More after the jump.
I'd seen a few stories on this here and there, and they seemed like the kind of weird item you pass around to your friends with a note along the lines of: "Look at those nuts in (insert red state here)! Can you believe it?" But these is the first story I've seen that talks about a trend, and a growing one to boot. It's a frightening one as well:
"There are pharmacists who will only give birth control pills to a woman if she's married. There are pharmacists who mistakenly believe contraception is a form of abortion and refuse to prescribe it to anyone," said Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, which tracks reproductive issues. "There are even cases of pharmacists holding prescriptions hostage, where they won't even transfer it to another pharmacy when time is of the essence."
It's official: the sex police is here and it's here to stay. Unless we do something--now!
When the Schiavo bill passed Congress while Democrats did nothing, I initially thought they did the right thing because it would be politically expedient to let Republicans self-destruct on this issue. Now I'm not so sure. The Schiavo case is part of a pattern: the right-wing "Christians" mean to reach right into the heart of our privacy and police it according to their own twisted sense of morality. The sex police isn't a cliche anymore. It's a very real phenomenon and it must be stopped.
If we can somehow manage to give Democrats in Congress a spine transplant (some have plenty, some are undergoing the procedure but have a long way to go), they need to get out in front of this issue. They need to stand firm and say this is wrong because:
- It violates our right to privacy: Single men, women and couples (married or not) have a right to choose whether to risk pregnancy during sex or not. This may be a moral choice, but no one, certainly not a pharmacist, has a right to dictate that choice to anyone else. When a pharmacist refuses to dispense birth control medication, he/she is substituting his/her moral judgment for that of the patient. If the pharmacist can't handle having to acquiesce to someone else's moral choice, he should pick another profession that doesn't present such moral hazards.
- It violates the doctor-patient relationship: If a doctor and his patient agree that birth control is a desirable, or even necessary, medical course of action, no pharmacist has any right to overrule the doctor, especially on moral grounds. The pharmacist is there to execute the doctor's orders, making sure they're executed safely. Pharmacists who refuse to sell duly prescribed birth control are also interfering with the doctor's trade.
- Birth control is a responsible, moral alternative: People who use birth control responsibly are making a responsible, moral choice. Couples do it all the time when they realize they can't have any more children, for whatever reason: financial, emotional etc. Single women who do it are also making a moral, responsible choice by NOT bringing into this world unwanted children. Many of these unwanted children would be either not cared for properly, abandoned, or worse, aborted. In fact, increased responsible birth control could help reduce the number of abortions. But under the sex police regime, birth control is taboo as well.
- Discrimination: Pharmacists who refuse to sell birth control on religious grounds would be discriminating against patients based on religion. While pharmacists are usually either employed by a pharmacy chain or work independently, they ARE licensed by states, and so should be made to comply with that state's anti-discrimination laws (and federal as well, though I'm not sure about the jurisdiction.)
I don't know which of these arguments would be most politically powerful, and I'm sure there are many others, but the point is made. The Schiavo case has made it clear that Americans don't want these right-wing "Christians" digging into their private lives. Democrats should seize this issue and cast themselves as the protectors of Americans' right to privacy. We have to stand up to the sex police now, before it's too late.