What about people who are on hormonal therapy (aka birth control) for painful and serious problems like endometriosis and primary dysmenhorrea? Do these people not understand that there are valid reasons for this medicine ASIDE from birth control? Are they ignorant as well as oppressive, or do they think women whose reproductive systems cause them pain don't deserve medical treatment if there's the slightest chance a pregnancy might be prevented in the process?

Now that that's out of the way, pharmacists should not get to decide whether my medical decisions are ethical. Violating the reproductive rights of thousands of women is certainly not okay.

Yeah, I read about this. Bastards. I hope that they're boycotted.

legallyblondeez, oo! me! I've been on them since I was 14 to normalize my cycle and help prevent debilitating cramps (I have primary dysmennorhrea, woo!). I wasn't even remotely sexually active until a few years later. And I can promise that if any self righteous pharmacist even tried to keep my pills from me, he would hear a VERY detailed description of why I needed those pills for reasons that weren't birth control.

A detailed description delivered at high enough volume to draw a crowd. And then maybe I'd cry, becuase I'm a small delicate looking girl and I am totally not above using that to get sympathy on my side.

Even if it is "just" for contraception, birth control is a legal, FDA-approved medicine prescribed by your doctor. There is absolutely no justification for a pharmacist to refuse to do their job. I have tremendous sympathy for women who have endo, etc., but we shouldn't feel we have to justify our need for this completely legal medication. Why are we on the defensive when the pharmacists are violating their own job description?

Agreed that it doesn't matter what the reasons for using contraception are. The woman and her doctor know best.

However, I have PCOS, and having taken hormonal BC voluntarily in the past, it is a whole NEW level of asshole to deny it to someone who needs it to treat a medical condition. Suppose I couldn't get BC for some reason for pregnancy prevention...I'd use condoms, spermicides, etc. But there's no alternative, really, for what I need it for now. And that almost makes me wanna get violent with people like this.

Amen, suspended disbelief. These stories infuriate me.

Who's asking the men out there if their Viagra is being used only in the context of marriage? I absolutely don't think this should happen, but my point is no one! Therefore, this comes down to sexism, oppression, and interfering with a person's medical care. Jerks.

Clearly, this would not be acceptable even if there were no other medical reason for taking birth control pills.

The fact that there *are* other reasons to prescribe this medicine (me too, Genny, and I'm not into silent suffering either) just highlights the fact that these pharmacists are either willfully ignorant about medical treatment--which, they're supposed to be trained on this stuff, right?--or care more about a potential pregnancy than about actual living, breathing women. As Twisty says, "Men [and other godbags] Hate You."

A new twist on the old chant: KEEP YOUR BELIEFS OUT OF MY BODY!!!!

These bastards!! I agree with Micheyd- makes me wanna get violent too. Maybe do a Carrie Underwood "Before He Cheats" on the pharmacists car while yelling "Whose the passive sex now??"

A new twist on the old chant: KEEP YOUR BELIEFS OUT OF MY BODY!!!!

These bastards!! I agree with Micheyd- makes me wanna get violent too. Maybe do a Carrie Underwood "Before He Cheats" on the pharmacists car while yelling "Whose the passive sex now??"

Pharmacists aren't robots; they should use some discretion. That, however, is limited to ensuring that the prescribed drugs treat the condition they are prescribed for; that a patient is not abusing painkillers or another prescription drug; and ensuring that there are no drug interactions (i.e. if you prescribe antibiotics to a woman who is on the Pill, you should inform her of its effects).

They are not, however, doctors. Doctors have developed long relationships with their patients, have the medical training to examine them, and have made prescription decisions based on that. The pharmacist supplements the doctor (see above), but does not override his decisions.

I'm with LegallyBlondeez. When I was in high school, most of my girl friends who took the Pill did so for extreme pain, irregular periods, nausea, depression, anemia, and a host of other stuff that just sucks.

I'm all about protecting unborn children. But for christsakes, who gives a flying f- about anything that happens before conception???

Fuck it. Let's just start attaching mini parachutes to boxes of birth control pills (and hell, while we're at it, EC) and releasing them over ever damn part of America.

I love that idea Elle!! Pink parachutes so the whole nation knows we're coming! :)

"Since when does a pharmacist have the right to decide whether or not to fill your prescription and interfere in the doctor-patient relationship?"

Since the onset of this country when individuals were guaranteed the right to free association. That also means no association. Don't want to sell a product, don't sell it.

I still don't understand how the anti choice side can be against birth control.

I can't stand it when pharmacists deem it upon themselves to be the moral compass for us heathen women who actually want to have sex for fun and not for babies.

Don't want to sell a product, don't sell it.

Fine, you don't want to sell a federally approved legal drug to someone with a valid prescription from their doctor? Then don't become a pharmacist.

Part of the moral obligation of being a pharmacist is to trust that a doctor and a patient know what drugs are best for that patient. Yes, another part is being aware of the other drugs a patient is taking and warning them of interactions, etc. But flat-out refusing to fill their prescription? That is unacceptable, in my opinion.

Imagine if the drug we were talking about were Ritalin rather than birth control. I am guessing that a lot of people who consider it acceptable for a pharmacist to refuse to fill a birth control prescription would quickly be up-in-arms if the same pharmacist refused to fill a Ritalin prescription.

And there are even more uses of the pill too --

while most Jews have no religious problems with birth control, fundie Jews, being fundies (well, IIRC, the fundie Muslims in parts of the Sahel, who have no problem stoning rape victims for 'adultery' are a-ok with condoms! wait for the fundies here to find that one out and claim that we liberals who support condom use are no different than fundie Muslims who stone rape victims!), of course, do.

But they use the pill. Many ultra-orthodox women will go on the pill shortly before their wedding that way they can control their periods and not be ritually impure on their wedding nights. I doubt if there are too many ultra-orthodox Jews in Montana, but still ... do these nutsos wanna keep other nutsos from getting it on even within the bounds of marriage and religious custom?

I thought the "wait till marriage" crowd was all about getting all hot and bothered about the wedding night ;)

SB - or a psychotropic drug that, if skipped, would cause the patient to start hallucinating, become depressed, or contemplate suicide.

Part of the obligation of being an attorney is to represent one's clients. I fully agree that there is a similar ethical obligation on pharmacists.

Nevertheless, it seems as if the store doesn't stock birth control pills (although you would have to wonder about condoms...?), so we can't blame the pharmacists for not dispensing what they don't have.

The right to free association has nothing to do with stocking bc pills. Nothing whatsoever.

In fact, the right to free association doesn't actually let you exclude people. It just means the government can't stop you from meeting people you want to meet with, and having parades and crap like that. And free association, like speech, is subject to reasonable time and place restrictions.

I love the bill of rights, and the Constitution guarantees a lot of rights that are incredibly important, but it's not a do-whatever-you-damn-please social contract.

Buffy, don't be a nitwit. Seriously.

DAS - traditional Jewish marriage rules require that the bride and groom have sex almost immediately after the wedding. In fact, the celebration usually happens AFTER that, so the guests wait around while the wedding couple gets it on. The idea is that sex and marriage are so inextricably intertwined that those who are married have sex and those who have sex are married.

LegallyBlondeez: your last statement really depends on a few things, the Constitution and one interpretation of it being a very small part of that.

The Ninth and Tenth Amendments were designed to limit the power of the federal government and to give powers to the state governments. The idea is that power not given to the Feds is given to the people to delegate to the States. If the people retained the power to, for example, run their businesses as they wish, then the state cannot force them to act differently (and neither can the feds). Therefore, no one can sue to change the status quo.

I take issue with your idea that the right of association does not include the right to exclude. Most rights are exclusionary rights (property rights being classic in this regard), and it would be difficult to argue that one may choose one's associates but have others foisted upon him.

Given that this also includes religious issues, it would be incredibly difficult to force the pharmacy to stock the pills. After all, pharmacies are not required to stock every medical drug around. The only angle you would have is against an pharmacist who refused to dispense the pills in stock.

Given that this also includes religious issues, it would be incredibly difficult to force the pharmacy to stock the pills. After all, pharmacies are not required to stock every medical drug around. The only angle you would have is against an pharmacist who refused to dispense the pills in stock.

I have to disagree with this, to the effect that deliberately not stocking a product that there is significant and regular demand for is failing to provide adequate service, and doing so with the specific intent of interfering with someone's access of it is malicious discrimination against those people.

In regards to the problem of these pharmacists in general, I'd really like to accuse them in some public manner of conspiring to drum up business for the "abortion industry." (Seeing as that's the general effect of lack of contraception: more unwanted pregnancies and therefore more abortions.)

borrowing a pretty popular saying here... protection causes sex like umbrellas cause rain.

Now seriously. These effers are also anti-choice. Do they really think they're not going to be providing the local abortion clinic (and by local, I bet there's one in the whole state) with a lot more business by denying woman a pre-emptive way to prevent unwated pregnancy?

God, I still have trouble believing ignorant fucks like this live in the US. I would expect this from a 3rd world country. I guess it's less shocking, since it's Montana.

The problem with invoking rights to association is that we're not talking a store that sells flip-flops, novelty key-chains, and scale models of the Lincoln Memorial--we're talking about a business that provides necessary medications. While they may be within their rights to make capricious business decisions based on their own irrational prejudices (not selling any pink pills because they don't like the color pink, for instance), that doesn't make it morally acceptable. If it is the only pharmacy in town, or the only one that takes a given customer's insurance policy, I think that it should be possible to take legal action. We all recognize that freedom of speech has limitations put on it--the "fire" example has to do with creating a clear and present danger to others. Refusing to stock a needed medication also creates a clear and present danger.

As an aside, and because I'm a leftist, I must say here that I've never understood why businesses get the same rights that individuals have. They are clearly not the same entities at all. Further, it seems an awfully big leap to me to go from "people have the write to hang out with or not hang out with whomever they please" to "pharmacies don't have to stock medications that their owners think are icky."

If it is the only pharmacy in town, or the only one that takes a given customer's insurance policy, I think that it should be possible to take legal action.

The way health care is paid for in the United States is Fucked Up. There's no polite term for how bad it is. We have neither an efficient market in health care nor an equitable government funded system. What we have is a system in which your employer chooses which insurance company you
have to deal with. Naturally, they're going to choose whichever one is best for them. If that one is a company well known for not paying claims without forms filled in triplicate and hours spent on the telephone being transferred from person to person, it's not the employer who has to deal with it. If it's one that will pay for Rogaine but not eyeglasses, that's not the employer's problem either. Meanwhile, the poor employee's best recourse is to try to get the government to control the worst abuses (good luck).

On average, a person shouldn't need insurance for routine health care; it should be cheaper to pay for it yourself than to use an insurer as a middleman. However, because health benefits aren't taxed as income, it actually becomes cheaper to use that middleman (even for something like eyeglasses) even though the middleman takes its cut of your health care dollar. Socialized medicine also uses a middleman - the government - but, ironically enough, governments seem to be less wasteful middlemen than insurance companies. (For example, governments don't have to pay dividends to shareholders.)

If there exist people who only have access to one pharmacy and that pharmacy can refuse to supply needed prescriptions, then there is a problem. For drugs that aren't needed immediately, a mail-order pharmacy can eliminate a geographic barrier to access, but an insurance barrier to access is far more pernicious and, well, there's just no doing anything about that without finally doing that badly needed overhaul of our health care industry.

On a side note, some pharmacies in high-crime areas refuse to stock narcotic painkillers (such as morphine) because they are afraid of getting robbed. Is that okay?

dmrnj85:

I was actually shocked that this WAS Montana, not because it's soooo liberal, but because it's been trying like HELL to get itself populated for the last twenty years. Montana and Idaho are both dying for the kind of money that rich liberals bring in, so have been trying to gentrify left and right.

Also, for normal birth control (NOT emergency contraception), maybe it is time to hand it over to robots. There are online drugstores that take scripts, and they couldn't give less of a fuck what you need it for. ANNNND the Post Office, for all its run by ignorant people half the time, does NOT have "freedom of association" or whatever bollocks y'all are running. They cannot NOT deliver mail because the contents are "icky". If they could, my ex-girlfriend probably would never have received any of her queer mags.

at the pharmacy where i used to work (family-owned and 100 years running), they didn't stock anywhere near everything. lotsa drugs are very expensive, have a limited shelf-life, and/or are rarely prescribed. OBV these things aren't really the case for BC, but my point is: if you came into that pharmacy with an Rx for something we didn't carry, the pharmacist would order it for you to pick it up the next day OR POINT YOU TO A NEARBY PHARMACY THAT DID CARRY THE MEDICATION. see what i'm saying here? if these bonehead picky pharmacists want to pick and choose what medications a customer receives and does not receive, there really oughta be a responsibility on that professional pharmacist to not be a dead end.
moral objection or not.

and spider, i'm not really sure what you mean but maybe the postmaster et al didn't find those 'queer' mags as icky as you did..? and i mean that;s the whole point. it's nobody biz what we buy, read, order or take daily at the same time, especially in cases like this.

FYI, Great Falls is a large town by Montana standards (it was the second largest town in the state when I lived there, although growth in the western part of the state may have changed that) and there are lots of other pharmacies.

Not that the presence of other pharmacies makes this okay. The Salon.com story about this said that people requesting OCP were given a flier telling them that Snyder had decided not to carry the drug. I don't think they were assisted in finding another pharmacy that accepted their insurance and carried the drug.

Ladies, get me my ax!!!!

I could just kill someone right now.

This is discrimination, plain and simple. What's next, they're going to stop selling tampons?

If my pharmacy did this, I would not only take my business elsewhere (and I spend quite a bit on RXs every month), I would also encourage everyone I know to do the same. Also, I'd probably make flyers and hang them up all over town.

Me too, Cara. I always get my prescription from Kroger and they are quick and friendly about it. But I am always worried some shithead is going to try and deny me my BC. I've already been denied Plan B by an Elizabethtown, Ky Walgreens. Part of me wishes that I had thrown something at the bastard pharmacist or something, or gotten some sort of revenge. But at that point every second counted and I had to go to another place.

I think excusing this behavior because it happened in Montana is a copout. Calling birth control abortion is the new trend and we are going to start seeing this shit everywhere. Instead of passing it off as something that happens in other states we need to be proactive and starting organizing now instead of playing defense.

You're so right Erica. I also hate it when people say "They can just go to another pharmacy" I just want to scream at them and say "That's not the point!!!".

Exactly, it's not the point. The sad thing is that it's the same exact reasoning that was used by a lot of people during segregation. If there was a restaurant that anyone could go to right next to the White's Only restaurant, it wasn't the POINT that the people of color could go eat next door-- the point was that it was and is their right to go where ever they damn well please.

Now please, don't get me wrong. I am NOT saying that this is the same level of discrimination that segregation was. One pharmacy refusing to fill BC pills, and a bunch of pharmacists all over the country refusing to fill EC prescriptions is awful, but it is IN NO WAY the same as the state-sponsored, pervasive segregation that used to exist all over this country and still unofficially exists in many places. But I do think that it's really interesting to look at the language that people use in making an argument, and what that same language has been used to justify in the past.

The best solution really is a free-market one, though. If people start going to other pharmacies and doing all of their shopping there, the store in question will stop its behaviour. (Doubly so if people demonstrate on the sidewalk and start a really active boycott.)

As for the DC/narcotics issue: I'm not surprised. I had to get my morning donut from someone behind a bulletproof window.

The best solution really is a free-market one, though. If people start going to other pharmacies and doing all of their shopping there, the store in question will stop its behaviour. (Doubly so if people demonstrate on the sidewalk and start a really active boycott.)
Uhm, not really.
There are places in the country where there really is nowhere else to go for miles & miles. You might only have a Wal Mart within a 30 or 40 mile radius, & we all know how great that Wal Mart is at protecting reporductive rights.
That can be devestating if you don't have a car or public transportation.
I know it's kind of shocking, but everywhere isn't like the northeast & west coast.

I found some interesting information. I think I'll send an email off to the corporate head office.

I found some interesting information. I think I'll send an email off to the corporate head office.

I found some interesting information. I think I'll send an email off to the corporate head office.

Sorry about the TRIPLE comment. I have no idea how that happened.

There are places in the country where there really is nowhere else to go for miles & miles.

And even if there ARE other pharmacies, there's no guarantee that they're going to carry or fill your prescription. My sister and I needed to fill a prescription for Plan B last summer (before it went OTC)--we live in conservative West Michigan--and we drove to three different pharmacies before finding a Walgreens that had it in stock and didn't give us dirty looks when we handed the prescription over. You could just tell the pharmacists were thinking "slut." It was SO infuriating.

Of course I wrote letters to the company headquarters and complained (and a thank you letter to Walgreens). . . and I patronize other pharmacies for my drugs. But it's so insane that a for-profit company can actually rudely refuse service to its customers for legal merchandise.
It's a form of discrimination that I don't think should be legal. If you aren't willing to dispense all legal drugs, you shouldn't be able to get a pharmacist's license.

While I can see some merit to the idea that people are free to sell what they want to, and not sell what don't, I also think that there's an appropriate role for government in mandating that EVERYONE have access to health care, including the drugs they need. Setting aside how to make said available health care affordable, at least the government could require as a public health measure that there be a strong national network of pharmacies that provide all communities with birth control and plan b.

"I'm all about protecting unborn children. But for christsakes, who gives a flying f- about anything that happens before conception???"

"I still don't understand how the anti choice side can be against birth control."

Because, as we've discussed before, the issue is about controlling female sexuality, not about protecting the unborn.