Becky's Story from NARAL

[Kerrytravelers]

I received this story from NARAL today via email...



Becky's Story...

I'd like to share my personal experience at the Pamida Pharmacy on Saturday, April 16th, 2005.

I walked up to a busy counter with a prescription for two medications. The pharmacist took the note and told me she'd fill one medication, but I'd have to come back on Monday to have the birth control filled by the other pharmacist. I verbally questioned this, because she herself was a pharmacist. Her answer was "for moral reasons I will not fill a birth control prescription."

I challenged the pharmacist by telling her, "It's a valid medical prescription signed by a medical doctor. Your other customers are receiving service. I shouldn't have to come back Monday when I'm here now." I was refused a second time on the same grounds and told to try another pharmacy. My response, "No, my insurance information is here and this is where I come to get my prescriptions." I was refused a third time. When I asked her to show me written documentation that would give her a legal right to refuse, she had nothing to show me.

Correspondence with the Pamida pharmacist manager was most disturbing. I was again told to come back when the other pharmacist was working or to follow a sticker on the prescription that instructs the patient to call in their refill a week ahead of time. Although they upheld the actions of their pharmacist, I was not told anything regarding their policy on the issue or given any evidence that the pharmacist acted within her legal right.

We are constantly being confronted with such emotionally charged issues as abortion, family welfare, domestic abuse, etc. It seems very contradictory to refuse a product whose absence will only make these issues more volatile.



Check out their site:

[jedr]

1. this has to be illegal on some level;

Do you know if someone is taking this case , or if any further action is going to be taken? It has far reaching effects on so many levels. What will be next? Can anyone be refused medical attention do to " moral reasons"? Can a grocery clerk refuse to sell me meat, or a garage refuse to service my imported car? This one has to be stopped.

[Kerrytravelers]

2. I wish it was illegal. Here are some other posts on the subject:

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=217x1478>

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=217x1751>

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=217x1631>

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=217x1534>

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=217x1250>

[iverglas]

5. that's my question

Why is nobody DOING anything but whining about these practices??

Here's what happens up here in rights-loving Canada, where people are apparently a tad more irritable about such things.

http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/prochoicepress/02spring.shtml

Stephen Dawson, a doctor from Barrie, Ontario could lose his medical licence because he refuses to prescribe birth control pills to unmarried women, citing his religious beliefs. Four female patients made formal complaints to the Ontario College of Physicians & Surgeons last summer. Dawson also refuses to provide single men with Viagra prescriptions, give unmarried women the morning-after pill, or refer for abortions.

Dawson will face a College disciplinary committee in April. He is charged with professional misconduct. The committee alleges Dawson compromised his patients' mental, moral, and physical health by failing to ensure their needs were met after refusing their requests for contraception. The committee has several discipline options: it can reprimand the doctor, suspend his licence, impose certain terms and conditions, or revoke it altogether.

Dawson believes that doctors who prescribe birth control pills to unmarried women unwittingly promote "fornication", because the fear of pregnancy is removed. "If a Christian physician must forsake his religious beliefs to maintain his medical licence, we cannot delude ourselves to believe we live in a free country," said Dawson. Although he was advised to refer the patients to another doctor to prescribe the pill, he feels that because the pill doesn't require a referral to a specialist, the patients were free to find another doctor on their own, or use condoms. However, Dawson's medical clinic is the only one in the Barrie area that is accepting new patients.

Dawson did agree to send letters of apology to the women for his "overzealous" approach, but said he won’t apologize for not offering the pill to single women. He told the anti-choice LifeSite Daily News, "Under no circumstances will I compromise. I would rather lose my licence."

Dawson began his policy in February 2000, after reading a Bible verse that convinced him providing birth control prescriptions was immoral. He informed his patients of his decision at subsequent visits and by a letter that quoted judgementally from the Bible: "When you do not warn or dissuade an unrighteous man from his evil ways, he will lose his soul for his iniquity, and his blood will be on your hands. Yet if you do warn him and he does not change from his evil ways, he will lose his soul, but you will at least save your own soul." (Ezekiel 3:18-21)

Dawson said the College's allegations amount to religious persecution. "We live, supposedly, in a free country," he said. "In this country, we are allowed to have fundamental freedoms of conscience, religion, and expression of our views." Dawson ignores the fact that while engaged in his profession, the patient's freedom of conscience, religion, and expression must trump his.

I am 100% with the opinion expressed at that site:

Although the requirement to make appropriate referrals seems like a reasonable compromise at face value, it has the potential for leading to a reductio ad absurdum situation. What if a doctor converts to Christian Science, and announces to his patients that his only treatment from now on will be prayer, because his religious beliefs say that pain and illness are illusions? Under current College guidelines, it seems he could simply refer his objecting patients, while still collecting patient visit fees from Medicare! The bottom line is that health professionals are obligated to offer real help for their patients' needs. If they can't do that for whatever reason, they should switch professions.

A physician (or any other professional) is not required to act contrary to his/her own interests while serving patients -- e.g. need not starve in order to heal the sick for free -- but it is simply not tolerable to permit physicians (or pharmacists) to deny legitimate professional services that the professional is paid to provide based on personal whim.

Unfortunately, the swine in that case was allowed to keep practising:

http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/prochoicepress/03spring.shtml

The patients in question agreed to a settlement to accommodate the physician. He is required to post a notice in his office explaining his refusal to provide services, and is prohibited from discussing the reasons (his "Christian beliefs") with patients unless they expressly so request.

The patients could have applied to the courts for judicial review of the decision of the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons ... at their own expense, of course. Or -- what I would have suggested -- they could have made a complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Commission charging discrimination (in the provision of services available to the public) on the grounds of sex and marital status. There's a backlog of such complaints waiting to be heard, but the process is free and the investigation and hearing are conducted independently.

Surely there are similar processes available in US states.

Oh my good dog:

http://www.cpso.on.ca/Whats_New/maydisc.htm

Summary of Cases Scheduled for Discipline Hearings
for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario
May 2005

DAWSON, Stephen T.
*(Barrie) May 9

Hearing to be held at the CPSO, 80 College Street, 9:00 a.m.

Sexual abuse of a patient

Engaging in conduct or an act or acts relevant to the practice of medicine that, having regard to all the circumstances, would reasonably be regarded by members as disgraceful, dishonourable or unprofessional

Incompetence

That's quite amazing. Swine, indeed. Ah, but those are allegations ... I wonder whether Google News has anything to tell me ...

Yahoo!!!

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050510/DOCTOR10/TPHealth/

Barrie physician stripped of licence

Doctor, 51, pleads no contest to charge of engaging in sexual acts with a patient

A Barrie doctor who refused to prescribe birth control pills or Viagra to unmarried patients because of his Christian beliefs lost his licence to practise medicine yesterday because he engaged in sexual acts with a patient.

"I have lasting emotional scars in the form of recurrent nightmares of being held down, kissed and groped against my wishes; I cannot get free, I panic and cannot breathe," the 40-year-old woman, who was also in the doctor's Bible study group, told a disciplinary hearing panel of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. The patient cannot be identified.

At the outset of the hearing, Stephen Dawson, 51, pleaded no contest to a charge that he had engaged in several forms of sexual activity, including oral sex and masturbation but not intercourse, with the patient in November and December, 1999.

The revocation of his licence for such sexual misconduct is mandatory under Ontario law, although he may apply in five years for reinstatement.

I cannot WAIT to read what all the anti-choice outfits that adopted him as their prisoner of conscience back when he was refusing to prescribe birth control pills have to say about THAT.

Eerily similar to the case of Paul Tremblay, who was supported all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada in his efforts to force his former fiancée to complete a pregnancy she wanted to terminate ... and a few years later was determined to be a "dangerous offender" and imprisoned indefinitely as a result of his long record of battering women.

Well, that was a tangent. I just get caught up in googling. ;)

There's a point.

Professionals who refuse to provide services that they are authorized (and given exclusive rights) by society to provide -- contrary to their clients' interests, and based on grounds that are unrelated to their clients' interests and are in fact based on their disapproval of the client based on sex (the client's) and religion (the fact that the client does not share theirs) -- are discriminating in no less despicable a way than if they refused to serve people of colour.

They are also violating their professional ethics, with which compliance is normally imposed by their governing professional body as a condition of their authorization to practice.

Formal complaints should be made directly to both public anti-discrimination agencies and professional governing bodies.

Or, that being the US, somebody should just sue the hell out of both them and their employers. ;)

[ehrnst]

3. Here's the contact information for Pamida Pharmacy:

Sounds like they need to hear from us:

http://www.pamida.com/comments/index.asp

[PA Mamma]

6. Done !

"Pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions should have their licenses revoked and Pharmacies who chose to allow them to deny customers their medications should be shut down. How Dare You ! Disgraceful !"

[Warpy]

4. Tell Becky to WRITE A DAMNED LETTER

to her state pharmacist's licensing board!

The only way to stop these fucking prigs is to THREATEN THEIR LICENSES!

DO IT NOW!