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Better that than to grow up and be a g.d. Republican.
Great LTE about Plan B birth control in the Tacoma paper today.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/.....07535.html
Contraception shouldn’t require computer access
JUDY KIMELMAN, M.D.; Seattle
Published: November 19th, 2007 01:00 AM
Re: “Start looking for other ways to ensure Plan B access” (editorial, 11-10).
Since when does our Constitution require women to have computers to get the contraception they need? Having cared for thousands of female patients, I can say that merely posting a registry on the Internet is not a workable, “pragmatic response” to the recent court ruling allowing pharmacists to refuse emergency contraception.
According to the latest Census, only 41.5 percent of Americans have Internet access in their homes. A pharmacy, unlike an Internet café, agrees to dispense drugs to meet the needs of the community it serves. That’s the whole rationale behind state licensing. Rather than “forcing pharmacists to dispense drugs,” society has granted them an exclusive privilege to dispense drugs.
The now-suspended pharmacy rules would have “ensured that patients don’t have to traipse from pharmacy to pharmacy” – a far better solution than forcing women to surf the Internet. Plan B and countless other drugs are highly time-sensitive. We know from years of experience that delaying proper medication is always a bad idea.
Plan B is highly effective in reducing a woman’s chance of an unplanned pregnancy and is most effective if taken in the first 24 hours after exposure. Every hour a woman must wait to get Plan B increases her risk of becoming pregnant. Even Catholic hospitals understand this and promptly dispense Plan B to sexual assault victims. It is not only the standard of medical care, it is the right thing to do. (Kimelman is Washington vice chair of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.)
Lee,
Eric Earling is loving you over at Sound Politics. Apparently your slam on local environmental activists really resonated with him.
I find it ironic that while you compare the Sierra Club to war-boosting neocons, it is you who’s earned their praise by advancing their interests on transportation and global warming.
@3
I actually tend to see fairly eye-to-eye with Earling on this issue. I know that Eric (through his father) has a lot of background here and understands it extremely well. I respect his views here because I think he’s one of the few people who understand that people who want rail and people who want more road construction both have valid demands. Too many people think that only one is valid, and the other is either a scam, wasteful, or dangerous.
I also sensed from his post that he didn’t like the neocon analogy too much either (and considering that foreign policy is where Eric really flies off the rails sometimes, I’m not surprised).
Lee @4:
FYI, you’ve probably seen it, but Washblog is also taking you to task, from the left flank (zappini also didn’t care for the “what scares me” line):
http://www.washblog.com/story/2007/11/17/154957/58
@5
Awesome. I hadn’t seen that.
@5
This part sums it up:
Fine. But why should I have to pay for them? It’s like buying an alcoholic a six-pack and pleading “This is it. After this, no more. It’s time for you to start acting reasonable. Okay?” Classic enabling behavior. What’s required here is some tough love.
I’m sorry, but someone who moves here from out-of-state to work for Microsoft in Redmond or Issaquah, or Google in Kirkland, or Boeing in Bellevue, Kent, or Everett, and decides to live outside of Seattle, is not being irresponsible. As long as people like Zappini see it as being irresponsible, they’re going to continue to hurt progressives when it comes to dealing with transportation.
No. But what IS irresponsible is building new highway capacity when we know that it will inevitably fill up and leave us just as congested as before, but with more CO2 emissions and less money in our pockets. We can’t build our way out of congestion. It’s a matter of simple economics: without a dynamic user fee system, the demand for road capacity in an economically growing region like ours quickly outstrips supply. Our experience shows this and the research backs it up (This is independent of road safety and maintanence needs, by the way. Those ought be funded as a matter of course).
The I-5 non-catastrophe during the summer closures should be a lesson to everyone that this region is capable of functioning with less single-occupant motor vehicle capacity than most people assume it needs. The answer to our traffic problems is not to pave the planet — it’s to manage our existing assets better while building fast, convenient alternatives.
Sounds like Wash Blog got it about right.
@8
No. But what IS irresponsible is building new highway capacity when we know that it will inevitably fill up and leave us just as congested as before, but with more CO2 emissions and less money in our pockets. We can’t build our way out of congestion.
No, but highway capacity has to keep up with population growth. Yes, it will fill up again, but that’s not an excuse for not expanding it in the first place. By your logic, there’s never a reason to build a road, ever.
The I-5 non-catastrophe during the summer closures should be a lesson to everyone that this region is capable of functioning with less single-occupant motor vehicle capacity than most people assume it needs.
That was a temporary shift that people were able to schedule around. It would be impossible to have the same kind of interruption with any permanence.
@10
“highway capacity has to keep up with population growth.”
Why?
What happens to global warming if it does?
@10
The ability to transport people and goods needs to keep up with population growth, not highway capacity.
@7 They also make progressives like foolish with idiotic arguments like “why should I have to pay for them” — because the only way he’s paying for roads is if he’s driving a CAR on them. Road funding does not come out of general tax revenues. But, unlike roads, which are paid for entirely with user taxes, light rail proponents want to tax the general populace (whether they use it or not), which is a horse of a different color. Why should a retiree on a fixed income, who doesn’t commute, and possibly doesn’t even own car, and who is struggling to pay for basic necessities, have his taxes raised to subsidize commuters with incomes three, four, or six times his income? That’s bullshit.
Lee: You use the examples of Microsoft, Google, and Boeing. Microsoft, I understand, has a kind of cult of corporate campus life, but many software companies these days support mobile work and work at home. It’s a big cultural shift, but it has benefits for employer and employees alike (cheaper for all, more productivity, better life-work balance for employees).
Providing that option would be more responsible than forcing thousands of cars onto the roads for hours every day. So the big local corporations can make a big difference by eliminating unnecessary daily travel.
@11
Why?
Do you really not know? Look, I know it’s great to envision alternatives to driving, but unless someone invents a flying car sometime soon, people still have to drive on roads to get around. And as the volume of people who need to get places increases in an area, road capacity (highways and secondary roads) has to keep up.
What happens to global warming if it does?
As I’ve said many times already, global warming does not hinge upon road-building. It hinges far more upon the technologies that our cars run on. Worrying about roads is a distraction from addressing the real things that matter for global warming (reducing emissions, developing better fuel-burning technology, etc, etc). You’re not going to reduce emissions by refusing to build roads. You’re going to just have people sitting in their cars longer in traffic until they get mad enough and build the roads any way. Why is this so damn difficult to understand? You’re not going to reach a point where people abandon their cars. It will never, ever, ever happen.
What’s the justification for taxing a senior citizen, who maybe drives 100 miles a month for grocery shopping and doctor appointments, the same as a daily commuter — to pay for a transportation system that won’t be operational in his lifetime?
You can argue that Prop. 1 failed because of the Sierra Club vote, and maybe it did.
But the “no” vote, like the “yes” vote, was comprised of many pieces, and one of the larger pieces was senior citizens. Light rail boosters lost the senior citizen vote when they opted for a sales tax increase. I haven’t talked to one retiree who voted for Prop. 1. The retirees I know were unanimously against Prop. 1.
@12
The ability to transport people and goods needs to keep up with population growth, not highway capacity.
Highway capacity is a critical part of being about to transport people and goods (feel free to ask someone at Boeing who has to transport large items between the Everett and Renton plants).
@15 “You’re not going to reduce emissions by refusing to build roads.”
You’re not going to reduce greenhouse gases with plug-in electric cars, either, unless you first come up with an alternative to coal generating plants. Since the region’s hydropower potential is already full utilized, most of the generating capacity being added in the region consists of coal plants.
@14
I agree with that. I think we should give companies tax breaks for implementing telecommuting programs that get people off the roads. Microsoft, at least when I was there, was very anti-telecommuting.
14 Yellowpup
I think you might be surprised at the level of support at Microsoft for “mobile work,” “work at home,” and “life-work balance for employees.”
@20
Well, it sounds like things may have changed since I left there. That’s a good thing.
@18
That’s good to know, and yet another reason that the battle to restrain global warming will be one by starting to develop better energy technology.
19 Lee
I am there now, and although there can be cultural differences that vary slightly from one business unit or product group to another, in general the company has become much more friendly toward flex time, working from home, and other work-life balance programs that additionally reduce commute volumes and fuel pollutants. About half of the writers in my group work from home at least one day a week. I generally do one day a week, and adjust my commute times as I please.
@22
Wow, that’s great. I might even be tempted to go back. :)
@17
Yup, it is, but we can take people off highways and we can make them run more efficiently, negating the need to have highway capacity keep up with population growth.
Many of the goods that we currently transport over roads could be transported by rail. As oil prices rise many of the goods we currently buy will be priced out of the market (Product, Price, Place (distribution), Promotion. Right) As gas prices go up the # of trips people take and VMT will go down. All of these argue against anything other than very modest growth in highway capacity.
@24
Well, beyond YellowPups good suggestions, there isn’t much else you can do to get people off the roads. Many of our existing highways are serious bottlenecks that haven’t kept up with population growth. 520 is a great example of this. 4 lanes is not enough. 4 lanes with an HOV lane is likely still not enough. Even with the large numbers of commuters who already ride buses across the bridge, it’s a parking lot westbound from 3:30 to 8 on most days. That’s ridiculous. And the Sierra Club wants to replace it with another 4 lane bridge?
At some point, you have to accept that traffic patterns are what they are and you adjust to them.
So ther’s going to be conflagration if we withdrawfrom Irq? So thousands will be sent to re-education camps in some replay of wingnut fantasies about Vietnam if we withdraw?
The british ledft Basra. Pulled the fuck out. What happened? Oh, how about, say, NINETY PERCENT?
http://www.independent.ie/brea.....21511.html
There is no one so full of shit as a Republican.
@24
As for the second part here:
Many of the goods that we currently transport over roads could be transported by rail. As oil prices rise many of the goods we currently buy will be priced out of the market (Product, Price, Place (distribution), Promotion. Right) As gas prices go up the # of trips people take and VMT will go down. All of these argue against anything other than very modest growth in highway capacity.
I tend to think any reduction in driving due to gas prices going up will be short-term. This is arguably the main point of what I’m trying to say. I think there’s a tendency to believe that roads are going to be a thing of the past (and even while I agreed with the Surface + Transit option for the replacing the viaduct, I didn’t buy this part of the argument). Transit can get people of the roads, but only that portion of the overall population willing to take it. Unfortunately, that’s not everyone, especially here, where people are rather insular.
Michael typed: “Since when does our Constitution require women to have computers to get the contraception they need?”
Please show me in the constitution contraception is a right? I found life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Which of those classify for contraception? In fact where does it say abortion is a right? When you find it I’ll agree with you to get the computer requirement removed.
@28
That was in an LTE written by someone other than me and I didn’t type I copied and pasted.
@28
Please show me in the constitution contraception is a right? I found life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That’s the Declaration of Independence, you buffoon.
The Constitution does not guarantee a right to contraception or basic health care. That doesn’t mean that it’s not the right thing to do. At the time the constitution was written, the notion of a modern-day pharmacy wasn’t quite accessible to people. But you can easily make an argument that a system that allowed for religious convictions to be imposed on others through an entity that the public relied on would not have made our founding fathers very happy.
@15, you’re assuming that people can’t live closer to work, can’t work from home, can’t take the train, can’t take the bus, can’t take a van pool, can’t share a ride… in other words, can’t do anything but what they are already doing.
They can’t even be like you, and live with only one car per household. In Washington State, there are about 2 cars per household. If everybody just does what you’re doing, the number of cars would be cut in half.
Your only proof that it is impossible for us to not build roads is that you say so. Meanwhile, there are rich, happy nations around the world that drive way, way less than we do. This is proof that we don’t have to be stupid with our future. It is not at all hard to understand what you are saying. Instead, it is hard to understand how you can present such a flimsy case and still be so awfully sure you are right.
WELL, AT LEAST I THINK IT’S FUNNY…..
OLYMPIA — Gov. Chris Gregoire tried to take a target off her back Monday and called for a one-day special session of the Legislature to reinstate a 1 percent limit on property taxes that was struck down by the state Supreme Court.
The special session would be Nov. 29.
“I believe we can easily enact the necessary legislation during a one-day session,” Gregoire said in a letter to legislative leaders. “The citizens of our state expect that we will expeditiously deal with this subject, and this subject only, to give them certainty about their property tax bills for the upcoming year.”
Gregoire said she would push for two bills to be considered — one to reinstate the 1 percent property tax limitation and another that would provide a property tax deferral for families under the state’s median income level.
In 2006 that figure was just under $57,000 a year, according to the Office of Financial Management
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/.....ion20.html
@2
We should have laws forcing pharmacists to provide Plan B contraception only after we have laws requiring all physicians to perform abortions.
They too are granted an exclusive “License to practice medicine and surgery,”
Perhaps we can bring back the draft as well, since all legal residents are granted an exclusive right to live here.
What’s sauce for the goose would certainly appear to be sauce for the gander……
At the time the constitution was written, the notion of a modern-day pharmacy wasn’t quite accessible to people
No but the prohibition on giving womem drugs to cause an abortion goes back to the time of Hippocrates….
I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfil according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:
To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art – if they desire to learn it – without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but no one else.
I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.
I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/d.....sical.html
@34
I’m sure all women would love to go back to how things were in ancient Greece.
@35
Not saying that….I probably wouldn’t either. Just putting things in historical perspective. From the standpoint of MORALITY, the founding fathers wouldn’t have cared for it any more that Hippocrates did.
Yes, I know…many of them were slave owners….etc. etc…..yadada yadada
In 2006 the Washington State Ferries burned $39 million of diesel at an average cost of $2.00 a gallon to provide 182 million passenger miles for an average efficiency of (182/(29/2)) or approximately 9.3 passenger miles per gallon.
http://www.ntdprogram.com/ntdp.....s/0035.pdf
A four-wheel drive Hummer gets 14 miles per gallon city and 16 miles per gallon highway, even if it is driven solo. Put two in it and you can easily triple a ferry’s fuel efficiency.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg.....2514.shtml
Even if the primary use of the Washington State Ferries wasn’t to spread Urban Sprawl to Vashon and Bainbridge, and even if the users did pay more than 17% of the operating costs (less than that this year, since the price of diesel has gone up 50%), it would seem that these things would be difficult for any environmentalist to defend, based solely on their carbon footprint.
And before you tell me that the ferries COULD use biodiesel, I’ll tell you that…maybe so, but they DON’T.
@36
From the standpoint of MORALITY, the founding fathers wouldn’t have cared for it any more that Hippocrates did.
For one, you don’t know that at all. Two, what the founding fathers did care about was freedom of religion. And with the controlled system we have today for obtaining prescription drugs, allowing a pharmacist to refuse certain drugs to people is a way of imposing morality. Our founding fathers would have found it repulsive.
@36
allowing a pharmacist to refuse certain drugs to people is a way of imposing morality. Our founding fathers would have found it repulsive.
That’s simply ignorant. Our founding fathers clearly indorsed a much closer tolerance of Church and State than we have today. That’s why the Preamble to the Constitution invoked God and why Sunday “Blue Laws” persisted even into the 1960s and 1970s in many states.
Now you don’t have to LIKE that reality, and you don’t have to APPROVE of that reality, but DENYING that reality is as factually incorrect as denying the Holocaust.
@38
An example, from the Blue Laws of Connecticut:
No one shall be a freeman, or give a vote, unless he be converted, and a member in full communion of one of the Churches allowed in this Dominion.
No man shall hold any office, who is not sound in the faith, and faithful to this Dominion; and whoever gives a vote to such a person, shall pay a fine of £1; for a second offence, he shall be disfranchised.
Each freeman shall swear by the blessed God to bear true allegiance to this Dominion, and that Jesus Christ is the only King.
No quaker or dissenter from the established worship of this Dominion shall be allowed to give a vote for the election of Magistrates, or any officer.
No food or lodging shall be afforded to a Quaker, Adamite, or other Heretic.
If any person turns Quaker, he shall be banished, and not suffered to return but upon pain of death.
No Priest shall abide in this Dominion: he shall be banished, and suffer death on his return. Priests may be seized by any one without a warrant.
No one to cross a river, but with an authorized ferryman.
No one shall run on the Sabbath day, or walk in his garden or elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting.
No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep house, cut hair, or shave, on the Sabbath day.
No woman shall kiss her child on the Sabbath or fasting day.
The Sabbath shall begin at sunset on Saturday.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Laws
Lee, get a clue…..
@39
That’s simply ignorant. Our founding fathers clearly indorsed a much closer tolerance of Church and State than we have today. That’s why the Preamble to the Constitution invoked God and why Sunday “Blue Laws” persisted even into the 1960s and 1970s in many states.
The Preamble to the Constitution does not invoke God:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.....nstitution
If you don’t even know that basic fact, how can you possibly think you can be taken seriously on this?
Also, just because some states enacted laws like the Connecticut Blue Laws does not mean that the founding fathers were directly supportive of them. They created a system where states had certain rights to dictate their own affairs. Over time, the clear intent of the founding fathers to separate church and state (please question me on this fact, I’d LOVE to provide examples), extended to making many of the state’s attempts to impose religious doctrine on its citizens unconstitutional as well.
Are you actually going to argue that allowing for pharamacists to refuse to fill prescriptions or to obtain certain medicines isn’t an attempt to impose religion?
@41
Mea culpa, Lee, Mea maxima culpa. I had a brain lib….
It wasn’t the Preamble to the Constitution, it was the Declaration of Independence I was thinking about. You maintain that the founding fathers didn’t believe in religion? Au contraire.
You remember the Declaration of Independence, surely?
Goes something like this……
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —
…….
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Also, just because some states enacted laws like the Connecticut Blue Laws does not mean that the founding fathers were directly supportive of them.
It wasn’t “some” of the states. It was thirteen of them………out of….thirteen?
Also, see below:
Religious Affiliation
of U.S. Founding Fathers # of
Founding
Fathers % of
Founding
Fathers
Episcopalian/Anglican 88 54.7%
Presbyterian 30 18.6%
Congregationalist 27 16.8%
Quaker 7 4.3%
Dutch Reformed/German Reformed 6 3.7%
Lutheran 5 3.1%
Catholic 3 1.9%
Huguenot 3 1.9%
Unitarian 3 1.9%
Methodist 2 1.2%
Calvinist 1 0.6%
TOTAL 204
http://www.adherents.com/gov/F.....igion.html
An excerpt:
The signers of the Declaration of Independence were a profoundly intelligent, religious and ethically-minded group. Four of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were current or former full-time preachers, and many more were the sons of clergymen. Other professions held by signers include lawyers, merchants, doctors and educators. These individuals, too, were for the most part active churchgoers and many contributed significantly to their churches both with contributions as well as their service as lay leaders. The signers were members of religious denominations at a rate that was significantly higher than average for the American Colonies during the late 1700s.
Are you actually going to argue that allowing for pharamacists to refuse to fill prescriptions or to obtain certain medicines isn’t an attempt to impose religion?
It’s a civil rights issue, among other things. The Board of Pharmacy, after being threatened by the gov, is attempting to compel individuals to perform an act that they believe to be improper, and that throughout most of the history of both medicine and pharmacy was considered improper. They are stating that the Board has no right to compel that behavior. I guess the courts will decide.
But if indeed the courts CAN compel that behavior, I believe it would still be discriminatory to compel the pharmacists to provide this service when no physician is compelled to provide an abortion, since physicians have exactly the same sort of state-sponsored quasi-monopoly enjoyed by pharmacists.
Hey, If the state wants to go and just provide the contraception at the state liquor stores, I have no problem with that. They ought to be good for something besides driving up the price of booze. But to COMPEL a pharmacist to do something he/she believes to be morally wrong? Not unless they do it to everybody, and they show no sign of being ready to do that.
@42
The fact that the Declaration of Independence referenced God means very little. When it came time to determine the backbone of America’s government, God was intentionally left out. And there’s a very good reason for that. Our founding fathers believed very strongly that religion and the state should be separate from each other.
@43
It’s a civil rights issue, among other things. The Board of Pharmacy, after being threatened by the gov, is attempting to compel individuals to perform an act that they believe to be improper, and that throughout most of the history of both medicine and pharmacy was considered improper.
You’re right, it is a civil rights issue, but you’re arguing that we should go back to a time in history where the civil rights of women weren’t protected. Aborting fetuses wasn’t outlawed in olden times to protect women, it was outlawed because women had no rights. If protecting the fetus was the main motivation, then why are there stories of women who commit adultery being stoned to death in the Bible?
They are stating that the Board has no right to compel that behavior. I guess the courts will decide.
What we’re dealing with is no different than an ER doctor refusing to treat a patient because he’s a certain religion or race. If you decide to fulfill the role of caregiver in our society, it is very clearly in the state’s interest to establish basic rules for that role so that people’s rights aren’t violated.
But if indeed the courts CAN compel that behavior, I believe it would still be discriminatory to compel the pharmacists to provide this service when no physician is compelled to provide an abortion, since physicians have exactly the same sort of state-sponsored quasi-monopoly enjoyed by pharmacists.
Are you really unable to see the difference there? A person who goes to a pharmacy expects to have what pharmacies normally have. But a person doesn’t walk into a random doctor’s office and says, “Hey I want an abortion!”
Hey, If the state wants to go and just provide the contraception at the state liquor stores, I have no problem with that. They ought to be good for something besides driving up the price of booze. But to COMPEL a pharmacist to do something he/she believes to be morally wrong? Not unless they do it to everybody, and they show no sign of being ready to do that.
I actually agree that pharmacies should not inject any moral decisions on a customer (but they actually can in the name of protecting their health). I disagree with this, and it’s a whole different discussion. Anyone who serves in the function of providing a public need should not be allowed to impose their religion in any way.
Are you really unable to see the difference there? A person who goes to a pharmacy expects to have what pharmacies normally have. But a person doesn’t walk into a random doctor’s office and says, “Hey I want an abortion!”
But why not? It’s a simple procedure…one that anyone licensed to practice “Medicine and Surgery,” should be able to do.
But it IS a civil rights issue. The state government licenses a lot of things besides health care. It even issues licenses to individuals allowing them to perform weddings. Is everyone with a state issued license therefore required to give up any other rights they might have?
I disagree with this, and it’s a whole different discussion. Anyone who serves in the function of providing a public need should not be allowed to impose their religion in any way.
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
@45
But why not? It’s a simple procedure…one that anyone licensed to practice “Medicine and Surgery,” should be able to do.
But it’s not an emergency in the same way that certain types of immediate-need birth control can be an emergency. An abortion is an elected procedure that can be planned out in advance. You’re comparing apples and oranges.
But it IS a civil rights issue. The state government licenses a lot of things besides health care. It even issues licenses to individuals allowing them to perform weddings.
Sure, but there’s no comparable situation. You’re still comparing apples to oranges. Getting married is not an emergency where the licensed government proxy’s moral objections can violate your civil rights.
Is everyone with a state issued license therefore required to give up any other rights they might have?
Only if there’s a potential for them to use that power to endorse a particular religious belief in a way that violates a person’s rights. Are you getting this now?
@46
Sorry, but if my religion says that I’m allowed to kill people, the government can restrict my freedom of religion.
But it’s not an emergency in the same way that certain types of immediate-need birth control can be an emergency
If it’s a rape it’s an emergency, and any ER can handle it. If it’s poor planning, it’s just poor planning. The rights of the pharmacist ought not to be affected by the poor planning of someone who had adequate opportunity to avoid the situation by other means and neglected to do so. Birth control pills have been available for fifty years. Time women took responsibility for using them.
An abortion is an elected procedure that can be planned out in advance. You’re comparing apples and oranges.
Indeed. If you are planning on having sex, there are a host of other options available to you besides the morning after pill.
Sure, but there’s no comparable situation.
Nonsense. They are ALL comparable.
Only if there’s a potential for them to use that power to endorse a particular religious belief in a way that violates a person’s rights. Are you getting this now?
Only that you are irrational. If I were to maintain that I have a MORAL but not religious belief that I shouldn’t do something that would be alright, but if I maintain that I have a religious reason for not doing something, that wouldn’t be? That flies directly in the face of the First Amendment.
Sorry, but if my religion says that I’m allowed to kill people, the government can restrict my freedom of religion.
But who is being killed by a pharmacist’s refusal to provide the morning after pill. NOW THAT was truly apples and oranges.
THE STATE BOARD OF PHARMACY HAS NO RIGHT TO RESTRICT THE PRACTICE OF ANY PHARMACIST BASED UPON THEIR REFUSAL TO PROVIDE ANY SERVICE. There are all sorts of pharmacies, and ALL restrict their services in some ways. Some provide hyperalimentation and IV services, some do not. Some are compounding pharmacies, most are not. Some stock HIV medications, others do not. The state board of pharmacy didn’t want this battle, because they knew they’d lose it in the courts. Gregoire bullied them into taking it, and it will eventually be in the courts. And the courts, no doubt, will wind up slapping the State Board (and Gregoire) down, the same as they slapped the Seattle School board down for trying to use race to determine what high schools kids could attend.
But it will be interesting to see some pharmacist get rich on punitive damages when he/she gets slapped down by the board for refusing to provide plan B.
@48
If it’s a rape it’s an emergency, and any ER can handle it.
If that were the case, then yeah, I’d agree with you. But it’s not. The ER would tell them to go to a pharmacy. You’re also ignoring the situation where someone is in a rural area and could be shut out of all available outlets.
Indeed. If you are planning on having sex, there are a host of other options available to you besides the morning after pill.
Again, irrelevant if we’re talking about someone who didn’t choose to have sex.
Only that you are irrational. If I were to maintain that I have a MORAL but not religious belief that I shouldn’t do something that would be alright, but if I maintain that I have a religious reason for not doing something, that wouldn’t be? That flies directly in the face of the First Amendment.
No, you’re completely missing the point. Someone’s refusal to dispense a prescription is not a moral choice that one makes for oneself, it’s a moral choice that they’re making for someone else. That, in and of itself, would not be a legal issue UNLESS the person attempting to make the moral choice for someone else is a government proxy. And because we have a very tightly regulated system for dispensing drugs in this country, a pharmacist should absolutely be considered a government proxy.
But who is being killed by a pharmacist’s refusal to provide the morning after pill. NOW THAT was truly apples and oranges.
I used an extreme example, but it obviously works for any type of violation of another person’s rights.
THE STATE BOARD OF PHARMACY HAS NO RIGHT TO RESTRICT THE PRACTICE OF ANY PHARMACIST BASED UPON THEIR REFUSAL TO PROVIDE ANY SERVICE.
So a pharmacist can refuse to fill prescriptions for homosexuals?
@48
There are all sorts of pharmacies, and ALL restrict their services in some ways. Some provide hyperalimentation and IV services, some do not. Some are compounding pharmacies, most are not. Some stock HIV medications, others do not. The state board of pharmacy didn’t want this battle, because they knew they’d lose it in the courts. Gregoire bullied them into taking it, and it will eventually be in the courts. And the courts, no doubt, will wind up slapping the State Board (and Gregoire) down, the same as they slapped the Seattle School board down for trying to use race to determine what high schools kids could attend.
I didn’t have time to finish out my last comment before heading out to pick up some last minute T-Giving items, but I want to clarify the difference here. I have no problem with pharmacies refusing to fill certain prescriptions for various reasons (there’s a lot about how we obtain various drugs that I would change in this country). But if this refusal makes it difficult or impossible for people to deal with an emergency situation, then I believe the state has a right to step in. If judges decide differently, I believe it’s an injustice. Businesses have a right to sell what they want to sell, but the state also has a right to ensure that the public is protected from people who have a desire to impose their religion on others through state regulated entities.