Texas Pharmacist Denies Rape Victim Morning-After Pill

[RainDog]

this is incredible. this person had better be fired. let them get a job at a "faith-based" pharmacy. this makes my blood boil.

too bad this person can't be imprisoned and find out what it's like to be a rape victim.

All you Republicans who know how wrong and horrible this is had better stop empowering the Talibornagains in this country.

fwiw- the rape victim got her prescription from another pharmacy.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/Southwest/02/03/pharmacy.protest.ap/index.html

Protest follows denial of morning-after pill

Wednesday, February 4, 2004 Posted: 1203 GMT ( 8:03 PM HKT)

DENTON, Texas (AP) -- About 40 people gathered outside an Eckerd pharmacy Monday, protesting what they said was a decision to deny a rape victim a prescription for the morning-after pill.

A spokesman for the Florida-based company confirmed that Eckerd has taken disciplinary action in response to an incident at the store.

"Apparently there was a request for a prescription to be filled and the prescription was denied based on a moral or ethical decision made by the pharmacist, and that's not in accordance with our corporate policy," said Joan Gallagher, vice president of communications for Largo, Florida-based Eckerd Corp.

[GOPisEvil]

1. What is the world coming to?

This pharmacist needs to be disciplined, fired, in fact. Who is he to put his personal morals above serving his clients what they require? Does he have a moral problem filling Viagra for men who can't "perform"? I bet he doesn't.

[DarkPhenyx]

2. Fire him now and you make him a martyr.

Discipline him severely, put something in the file with the American Society of Pharmacology or something as well. Hurt him, don't "kill" him. "Dead" people have a nasty way of becoming symbols and heros.

[GOPisEvil]

4. He's already a hero to Randall Terry and his kind...

...I'll bet any discipline is answered with a boycott.

(He says from the town where ONE CONTRACTOR led a boycott of the Planned Parenthood clinic construction...)

[DarkPhenyx]

5. Ignore him and give him very little press...

...and he is much more likely to go away, and you can get him when the light is off him.

[GOPisEvil]

6. True.

I'd still like to kick his sanctimonious ass, though.

[DarkPhenyx]

7. Oh, definately.

But there is a time and a place for everything. Several actually. The key is to choose the ones that work best for you.

[dansolo]

8. I want him to become a symbol

We need to remind average Americans where this country is headed.

[RainDog]

10. A Martyr? To whom? What about the woman who was raped????

Big fucking deal if the Christian Reconstructionists make him a martyr.

The majority of Americans do not want some asshole at a pharmacy overriding their doctor's prescription!!

This is an issue which ALL WOMEN need to know about, and will want to know about, believe me.

The morning after pill is nothing more than a large birth control pill. There is no indication whether or not the woman was pregnant or not because of the rape.

This is a preventative measure.

The woman who was raped has the moral high ground here, the legal high ground, and the common sense high ground.

Ask how many parents would want to go to a pharmacy to get their doctor's prescription filled if their daughter was raped and be told that they couldn't have that medicine.

This is utter and total bullshit and the pharmacist should be fired. If a Christian Scientist took a job as a pharmacist (a stretch, I realize) and tried to deny you medicine for a heart condition, would you think that person should be kept on??

That person is endangering the health of another person and has no place in that job.

[Ilsa]

3. I think we're going to start seeing more of this.

I bet the Shi'ite Rightwingers are going to start "taking a stand" to "protect" their religious values at work (go find another job, bozo) and start denying assistance for people with medical situations because "they sinned" or some other such nonsense. In fifty years we'll have a divided society and divided services.

"Talibornagains". I love it!

[BiggJawn]

9. No, we won't have a divided society.

We'll have the visible, "Born AGAIN Hally-LOO-Ya!" society, and the underground, silent back-alley society.

My choice is gonna come down to going underground, or stay above ground, mouthing all the "holy buzz-words" while knowing in my mind that it's all superstitious hooey.
I sure hope it doesn't happen in my lifetime, I have better things to do with my Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings.

[RainDog]

11. eckerd contact information

customer service

Toll Free: 1-800-Eckerds (1-800-325-3737)
Fax: [phone]
Mail: PO Box 4689, Clearwater, FL, 33758

[pansypoo53219]

12. WI has tried to pass

a bill to give pharamsists the right to do this kind of shit.

can evangelical assholes be exorcised?

[RainDog]

13. And so a pharmacist could deny aids medication

because he or she believes that it's a sin to be homosexual.

And a pharmacist could deny birth control pills because he or she thinks it's a sin to try to prevent pregancy.

And maybe the woman taking those pills has endometriosis and is taking birth control pills to try to stop the endometriosis...which can cause infertility, btw.

it is none of the pharmacist's damn business why someone gets a prescription from a doctor.

Eckerd says they are "disciplining" the pharmacist, but won't say what that discipline is.

I say that if Eckerd does not fire this person, then people who work for companies who have deals with Eckerd, across the country, should pressure their companies to do business with another pharmacy which will protect the rights of American citizens to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I wish the rape victim and her doctor would sue the pharmacist.

[truthspeaker]

14. in Eckard's defense, if they announced the discipline he could sue them

Anytime an employer releases information to the public regarding the performance of an employee they are risking a lawsuit.

[RainDog]

15. well then, if there are any pro-democracy companies

who use eckerd as their pharmacy for insurance coverage, surely they should be allowed to know the status of a situation like this because of the potential impact upon their employees.

I appreciate the discretion; however, there should be some accountability when a company has responsiblity for health coverage, including prescription drugs, for it's employees.

[elfwitch]

16. All it had to say was DENTON, Texas

You have NO IDEA how backwards North Texas is.
Hell, just the alcohol laws in this part of the state are enough to drive any sane person stark raving mad.

I'm surprised the guy didn't hold her up there long enough to call some of his Bible thumping friends to stage an intervention. Poor girl was probably asking to be raped anyway. Why should it be a "baby's" fault that she lives a lewd and Godless lifestyle that would get her in that situation? Her poor innocent "baby" shouldn't have to be murdered for her sins right?
(sarcasm off now)

I seriously doubt anything will happen to him. I'd even bet that the business to this store will increase when the fundie freaks find out there is such a Christ loving man at the counter.

[RainDog]

17. then again, I say Americans must protect their freedoms

by pressuring the companies they work for to drop their contracts to have prescriptions filled at ANY Eckerds (and I know they are all across the south, and originate in Florida).

The majority of Americans do not support the idea that females should not have access to preventative birth control.

Ask the majority of parents if they would want their daughter to have to endure one humiliation on top of another by a person who is certainly at rights to live the way he or she wants, but who has no right to impose those beliefs on others.

This makes me sick.

This woman who was raped would be entirely justified, imho, if she ripped this pharmacist a new asshole and then withheld treatment...let him know just a little bit about what it feels like.

[Skittles]

21. you know it, Elfwitch

I live in Plano; north Texas just disgusts me sometimes.

[elfwitch]

22. it disgusts me all the time...

Boy what a difference a few hundred miles makes. North Texas and South Texas might as well be two different states.

I still have not recovered from the culture shock of the move and we've lived in Dallas for almost three years now.

[iverglas]

25. ah, Plano

Couldn't resist. Made two trips there in the late 80s -- one wedding, one funeral. About the same amount of beer consumed at each, usually in or around a pickup truck, not infrequently by the driver while it was in motion.

Speaking of pickup trucks, one of the items in the Austin newspaper's session-end round-up of legislative initiatives (only spent a couple of days in Austin, on the first trip) was the attempt to prohibit the carrying of children in the back of pickups travelling over 30 mph. Yessir, your kids will be safe when thrown from a vehicle moving at only 29 mph, especially when it hits another one ...

It was a long drive from Texas back to Ontario, but the state line was a very happy start.

Ah, Texas. Forgive me if I say I never want to go back. Although yes, there's the south, and I've always been tempted by the idea of "east Texas" (at present known only from Horton Foote's excellent movie "1918"), which seems like a nice juxtaposition.

As an aside, I watched an early-morning A&E bio of Thurgood Marshall today. He used to have to have state troopers protect him from local law enforcers when visiting Texas as a civil rights lawyer ... although I see that they were also used in Texas to prevent integration: http://encarta.msn.com/text_761595158___94/African_American_History.html


To be fair, though, the Hoosier Pharmer person -- Karen Brauer, fired by K-Mart a few years ago for refusing to dispense contraceptive pills (and lying to clients) -- seems to have been bred and born in Indiana. ;)

.

[snippy]

18. How very republican.

This is the republican party in action. Democrats should make this an issue and force Bush to address it. Bush probably would lie and waffle and piss off some of his Reich wing base. But if he starts speaking in tongues and praising this pharmacist he will piss off many moderate republican voters. This is exactly the type of event which can be used to define the real republican party to those moderate voters who think the Reich wingers are quaint but harmless.

[iverglas]

19. the long and twisted tale of "Pharmacists for Life"

You know -- the ones who don't belong to that great "Pharmacists for Death" conspiracy that all the other pharmacists in the world belong to.

If you really want to know about them, here: http://www.pfli.org/

The original tale is the epic one of Karen Brauer, the K-Mart pharmacist fired for the same offence against professional ethics. She became the darling of the anti-choice Rightgrrls -- sort of forerunners of freepers, with more intellectual airs; Carolyn Gargaro and the other one and the assortment of right-wing loons who inhabited their now-defunct message board: http://www.rightgrrl.com/guestbook/guest.html (you can still read archives).

Read about Karen Brauer, the "Hoosier Pharmer" on the internet and the Rightgrrls' message board, from their perspective, here: http://www.rightgrrl.com/dec97grrl/
I mean, if you have a finely honed sense of black humour and are able to avoid tearing your hair out and throwing things when reading such drivel and tripe.

If you search for Brauer at Google, you'll find all sorts of anti-choice outfits fawning over her, but soldier on and you'll find real facts: http://www.choice.org/accessmonth/kmart.html

When K-mart hired Karen Brauer as a pharmacist ten years ago, the company had every expectation she would serve the needs of all its clients. Instead, at least 10 times over the course of seven years, she turned away women who came to the pharmacy with prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraception.

In 1996, Brauer untruthfully told a customer that the contraceptive she wanted was out of stock, in order to avoid having to dispense the medication. The customer realized Brauer was lying and complained to K-mart. After learning of her repeated refusal to dispense the drug Micronor and other birth control pills, K-mart asked Brauer to sign a statement agreeing to dispense all medications, regardless of her own religious objections. Brauer, who is an anti-choice Catholic, was unwilling to do so. K-mart then fired her on the grounds that she was denying customers access to legitimate prescriptions.

In August 1999, three years after Brauer was dismissed, the American Center for Law and Justice, which provides legal aid to anti-abortion protesters, filed a lawsuit on her behalf in the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati. In the suit, Brauer is claiming that K-mart violated both state and federal laws by firing her "because of her religion." ...

I believe she lost that suit.

"Professions", such as law, medicine, engineering and pharmacy, are given extraordinary powers by society. People who do not belong to the profession are prohibited from providing the services it deals in -- non-lawyers may not practise law, non-doctors may not practise medicine, and so on.

Society empowers those professions to be "self-governing" -- to set rules of professional ethics and to set the minimum qualifications for practising. The professions are required to do these things in the public interest, and their members are required to practise the professions in a way that is in the public interest. The powers they and their members are given are not given to them for their own benefit, they are given to them for the public's benefit.

Someone who does not wish to dispense contraceptive pills is entirely at liberty not to become a pharmacist. S/he is *not* at liberty to act contrary to a client's interests, i.e. refuse to provide the services legitimately sought by a client, based on his/her own personal prejudices, regardless of what the basis for those prejudices is -- whether it be a belief that people of colour are inferior and should not be served at pharmacies, or a belief that preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg (which it is speculated the "morning-after" and contraceptive pills may do) is evil.

So far, it seems to have been employees of large corporations who have been caught violating professional ethics, clearly grounds for dismissal. I'm curious to see what might happen if a self-employed pharmacist does the same.

(Pharmacists may and should refuse to fill prescriptions if, in their professional and not personal judgment, a medication is not in the best interests of a client, for instance for a medication-conflict reason the physician may not have been aware of, and of course must then consult with the prescribing physician to discuss the concerns.)

The American Pharmaceutical Association seems to have passed this resolution in 1998:

1998 Pharmacist Conscience Clause

1. APhA recognizes the individual pharmacist's right to exercise conscientious refusal and supports the establishment of systems to ensure patient's access to legally prescribed therapy without compromising the pharmacist's right of conscientious refusal.

2. APhA shall appoint a council to serve as a resource for the profession in addressing and understanding ethical issues.

Seems to me that "conscientious refusal" could cover just about anything. How about a Christian Science pharmacist, who "conscientiously" refused to dispense anything??

Fortunately, the APhA is *not* the governing body of the pharmacy profession -- it is the voluntary body formed by pharmacists to promote their own interests.

The profession is governed, in the US, by state Boards of Pharmacy, and as far as I know, they don't recognize "conscientious objection" as grounds for denying professional services.

.

[RainDog]

20. Please call the Eckerd number noted above

to let them know you do not appreciate them employing someone who endangers the lives of others based upon their skewed morals.

that is no exaggeration, btw.

the post-traumatic stress of some events can trigger depression and can have all sorts of repercussions.

for this pharmacist to deny care to this woman is repugnant.

[slappypan]

23. bd enough we are at the mercy of doctors and insurance clerks

O joy, another set of complete strangers who feel qualified to make intimate health decisions for us without our consent. How far will this go? Will insurance paper-shufflers refuse to process claims next?

[indepat]

24. Moral and ethical decision: how about a warped immoral, unethical

decision reeking of blind ideological insensitiveness, callousness, and reichousness?

[PVnRT]

26. Pharmacists cannot deny prescriptions from a doctor

Period.

Is this fuckwit going to adopt and raise the child? If not, he can shut the fuck up and quit being a hypocrite and starting doing his fucking job.

[mulethree]

27. Booo! can't have an employee's personal ethics .....

Find something you strongly feel is wrong, Imagine your boss tried
to force you to do that thing.

Now imagine that you did it, putting the almighty paycheck ahead of your personal beliefs. Selling out. Goodbye sleep, self-esteem, job satisfaction. Hello Viagra, anti-depressants and stress formula 2000.

Should we boo someone for standing up for what they believe in? Even
if we believe differently?

[slappypan]

28. Aren't you forgetting someone?

What about the woman who was depending on that pharmacist to fill her precription? Does he have no obligation to her? Or to the doctor who writes prescriptions trusting that pharmacists will fill them as instructed? This is not an issue of pharmacist versus boss. We, the public, put a lot of trust in pharmacists when they are given a license. Our lives are on the line. It is my decision whether or not to get that prescription filled, not some stranger's.

[veganwitch]

29. exactly

look at the pharmacist in indiana (my state!!! why do your people suck!) the watered down cancer medication (some times to only 10% strength) to make more money.

what if he really really believed (on the same level as this pharmcists belief that the morning after pill killed a human) that making lots and lots of money was the most important thing.

the "personal beliefs" argument doesnt fly.

[LeahMira]

30. Then you leave...

Find something you strongly feel is wrong, Imagine your boss tried to force you to do that thing.

The reasonable thing would be for the pharmacist to work elsewhere. There are some chains that have a policy of not filling prescriptions for contraceptives or abortifacients.

The fact that this person accepted the job where he could reasonably know that he would be asked to fill this sort of prescription shows that he thinks a paycheck is of more importance than his moral convictions.

If he doesn't plan to do the job, he has no business accepting it.


Should we boo someone for standing up for what they believe in?

That's not what he did.

[RainDog]

31. If the pharmacist opposes contraception, he should work

elsewhere.

the morning after pill is contraception. there is no evidence of pregnancy.

so, yes, it is legal for females to have access to contraception, and it is illegal for the pharmacist to deny that contraception, to impose what are, in fact, considered extremist beliefs on another person.

if the pharmacist is so stupid he didn't know this was contraception, then that's certainly no reason to have him work in a job in which he must know about medications.

If he wanted to take a stand, let him quit his job. It's bullshit to say that he's in any way heroic or moral to deny medical care to this woman.

it doesn't matter what the circumstances..whether she was raped or not.

what he did was wrong and he has no business in a job with the responsibility he has since his ignorance allowed him to make such a decision.