Pan B is not an abortifacient, even if that inconvenient fact destroys the entire premise of Joe Connelly’s column this morning. While it’s great fun to attack liberals for hypocrisy, it’s actually more fun if it’s actually true.
If I were a pharmacist I would, as a matter of conscience, require men getting erectile dysfunction medications to present a marriage license and an affidavit from their wife acknowledging approval. That would pretty much stop this endless, phony controversy, which at its core represents the desire of religious extremists to subjugate women. If contraception is so evil, why are medically created erections so damn holy? Huh?
This is an excellent example of how regulations need to be written in a practical, careful and balanced manner, since there can be severe medical consequences if a woman is wrong about when intercourse happened or is lying about it. Pharmacists are not doling out chicklets back there, so it might be wise to avoid “make them give it out or else” regulations as well.
We’re supposed to be at the end of the attacks on science, but guess not. It has been cold this winter, so there’s another column that could be written.
Jon, you ask: “If contraception is so evil, why are medically created erections so damn holy? Huh?”
Well, isn’t it rather simple? One enables conception and the other disables conception. Reasonable minds can disagree on the Plan B issue (I believe pharmacists should dispense prescriptions, not pass moral judgment), but this poorly thought out rhetorical question of yours certainly settles nothing.
Isn’t religious warfare fun? If you stupid humans didn’t have this to fight over, you might expend your energies on screwing up something that’s actually important, such as what to replace the Alaska Way Viaduct with.
Jon you are too damn funny.
There is no equation here between erectile dysfunction and abortion except in that puny libtard mind.
Maybe you experienced priapism trying to be black in bed?
There’s some weird, perhaps unintended implication in Jon’s thesis that heterosexual coitus inherently “subjugates women”.
That being said, the “partnership for a hornier America” efforts by the drug companies to seek massive profits by helping old guys pop a woody seems, in view of our present woes over health care, to be a sad misapplication of resources.
ArtFart: Maybe Jon worships at the Gloria Steinem altar.
What is even worse is that many insurance plans cover erectile dysfunction drugs but do not cover contraception.
And Jon, You are right about plan B not being an abortifacient. Having taught and educated pharmacists, they are supposed to give out the drugs that are prescribed by a physician. Nowhere in the job description does it say that they should give their own moral advice, period.
If they don’t want to give out the drugs that are prescribed, then they should quit being a pharmacist. No one forced them into pharmacy and they knew the rules when they got the degree.
ArtFart:
Why are there articles discussing married couples who have regular sex also have lower blood pressure, stress and depression levels in various journals?
The use of erectile enhancement products keep hope alive.
To equate this with anything around abortion is folly.
Now I agree with correctnotright around contraception. Some married couples are not equipped to have children at a certain time in their relationship and need that aid to inhibit procreation. It should be covered.
But just think correctnotright, what are your thoughts on gay men using erectile dysfunction drugs?
Just axking.
Conservative are for less government interference in private citizens’ lives.
Plan B is a contraceptive that blocks conception. It does not induce abortion.
There is nothing in Jon’s post about abortion.
Why is it that conservatives cannot discuss contraception?
SS @ 8
By keeping those private citizens from making their own medical decisions.
Oh, an unmarried people have sex too, quite legally as it happens.
#8
They may be in theory, but not in practice. In general, they seem to want less government corporate regulation, but are perfectly willing to restrict individual liberties, like the patriot act, tort reform, bans on gay marriage and access to health care
@8,10,11,12, Except for most of the time when they’re not.
SS @ 13
Ah, I get it. Sometimes conservatives are for MORE interference and sometimes they are for LESS interference, so you just summarized those facts for us by stating that they are for less. Thanks.
BTW, #11 has nothing to do with your post.
In your world, conscience is apparently something selective — with you as the one who gets to do the selecting.
…the pharmacist should not presume the right to press personal views on a customer…
seems simple enough to me.
Pan B is not an abortifacient, even if that inconvenient fact …
DeVore, classic red herring here.
Whether Plan B causes an “abortion” is entirely, absolutely, completely, irrelevant. What matters is that Plan B can, and often does, cause the destruction of a living, growing, unique, and complete organism of species homo sapiens by preventing its implantation in the womb.
This is the reason why abortion is opposed, and it is the reason why Plan B is opposed.
So this is not an “inconvenient” fact, it is an irrelevant one. And that you do not recognize this obvious truth shows you really haven’t even taken the smallest amount of time to really understand why the “other side” thinks differently from you on this issue.
Either that, or you just have no clue how Plan B actually works. Evidence to support this hypothesis follows:
If contraception is so evil, why are medically created erections so damn holy?
If Plan B were merely about preventing conception, there would be no major issue. But it is not: it prevents both conception AND implantation. Preventing conception is accepted as legitimate by most people. Preventing implantation is very controversial.
You are trying to argue morals from definitions: since by your definition, this is “contraception” and not “abortion” and “pregnancy” has not begun until “implantation” has completed … there’s no issue!
But that’s obviously nonsense. What matters is what is actually going on, not what words you use to describe it. And the fact is that this is a living, growing, unique, and complete human organism.
Preventing implantation is different from what we normally think of as contraception — preventing fertilization — because the egg and the sperm are not living, growing, unique, and complete human organisms. They are small pieces of human organisms. But once fertilization occurs and cell division begins, the human organism comes into existence, and many of us believe it is a crime to kill it, no matter what dictionaries you try to hide behind.
We’re supposed to be at the end of the attacks on science, but guess not.
Exactly: as long as people like you keep ignoring obvious medical facts about the nature of the life inside the mother, we have a long way to go before these attacks on science are concluded.
We can disagree on whether this blastocyst has, or deserves, rights. But you are either ignoring the scientific fact that the blastocyst actually is a new homo sapiens, or you are ignoring the fact that Plan B prevents implantation.
17 The Catholic Church has long opposed artificial birth control (i. e. “the pill”) specifically because it may at least partly work by depriving concepti of a receptive uterine lining to implant to.
Curiously enough, the Protestant Christian right, which has to a degree seized the lead in militant opposition to abortion, seems considerably less concerned with this. My personal take on this is that many Protestants are more concerned with termination of pregnancy as facilitating sexual “immorality” in general than they are about defending the viability of every complete set of human genes.
Typical Republican bullshit: Anti-woman, anti-sex, anti-freedom.
In other words, anti-American.
@18:
The Catholic Church has long opposed artificial birth control (i. e. “the pill”) specifically because it may at least partly work by depriving concepti of a receptive uterine lining to implant to.
In part, yes.
Curiously enough, the Protestant Christian right, which has to a degree seized the lead in militant opposition to abortion, seems considerably less concerned with this.
Yes, because this can be controlled by the user: for example, don’t engage in sexual activity until you know that you’ve stopped ovulating.
My personal take on this is …
Complete crap.
@19:
Typical HA bullshit: no arguments, no evidence, no facts, just ad hominem.
Indeed, saying that the pro-life argument is anti-liberty is, in point of fact, at BEST a question-begging fallacy. Saying it is anti-woman is at best a red herring fallacy. And saying it is anti-sex is just sad. Did you miss the memo that Republicans have better sex than Democrats? :-)
I am a pharmacist, and I remember when I was in school some older pharmacists told me about “back in the day” when it was in fact okay to refuse to dispense birth control pills to an unmarried woman! Hard to imagine, but true.
When I worked in the drug information center at a prestigious university, I was once asked to help the state determine the “right” way to perform lethal injections. They wanted to stop using the electric chair and had never done lethal injection before. I am opposed to the death penalty and this was a real moral quandary for me. If I provided the information, was I complicit in the inmate’s death?
I decided that it was in fact my job to provide the information. I can work in my spare time to change the laws regarding the death penalty, but that is separate from my obligation to perform my job as a pharmacist, a profession that is licensed by the state, a secular entity. The state was going to put this person to death one way or the other; the least I could do was try to make it as humane as possible. I was in a unique position to provide information to someone who needed it, even though I didn’t agree with what would be done with that information. But what they were going to do with that information was perfectly legal at that time, no matter my belief system.
I see the plan B situation in the same way. A pharmacist can vote for pro-life legislators, work in his spare time to change the laws of the land, but he cannot deny a safe and effective medication to a patient who presents a valid prescription.
Bottom line: the practice of medicine is a secular activity and should not be impeded by someone else’s religious beliefs.
“reasonable” @22:
You do not back up your opinion with anything other than the fact that it is your opinion. I, and many pharmacists, disagree with you.
Further, you make some logical errors. Most notable is one that most people seem to make on your side of the issue: “the practice of medicine is a secular activity and should not be impeded by someone else’s religious beliefs.” First, we have laws protecting the rights of doctors to not perform certain procedures (in certain situations) they disagree with; and further, what isn’t a secular activity?
What about a tattoo parlor that refuses to give someone a tattoo of a swastika? What about a vegan food store that refuses to stock milk, even though my doctor told me I need milk for my diet?
What makes pharmacists special? The answer is, of course: nothing. And it’s odd you would so willingly give up your rights as a pharmacist for no reason. Choosing to dispense whatever someone wishes is one thing, but choosing to delegate that choice to government is just bizarre.
The other logical error you made is in the comparison of helping someone who was going to die, die humanely, to the issue of killing a life inside the mother. They are obviously very different.
Mental exercise: imagine the government makes it legal to kill young children, between three and eight years old, if no one wants them. Those are the ages where it can become very hard to find adopted parents, and yet still young enough that they are not able to live on their own. And state budgets being what they are …
Executioners don’t actually do the killing, the orphanages do, so the orphanage staff gets their government document allowing them to procure the pills to make it happen.
Would you fill that prescription, if you knew what it was for?
I doubt your answer would be the same as it was for the execution question.
@4 Oh hell, pills never did anybody any good anyway, so who cares what drug companies do with themselves?
@7 “Why are there articles discussing married couples who have regular sex also have lower blood pressure, stress and depression levels in various journals?”
Well, if that’s the case, when we Democrats get done fucking you Republicans, you’re going to be one healthy bunch of people.
23 Pudge,
The comparison Reasonable made had nothing to do with “helping someone to die”. It was about assisting the state in executing a few people convicted of certain horrendous crimes. The Catholic teaching on “defending human life”, in fact, applies at least in principle to the lives of felons as well as fetuses. His moral decision was that his job requires him to perform his job as the law defines it, and to work to change the law on his own time. That says a pharmacist shouldn’t play politics at the drug counter any more, in fact, than a priest should play politics at the communion rail.
Pudge, let’s use some real examples and not hyperbole. I would never expect to buy milk at a vegan grocery store, so that is completely irrelevant. And discussing the hypotheticals of state-sanctioned executions of toddlers doesn’t even warrant a response.
But how about this: A Catholic pharmacist refuses to dispense oral contraceptives to anyone, ever. According to their religion, birth control is not allowed, even for married people. So is that okay? What about refusing to fill a Viagra prescription for an unmarried man because you don’t believe in sex outside of marriage?
The one thing I do agree with you on is this: the state taking the life of a prisoner is indeed quite different from a woman wanting to prevent ovulation and prevent the formation of a new life. One is murder, the other is not.
Art @26:
The comparison Reasonable made had nothing to do with “helping someone to die”.
So you agree with me that their comparison to providing Plan B is ridiculous.
His moral decision was that his job requires him to perform his job as the law defines it, and to work to change the law on his own time.
So? We are saying the law should allow people to NOT provide Plan B.
That says a pharmacist shouldn’t play politics at the drug counter any more
That you think not wanting to provide a pill designed to terminate a living human organism is “playing politics” is sad.
Should a vegetarian cashier at Safeway have the right not to sell me eggs, milk and meat? If so, should these cashiers each have to wear a sign indicating what foods they refuse to sell to spare patrons the bother of waiting in line?
Steve:
Absolutely, of course they should have that right. They have that right now, and no one has proposed taking it away from them.
And Safeway has the right to fire cashiers for that, of course.
We should differentiate here between the right of the individual and the right of the employer. The individual should absolutely have the right to refuse to sell something, and the employer should absolutely have the right to direct their employees to sell or not sell it.
Some people advocate taking away the employer’s right to determine policy for their own business, by allowing individual pharmacists to make their own judgments. So a pharmacy could say “you must fill prescriptions for Plan B,” but individual pharmacists could ignore that, and the pharmacy could not take action against its employees.
I am not saying that: the employee can choose as he wishes, but the employer gets to make policy, and fire the employee for violating that policy.
It’s called liberty. Love it! Live it!
The most amazing thing to me is that people tell me, “just because you think life begins at conception, doesn’t mean you can force it on me” by making abortion illegal, and then follow it up with, “just because you think life begins at conception, doesn’t mean I can’t force it on you” by requiring you to aid them in facilitating the death of the new life.
Freedom of choice should apply to the pharmacy, too.
@15, to whom are you directing that question?
“A contrarian idea took hold in my mind: Show, for once, that a Seattle newspaper scribe can write a column sympathetic to the pro-life viewpoint”.
Did you select this topic to prove a point, or because you believe in this instance of a pro-life viewpoint? And if you do believe in just this instance (pharmacists not dispensing) then aren’t you cherry picking for your conscience just to prove a point?
@31:
This is not about the pro-life viewpoint, it is about defending the rights of people who HOLD the pro-life viewpoint. Two very different things.
So Pudge @30, I’m so confused. Are you saying that pharmacy owners have a right to decide what to sell and what not to sell? Unfortunately, that’s not entirely true.
State law says that pharmacies must stock drugs that are used by the population it serves (or basically something to that affect), so an employer’s hand are tied right there as far as whether or not he allows his pharmacy staff to exercise their consciences. If the population uses this drug, it must be stocked as best as is reasonably possible, and the employer cannot simply refuse to fill the prescriptions.
Nuremberg
I am afraid I side with Joel on this one. The principle of conscience was the vary basis for the trials at Nuremberg. “Iwas just following orders<‘ should never trump moral convictions.
There is one obvious exception to this rule .. that is the right of each of us to whatever the State says is legal. If WAstate says plan B is legal, no pharmacist has the right to make it illegal. That, however, could only happen in the case there was not a readily available alternative vendor.
The analogy to Viagra actually strikes me as totally fair but misused by John. If a phamacist knows his customer is unmarried, then it ought to be within the pharmacists’s right to send the patient elsewhere.
There is, however, on further issue and that is the rights of the emplyer. Suppose Bartell’s loses business because its emplyee chooses to not sell Viagra? It seems to em that this is very much a basis for firing the person.
Morality does have consequences.
@33
answering for pudge,
No, the pharmacy MUST stock whatever it is licensed for. BUT, it also has the right to choose NOT to employ someone who refuses to sell its legal goods.
“Reasonable” @33:
So Pudge @30, I’m so confused. Are you saying that pharmacy owners have a right to decide what to sell and what not to sell?
As long as something is legal for them to sell, of course.
State law says that pharmacies must stock drugs that are used by the population it serves
Unfortunately, yes, we already have various encroachments on the liberty of the owners of pharmacies. It’s a damned shame.
We have laws on the books that require gas stations to sell gas to everyone that can pay for it too.
Damn shame too I suppose.
Should a pharmacist have the right to know the marriage status of their customers in order to determine whether or not any particular sale of viagra is against their values?
Sorry pudgefacker, but the only bullshit on this website comes from you and your ilk.
So why do you hate freedom?
So why do you hate America?
@17: Pudge is an idiot. Pudge you are simply out of your league in biology (or most any other topic, being a certified nitwit).
Millions of fertilized eggs never implant naturally – are you complaining about all those fertilized eggs that never implant that are potential homo sapians and are naturally “flushed down the toilet”?
The pill (estrogen and preogesterone) or estrogen only work the exact same way (they affect both the ability to ovulate and the ability to implant) and plan B is basically the pill – would you outlaw the pill?
Here is the scenario – a rape victim is prescribed plan B and goes to the only local Pharmacy within 30 miles and has no car and noone to help. She is turned away….because the idiot pharmacist is making some kind of inaccurate and selfish moral judgement.
Yup – that is truly justifiable. Only an idiot like Pudge would be arguing for that.
@ 37.
Really? I have seen gas stations refuse to pump gas when a customer was drunk or even obnoxious.
@40 correct
Any law will fail tests at some extreme. YOU have raised one and it is reasonable to imagine that a pharmacy that employed someone who would refuse to sell the drug woukld lose its liscence.
Having tyhe liscence, however, ought not to be the basis for enforcing state morality on the employee.
In your scenario, the emplyer would be require the pharmacist to state whether she or he had any moral problems dispensing all drugs the State requires a licensee to sell. If the answer were yse and if the pharmacy is as isolated as tyou state, it would seem to me to be required that the pharmacy move the pahrmacist to a less critical job, ensure that abackup was available, or fire his righteous ass.
As for an independent, owner operated pharmacy, the owner would be required by the law to carry and sell the drug.
Why does this not work?
BA @37:
We have laws on the books that require gas stations to sell gas to everyone that can pay for it too.
You surely realize that’s completely different, right? I am talking about not selling a certain item to anyone. You are talking about selectively not selling a certain item to certain people.
Yawn @40:
Millions of fertilized eggs never implant naturally
And millions of people die of natural causes every day. Does that mean we should have no laws against manslaughter and murder? Don’t be stupid. Please.
The pill (estrogen and preogesterone) or estrogen only work the exact same way
Except that when taken properly, the pill does not prevent implantation, because it prevents ovulation. Plan B, given that it is taken after sex, often cannot prevent ovulation.
would you outlaw the pill?
Again: please don’t be stupid. I never said a thing about outlawing Plan B. However, that said, yes, absolutely I do believe pharmacies can choose to not provide “the pill.” Or condoms. Or IUDs. Or ANY OTHER PRODUCT they object to. It’s called Liberty.
a rape victim is prescribed plan B and goes to the only local Pharmacy within 30 miles and has no car and noone to help. She is turned away…because the idiot pharmacist is making some kind of [reasonable] moral judgement.
Again: please don’t be stupid. A rape victim would get a D&C making Plan B irrelevant, and further, if they DID decide to prescribe Plan B to her, the doctor would have some on hand to give her, since he knows that there’s not a pharmacy within 30 miles of his office/hospital that carries it.
All I can say is I hope Pudge and idiots like him have wives, girlfriends or daughters who need this option and can’t get it. It’s only when something directly impacts a right winger that they decide it’s a good thing.
Bent:
Logical fallacy: no one needs this option.
Are you really that stupid?
Oh my!
Pudge says: “Plan B, given that it is taken after sex, often cannot prevent ovulation.”
How exactly do you think that a woman becomes pregnant? Having sex does not cause ovulation! But, having sex in the days prior to ovulation is a common way to make a baby. Indeed, many pregnancies result from sexual activity that occurs prior to ovulation. Sperm live for several days and if they arrive in the environment even a few days prior to ovulation, those that remain are perfectly capable of creating a zygote when the egg is finally released. Remember too that the egg itself has a shorter period of viability than the sperm, which is why most pregnancies occur when sex is prior to or exactly at the time of ovulation, not in the days after ovulation.
Think about it. This explains why Plan B is not 100% effective – to work, it must prevent ovulation. If a woman has already ovulated, there isn’t much Plan B can do. But, a high dose of a progestin given even in the hours prior to ovulation can prevent the event. There is no scientific data to support the hypothesis that Plan B prevents implantation. Seriously – it’s speculation that has been repeated often enough that many believe it’s true.
Most women do not know the precise moment of ovulation. If a condom breaks or they are raped sometime mid-cycle, there is a good chance that taking Plan B ASAP can prevent ovulation. This is clearly a drug to use when you are trying to *prevent* a pregnancy, not end one.
If you want to discuss abortifacients, then focus on mifepristone, but not Plan B.
“Reasonable” @46:
Having sex does not cause ovulation
And most of your argument is completely irrelevant. I don’t even know what point you think you’re trying to make. I know very well how ovulation and fertilization work; explaining it might make you feel better, but it doesn’t actually argue against anything I’ve said.
If a woman has already ovulated, there isn’t much Plan B can do.
According to the FDA, it might prevent both fertilization and implantation.
There is no scientific data to support the hypothesis that Plan B prevents implantation.
Actually, yeah, there is. There’s no PROOF that it does, but there’s data to support the hypothesis, based on what the drug does to the uterus lining.
And given that this is a reasonable hypothesis, and given that many people believe in the “first, do no harm” credo … do I really have to spell this out for you?
This is clearly a drug to use when you are trying to *prevent* a pregnancy, not end one.
You keep saying this as though you have a point. You don’t. Yes, the purpose is to prevent the fertilization from ever happening. But if it DOES happen, it MIGHT prevent implantation.
Let’s use your logic in another context. I shoot guns at shooting ranges. The range is designed to shoot targets, not people. But if I do not know there is no person there, then you know what? I could shoot a person. I might, I might not. So I make sure there’s no person there, or I trust the person running the range to make sure. And if no one can make sure, then I don’t fire my gun.
Your logic says I should just fire, because there’s no evidence I will shoot anyone.
I am similarly against Plan B because I cannot be sure that there’s no fertilized egg present, and if there is, the drug might destroy it.
This is not hard to figure out.
If you want to discuss abortifacients …
No, I am discussing a drug which when taken properly could result in the destruction of a fertilized egg. I don’t care how you choose to label it.
If I owned a pharmacy I would not give out Viagara and other such drugs. Yes, it is for religious reasons. I would also not give other drugs. To me this is about the right of the indvidual store owner. I see it as the same as a sporting goods store not wanting to sell guns or a christian book store not wanting to sell copies of the koran.