Drugs

Courtesy of Michele, we have a story about the increasing frequency of pharmacist refusals to fill prescriptions they have moral objections to. This could include any number of prescriptions, but for some strange reason seem to focus on birth control, the morning after pills, etc. You know, pills that are prescribed to women.

The money quotes:

{...} "This is a very big issue that's just beginning to surface," said Steven Aden of the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom in Annandale, Va., which defends pharmacists.

"More and more pharmacists are becoming aware of their right to conscientiously refuse to pass objectionable medications across the counter. We are on the very front edge of a wave that's going to break not too far down the line."

An increasing number of clashes are occurring. Pharmacists often risk dismissal or other disciplinary action to stand up for their beliefs, while shaken teenage girls and women desperately call their doctors, frequently late at night, after being turned away by sometimes-lecturing men and women in white coats.

"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 [dispense] 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."

{...}"Our group was founded with the idea of returning pharmacy to a healing-only profession. What's been going on is the use of medication to stop human life. That violates the ideal of the Hippocratic Oath that medical practitioners should do no harm," said Karen Brauer, the Pharmacists for Life president, who was fired from a Kmart pharmacy in Delhi, Ohio, for refusing to fill birth-control prescriptions.{...}

I have a few problems with this, the very least of which is that someone in a position of power is trying to push their morals on people who aren't paying to hear them. I mean, honestly. You want a "moral" pharmacist in that you can be reasonably sure they're not part of a meth pipeline, but to deny a woman birth control pills because it goes against your relgious beliefs? Particularly when there are other uses for birth control pills other than contraception? Where the fuck do you get off?

Erm. Let me rephrase that.

To put it mildly, I find this disturbing.

About a year ago, there was much rumbling from the gay community about a bill that was going through the Michigan Legislature. While I have no Lexis/Nexis to go a researching on this particular bill and Google has proved inadequate to the task, the controversy revolved around allowing medical providers to refuse treatment on moral grounds. The gay community was, understandably, upset because if this bill had become law (which I don't believe it did), it would have meant that a doctor who had issues with gay men could, conceivably, throw over their Hippocratic oath and refuse them treatment for HIV/AIDS without facing any legal ramifications. Furthermore, if I'm remembering correctly, this bill would have shielded insurance providers and hospitals as well.

What I found interesting about this whole brouhaha, was the fact that while the gay community was upset about it, everyone seemed to skip right past the somewhat larger issue---strictly in terms of population---of how this would affect women's health. As in birth control, access to abortions, sterilization, hysterectomies, etc. Because, let's face it, while a lot of people have problems with homosexuals, an equal number of people have issues with women having control over their reproductive systems.

This, like I said above, is disturbing. There are two separate issues at play here: one is birth control, the prevention of conception, which some people believe is just as bad as abortion, and there is abortion in itself. The evils associated with the latter, I believe, are what is driving some people to take a hard line stance against all contraception. Which is not very nuanced, if you ask me, and could even be dangerous and deleterious to a woman's health if a prescription for birth control were denied someone who had, say, ovarian cancer, for which birth control pills are prescribed as a part of the treatment. I've read many o' a history of what life used to be like for women before birth control became widely available, and let me tell you, no matter how much I loathe abortion and the culture it has wrought, I just don't want to go back to a time when birth control was not available because someone refuses to distinguish between contraception and abortion.

In case you're wondering what I'm talking about, let me refresh your memory: multiple pregnancies that resulted in more children than a family could feed; women whose life spans were half of what they are now because pregnancy is not kind to a woman's body; high infant mortality rates; high rates of women dying in labor due to complications; unmarried women, panicked at the thought of being pregnant, making an unholy covenant with a back-alley abortion provider and perhaps bleeding to death as a result---ya think there's a counselor available then; women relying upon a set of knitting needles to do the job, etc. This was less than a hundred years ago, yet some portions of our society believe we're past all of this, and that they have a right to deny birth control because they believe contraception is wrong. Furthermore, this notion of "holding a prescription hostage' is even worse. It's telling someone that well, I'm not going to do it for you, and I'm going to prevent anyone else from helping you, too. Because I know what's best for you.

Hmmmmm.

This affects all women. I am not a big fan of NOW and similar organizations, so it bothers me greatly that I'm parroting their line here. That said, they've got a point when it comes to protecting women's reproductive rights. If this becomes a widepread practice, what happens when it transfers to the practice of medicine itself? What happens when, for instance, a Catholic doctor refuses to perform a sterilization on a woman who's had her kids because they claim it's against their beliefs? Or if a woman has a prolapse and would like a hysterectomy because she's in pain? I could go on, but I'm sure you get what I'm driving at. Who has the choice then? You can always find another doctor here in the big city, but what happens if you live in a small town and there's only one doctor available? Or one pharmacist available, for that matter?

It's a extremely slippery slope and one I don't want to find myself sliding down.

Posted by Kathy at March 29, 2005 03:06 PM