This affects you too, guys.

[lagilman]

Because if we can't get access to reliable birth control? Lots of women saying you're not getting access to reliable sexual intercourse. And I for one will be carrying the means to enforce that decsion for myself. They can take away my sexual rights but they don't seem willing to take away my right to bear arms... (or walk with armed bears).


Just go here, 'k? Read. And if you think it's all screaming hysteria, do a little research for yourself. Then read the first statement again.

And say, all together now, WTF?

Comments

[deire.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the heads up. I am talking to people in my area about checking on pharmacies and clinics here, and the possibility of contacting those to let them know that should they undertake this sort of moralistic medicine, they *will* be blacklisted insofar as personal choice and social circle effort can manage. They want medicine to be a form of capitalism? Then they don't get to talk about their damn morals, since their "morals" include letting people who can't pay suffer and possibly die.

[windrose.livejournal.com]

I wish I could say I was surprised, but it's the "logical" next step after some doctors and pharmacies started refusing to prescribe the morning after pill.

Shit. We really ARE living in the Republic of Gilead.

[mccalix.livejournal.com]

There's a very simple solution to this - switch to a different doctor and / or pharamacist. I don't have any statistics, but I strongly suspect that the doctors that do this are in the minority, so it shouldn't be difficult to find a new care-giver.

Anyway, I fully believe in birth control, think that these doctors and pharmacists are very irrational, and wouldn't patronize them myself. However, I don't think that doctors should be forced to prescribe something, or offer services that violate their beliefs. That's the beautiful thing about a free market - you have the choice as to who to give your business to.

[kefiraahava.livejournal.com]

IF you have the access to do so, sure, yeah, switching your doctor/pharmacist can be an option. But I've lived in both cities and very rural parts of America, and that hasn't always been an option even for me--a white, middle-class woman who is articulate and legally knowledgeable for a nonlawyer and has had health insurers who had large medical provider lists.

The barriers to switching providers are a lot higher if you're poor, if you don't have access to your own car, if you're a teen, if you're in a rural area, if you don't HAVE insurance...etc. I saw that first-hand living in a rural area.

If the scrip is legal, that's IT. End of discussion. It is not the pharmacist's business as to why I was provided it. It is the pharmacist's business to check and see if I'm taking other prescription meds that might counteract/interact, inform me/check with the doctor if that is an issue, and fill the scrip as it was legally written by a doctor. It is NOT the pharmacist's business to interject his/her personal morality into my body or interfere with my right to control it. It is NOT a doctor's right to impose his/her personal morality on me. "Do no harm" is the Hippocratic Oath. Imposing personal morality on me IS doing harm to me.

These pharmacists/doctors are less of a minority than it might appear (see the Washington Post article yesterday or the other links Suricattus has cited), and I don't want them to get any more of a toehold into restricting my right to my life and my body than they already have. Or the life and bodies of other, poorer, younger women.

Your mileage may vary, of course, but personally I'm hardline on this one without apology.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

If you live in an urban or suburban area, that's easy. If you live in a rural one, not so easy.

I'm actually finding that I do think doctors shouldn't be allowed to restrict legal treatment based on their own beliefs. Medicine isn't primarily a business, it's a basic human need for quality and length of life, and no other social resource, like safe water or food, is allowed to back out of meeting social health needs based on a religious belief that, say, water treatment is forbidden in the Bible or shellfish doesn't need to be safe because it's forbidden. If a doctor is unwilling to provide legal and condition-appropriate treatment to his patients, he's unwilling to meet the needs of his patients and should be in a different branch of medicine where he doesn't treat those conditions. Just as a patient has the right to refuse appropriate treatment based on personal belief, informed but not dictated by the doctor, they should also have a right to get legal treatment based on personal belief, informed but not dictated by the doctor.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

If a doctor is unwilling to provide legal and condition-appropriate treatment to his patients, he's unwilling to meet the needs of his patients and should be in a different branch of medicine

Bingo. My doctor's only concern should be MY health. Said doctor was not hired to replace my preacher or to be a legal avocate for any other resident in said body.

This needs to be smacked down fast. That it's finally showing up on the front page above the fold of the WaPo - right when the Right is wiping egg off their faces about putting their morality over law in the Schiavo case - makes me hopeful that it's about to go down in flames.

[deedop.livejournal.com]

If I still lived in Portland, I'd fight to switch providers, but I'd still put up a stink.

Where I live now? We have one pharmacy on the island and one medical clinic. Switch to what? Oh, yeah, that's right. Abstinence. (While meanwhile, all the men still get their Viagra prescriptions refilled...)

And meanwhile elsewhere, in the WTF slippery slope dept, there's this (http://www.tgcrossroads.org/news/?aid=870) from Michigan:

On Friday, members of the Republican-controlled Michigan House of Representatives sent a frightening and inhumane message to medical practitioners throughout the state with passage of the Conscientious Objector Policy Act. The measure will allow doctors to refuse to treat gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender patients based on moral, ethical or religious beliefs (although, the measure would prohibit the refusal of emergency care).

[alpha-strike.livejournal.com]

"The measure will allow doctors to refuse to treat gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender patients based on moral, ethical or religious beliefs"

Pardon me, but I thought the Nazis -lost-.

[david-chunn.livejournal.com]

Funny how news works. This was big news to my wife and me about a year ago. Now the news is to look at who the Bush administration is appointing to the one of the key health cabinets/councils/whatever that deals with pregnancy, reproductive rights, etc. I'll give you a clue: they're all anti-birth control. The head of that council wrote some books about it. It would be nice if I could remember the specifics of what all of that is called, but my mind's just too hazy for that right now. Anyway, it looks like things will only get worse. It's all ridiculous, and I've been bitching for years about how insurance companies won't cover birth control but will cover Viagra. It's thing like this that make us want to move somewhere sensible like Sweden.

[deedop.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you're thinking of David Hager. (http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/media/pressreleases/pr-040628-hager.xml)

From the Planned Parenthood article linked above:

Dr. Hager co-authored a book that recommends scriptural passages and prayers for problems like headaches and premenstrual syndrome, and he is widely known to be opposed to prescribing contraceptives for unmarried women.

Shudder.

[liuseth.livejournal.com]

If these doctors/pharmasists believe they should not dispense or prescribe these medicines, then to remove any possibility of having to do those things they should remove themselves from the field in which those practices take place. Just like they are urgin us to abstain from sex if we cannot have contraception, then they too should abstain from any practice involving women's health.

What i find to be the ULTIMATE hypocrisy(sp?) about all of these kinds of issues is if they *truly* believe that reproduction should be left in the hands of a Deity, why are they not also petitioning against fertility treatments?
One would assume based upon their rationale of conception being God's Will, that who do women (and the insurance companies) think they are to mess with God's choice and demand a child when it plainly goes against His Will to make her infertile? Especially without a shitload of insurance company dollars to make her conceive??

oh, wait, i forgot.. that would mean a reduction in the number of possible church members.

To me if you demand one option you need to also demand the opposite and equally valid option.. else you're nothing but an interfering hypocrite and don't really believe what you're preaching, you're only using it as a means of moralistic control.