Pharmacists for Jesus

[charles cure]

this was the subject of a radio call in show i heard on NPR this morning. they basically had two "experts" on debating whether it was ok or not for pharmacists and other health care professionals to refuse to give emergency contraception (or regular contraception for that matter) to women because they had a moral objection to it. it was an interesting debate, so lets see how the sciforums people feel about it.

is the patient's right to care greater than some implied right of a health care professional to express their moral objections to abortion or contraception through denial of care? should these people be fired because they are not doing their jobs properly? should efforts be made on the part of the industry to accomodate their beliefs?

i'll go first. i think that if you are a health care professional, whether pharmacist, nurse...etc, whatever, it is your job to give people the care and medication that they need, and if you cannot fulfill the demands of the job then you should go into a different field. however, if it is convenient for the employer to accomodate a person with these objections, i believe they should, provided that the employee voices their objection prior to getting a job with that particular company, and with the caveat that they may not lecture or proseletyze the patient who is there to get the medication, and that they direct them to an employee who can help the patient without objection. i also think that any hospital, catholic, protestant, jewish, or otherwise that receives taxpayer funds should be required to dispense both types of contraception or face having their public funds withheld. i do not pay taxes so that people can be denied access to care by some holy rollers. that said, i think it is a ridiculous and unrealistic thing that these people want, and that they are really basically making a big deal out of this issue so they can stir the chrisitan right into a further frenzy, resulting in protests at pharmacies and boycotts and all kinds of other trash.

lets go.

 

[spidergoat]

I agree. If your job is to dispense drugs, and you don't do it, you should be fired and your license revoked.

What I don't understand is why anti-choice people are also anti-contraception. Are they concerned about the life of the sperm?

 

[The Devil Inside]

eeeeeveryyyy sperrrm is saaacred!!!!
you KNEW that was coming.

 

[charles cure]

eeeeeveryyyy sperrrm is saaacred!!!!
you KNEW that was coming.

theres something i could agree with. dont waste the little fellas, you never know when you'll run out.

 

[geeser]

I agree. If your job is to dispense drugs, and you don't do it, you should be fired and your license revoked.

What I don't understand is why anti-choice people are also anti-contraception. Are they concerned about the life of the sperm?

yes, we are all mass murderers. no more hand shandys, five fingered shuffles, let alone safe sex.
lol.

 

[Theoryofrelativity]

maybe you mean this is what is being objected to:

quoted from web

"RU-486, also known as the French abortion pill, is a completely different drug from the birth control pills used for emergency contraception. RU-486 (mifepristone) belongs to a new class of drugs known as antiprogestins, and has been approved in the United States under the brand name Mifeprex.

Mifepristone is approved for use in early abortions in the United States, France, Sweden, United Kingdom, China, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Tunisia, South Africa, India, Greece and Taiwan. At a far lower dose, it has also proved effective for emergency contraception, but it is available for EC only in China."

If this is what pharamcists are objecting to, they are objecting to being the hand that assists destroying a 'life'. Which may not have been something they anticipated when they joined the proffession, as it wouldn't have been available over the counter then. Its like asking Gp's to perform abortions. They joined medicine to save and preserve life not destroy it. Hence objections.

 

[Theoryofrelativity]

Meanhwile I worked with a Gp who was phobic to blood! She could not assist in injections or any emergency care...so go figure?

 

[Theoryofrelativity]

I agree. If your job is to dispense drugs, and you don't do it, you should be fired and your license revoked.

What I don't understand is why anti-choice people are also anti-contraception. Are they concerned about the life of the sperm?

Catholisism is anti contraception and anti abortion, so contraceptives and anti abortion pills , etc etc etc are out! I think as medicine advances, proffessionals may be required to do many things they never anticpated when joining medicine so it is unfair to just say 'you're fired' if they don't agree to every new 'controversial' change that comes their way. There are shortages of these type of proffessionals as it is without making more restrictions.

 

[charles cure]

maybe you mean this is what is being objected to:

quoted from web

"RU-486, also known as the French abortion pill, is a completely different drug from the birth control pills used for emergency contraception. RU-486 (mifepristone) belongs to a new class of drugs known as antiprogestins, and has been approved in the United States under the brand name Mifeprex.

Mifepristone is approved for use in early abortions in the United States, France, Sweden, United Kingdom, China, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Tunisia, South Africa, India, Greece and Taiwan. At a far lower dose, it has also proved effective for emergency contraception, but it is available for EC only in China."

If this is what pharamcists are objecting to, they are objecting to being the hand that assists destroying a 'life'. Which may not have been something they anticipated when they joined the proffession, as it wouldn't have been available over the counter then. Its like asking Gp's to perform abortions. They joined medicine to save and preserve life not destroy it. Hence objections.

no, they are objecting to providing the "morning after pill" and in some cases they are objecting to the distribution of basic birth control pills. they are doing so on the basis that these things basically amount to abortion and that they dont want to have a hand in destroying a life. there was an example given by one of the people on the talk show i was listening to of a pharmacist in wisconsin who wouldnt fill a woman's prescription for birth control and refused to tranfer the prescription to another pharmacy where she could get it filled. she had to get the police to come and make him do it. i think that guy should be fired for not doing his job. if you get into the medical/health care field knowing that you have objections to certain actions you may be required to perform in your job, then the job is not for you and you should leave the field and do a different job that you dont have moral objections to.

 

[charles cure]

Catholisism is anti contraception and anti abortion, so contraceptives and anti abortion pills , etc etc etc are out! I think as medicine advances, proffessionals may be required to do many things they never anticpated when joining medicine so it is unfair to just say 'you're fired' if they don't agree to every new 'controversial' change that comes their way. There are shortages of these type of proffessionals as it is without making more restrictions.

they should be fired because they cannot perform their job as required by their emplyer. think about how ridiculous you sound. say that i was an EMT called to the scene of a violent crime because some people had been injured. say it was a rape and that as an EMT i was required to treat both the victim and the perpetrator for injuries. suppose then that i refused to treat the perpetrator of the crime because i objected to the act of rape. i would be fired for not doing my job. the company's right to provide care and service that people want and need trumps the right of some self-righteous employess who refuse to do their jobs because of some religious objection.

 

[Theoryofrelativity]

well I agree this pharmacist has behaved inappropriatly and should have at least referred her to someone else. Meanwhile if the pharmacist qualified before the morning after pill existed, you can't expect him not to enter the proffession because of something he never knew existed?? Thats just nonsense. This example would never happen in Uk
but they do say '.....only in America.........'

News clip:

"Druggists refuse to give out pill
By Charisse Jones, USA TODAY
For a year, Julee Lacey stopped in a CVS pharmacy near her home in a Fort Worth suburb to get refills of her birth-control pills. Then one day last March, the pharmacist refused to fill Lacey's prescription because she did not believe in birth control.

Gracy Marshall, left, and Gloria Benavides protest in front of Eckerd's in February in Denton, Texas.
Al Key, The Record-Chronicle

"I was shocked," says Lacey, 33, who was not able to get her prescription until the next day and missed taking one of her pills. "Their job is not to regulate what people take or do. It's just to fill the prescription that was ordered by my physician."

Some pharmacists, however, disagree and refuse on moral grounds to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. And states from Rhode Island to Washington have proposed laws that would protect such decisions.

Mississippi enacted a sweeping statute that went into effect in July that allows health care providers, including pharmacists, to not participate in procedures that go against their conscience. South Dakota and Arkansas already had laws that protect a pharmacist's right to refuse to dispense medicines. Ten other states considered similar bills this year.

The American Pharmacists Association, with 50,000 members, has a policy that says druggists can refuse to fill prescriptions if they object on moral grounds, but they must make arrangements so a patient can still get the pills. Yet some pharmacists have refused to hand the prescription to another druggist to fill.

In Madison, Wis., a pharmacist faces possible disciplinary action by the state pharmacy board for refusing to transfer a woman's prescription for birth-control pills to another druggist or to give the slip back to her. He would not refill it because of his religious views.

Some advocates for women's reproductive rights are worried that such actions by pharmacists and legislatures are gaining momentum.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a provision in September that would block federal funds from local, state and federal authorities if they make health care workers perform, pay for or make referrals for abortions.

"We have always understood that the battles about abortion were just the tip of a larger ideological iceberg, and that it's really birth control that they're after also," says Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

"The explosion in the number of legislative initiatives and the number of individuals who are just saying, 'We're not going to fill that prescription for you because we don't believe in it' is astonishing," she said.

Pharmacists have moved to the front of the debate because of such drugs as the "morning-after" pill, which is emergency contraception that can prevent fertilization if taken within 120 hours of unprotected intercourse.

While some pharmacists cite religious reasons for opposing birth control, others believe life begins with fertilization and see hormonal contraceptives, and the morning-after pill in particular, as capable of causing an abortion.

"I refuse to dispense a drug with a significant mechanism to stop human life," says Karen Brauer, president of the 1,500-member Pharmacists for Life International. Brauer was fired in 1996 after she refused to refill a prescription for birth-control pills at a Kmart in the Cincinnati suburb of Delhi Township.

Lacey, of North Richland Hills, Texas, filed a complaint with the Texas Board of Pharmacy after her prescription was refused in March. In February, another Texas pharmacist at an Eckerd drug store in Denton wouldn't give contraceptives to a woman who was said to be a rape victim.

In the Madison case, pharmacist Neil Noesen, 30, after refusing to refill a birth-control prescription, did not transfer it to another pharmacist or return it to the woman. She was able to get her prescription refilled two days later at the same pharmacy, but she missed a pill because of the delay.

She filed a complaint after the incident occurred in the summer of 2002 in Menomonie, Wis. Christopher Klein, spokesman for Wisconsin's Department of Regulation and Licensing, says the issue is that Noesen didn't transfer or return the prescription. A hearing was held in October. The most severe punishment would be revoking Noesen's pharmacist license, but Klein says that is unlikely.

Susan Winckler, spokeswoman and staff counsel for the American Pharmacists Association, says it is rare that pharmacists refuse to fill a prescription for moral reasons. She says it is even less common for a pharmacist to refuse to provide a referral.

"The reality is every one of those instances is one too many," Winckler says. "Our policy supports stepping away but not obstructing."

In the 1970s, because of abortion and sterilization, some states adopted refusal clauses to allow certain health care professionals to opt out of providing those services. The issue re-emerged in the 1990s, says Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive issues.

Sonfield says medical workers, insurers and employers increasingly want the right to refuse certain services because of medical developments, such as the "morning-after" pill, embryonic stem-cell research and assisted suicide.

"The more health care items you have that people feel are controversial, some people are going to object and want to opt out of being a part of that," he says.

In Wisconsin, a petition drive is underway to revive a proposed law that would protect pharmacists who refuse to prescribe drugs they believe could cause an abortion or be used for assisted suicide.

"It just recognizes that pharmacists should not be forced to choose between their consciences and their livelihoods," says Matt Sande of Pro-Life Wisconsin. "They should not be compelled to become parties to abortion."

Also the point I made re Gp's here and abortion, their objections aren't anything religious, its a moral issue and Gp's did not qualify as Doctors so they could KILL babies/fetus's or anything else.

 

[charles cure]

CC nothing you say makes sense, waste of time contributing to your threads, you have zero logic or reason.

wow really? how so? i made my position clear. i think that if you cant do your job then you should be fired, how is that in any way illogical? it may be that its a waste of time for you to contribute to my thread because you have nothing worth saying.

 

[spidergoat]

These backwards dumbfuck RELIGIOUS pharmacists have no place in the modern medical community. period.

 

[charles cure]

The point which u are neatly missing CC is that it may NOT have been part of their job when they qualified! And as my news clip shows, they are premitted by laws in various states to refuse. So they KNOW they are protected before accepting the job. The ones who don't comply properly with the rules ARE fired.

Er lets see, I get a job as an ice cream seller, two yrs into it they tell me part of my job involves putting out house fires, I refuse...I'm fired? yeh very logical argument cc. goodbye.

that doesnt matter, because the medical and helath care field is and has been for many decades an ever-advancing industry in terms of technology and development of new types of drugs. the health care worker undoubtedly knows this when they get the job. normal birth control has been available for many many years now, and the morning after pill isnt anything new either, so your argument here is falling on its face. a good pharmacist understands that it is their job to provide the patients with the medication that they need and that has been prescribed by a doctor. it is not their right or their decision to make about whether or not someone else should use or have access to the medication that has been prescribed to them. how arrogant can you get? and, i'm not saying that laws protecting the pharmacists right to refuse dont exist in certain states, im saying that i think they shouldnt exist, because they place an undue burden on the employer to continue to employ someone who cant do their job in full, and give them the same type of credibility as someone who does do their job properly.
think about it, you cant fire a pharmacist who objects to dispensing birth control or the morning after pill, so you then have to place them on a shift with a pharmacist who will dispense these prescriptions. that means that the company now has to have two pharmacists on hand when they could have only had one. how much sense does that make from an economic cost/benefit standpoint for the pharmacy? not much. so go ahead and deride my logic as crazy, but yours makes even less sense.

 

[charles cure]

Like I said .....only in America, they're YOUR laws

re your crazy logic I was referring to the crap rape argument

they arent my laws, there isnt one in my state, and there is no federal law on the matter, so no, i had no hand in any of that.

and why dont you explain to me exactly how my "rape argument" constitutes crazy logic? or is the extent of any one of your critiques of my arguments amount to little more than calling names and evasion?

 

[charles cure]

no, they are objecting to providing the "morning after pill" and in some cases they are objecting to the distribution of basic birth control pills. they are doing so on the basis that these things basically amount to abortion and that they dont want to have a hand in destroying a life. there was an example given by one of the people on the talk show i was listening to of a pharmacist in wisconsin who wouldnt fill a woman's prescription for birth control and refused to tranfer the prescription to another pharmacy where she could get it filled. she had to get the police to come and make him do it. i think that guy should be fired for not doing his job. if you get into the medical/health care field knowing that you have objections to certain actions you may be required to perform in your job, then the job is not for you and you should leave the field and do a different job that you dont have moral objections to.

you mean this one, in response to whether it was RU-486 or not? how does that fail to address your post? thanks for the substantive response though, the truth is that when challenged, you back down and have no actual way of denying my logic. or maybe you do and just dont post it because you dont want me to follow up to it? hmm?

 

[charles cure]

There was nothing wrong with this reply, I never critisised it, you just let yourself down on the next one you posted, meanwhile reasons for my lack of whitterring on, I am in middle of caring for my kids, doing dinner, changing diapers, checking in here while ay pc to access my buisness's emails, so I have no fear of arguing with you, except the fact you only really have one objective and that is to bash the religious, so all your logic flies out the window then, as you seriously NEED to find something else to do with your time! Bashing religious goes on a lot here and it is sooooooooooo tiresome.

im not bashing the religious, who said that religious people were the only ones who might have a moral objection to birth control? you assume to much. although the objectors are mainly religious, i would support the firing of an atheist who couldn't do their job because they objected to the distribution of contraceptives. my logic is consistent, and if it is at odds with the religious, then so be it, i have bashed no one on this thread, only said that i think it is ridiculous that someone would think that a religious conviction should allow them to become the arbiters of what medication people should get, and i said religious conviction because this entire debate has been framed by religious special interests, and any atheists or ethical humanists objecting to the distribution of medications seem to be in an extreme minority. i love how every time someone challenges the actions of religious people or organizations it all of a sudden morphs automatically into "religion bashing".

i still fail to see how i didnt respond to your other post? do you want to talk about catholics and contraceptives? first of all, i would think that out of all catholic doctrines, this one is the most often violated by followers. in addition to that, on the off chance that you are a catholic that adheres to this specific point of dogma, then when is it in the last 50 years that you could have gotten a job at a pharmacy where contraceptives arent sold? dont tell me that condoms and birth control are such new developments that a potential pharmacist who has to undergo extensive schooling and training before getting a job does not know that they will be sold at the pharmacy long before ever applying for a job? even if the person has an objection i still dont understand how you think that denying people the prescription or over the counter contraception that they are there to buy constitutes doing your job, whether a law allows for your objection or not?
another part of the issue was religious hospitals failing to provide birth control. i think that if the hospital takes taxpayer money, they should be required to dispense the prescription contraceptive. everyone pays taxes, not just the religious, and so everyone should be able to expect to receive care and medication from publicly funded hospitals. if a religious hospital is a private institution that doesnt take public funds, let them do whatever they want in terms of providing or not providing contaceptives.

im sure your response will dazzle me as always.

 

[spidergoat]

My objection is not with religion, but with people who feel they are obligated to make moral decisions for others regarding their own private, personal bodies.

 

[Theoryofrelativity]

im not bashing the religious, .

yes my response will DAZZLE you


THis thread is in THE RELIGIOUS Forum why? If your agenda is NOT religious.
Ethical forum may be more appropriate or free thoughts.

It's title 'Pharmacists and JESUS'
and you still say this isn't about religion bashing?
geeeeeeeeeeeze

 

[spidergoat]

Criticising certain aspects of certain religious followers is not "bashing" religion.