Posted on 04/28/2005 7:57:16 AM PDT by SmithL
YOU know the world is changing when the left -- which used to believe in respecting choice and requiring businesses to accommodate workers' personal preferences -- opposes choice and letting individual workers say no to tasks they find morally abhorrent, while the right -- which used to stand for letting businesses choose policies that promote their bottom line -- supports laws that could force employers to accommodate workers whose personal scruples prevent them from selling a product.
Yet that's exactly what you get as Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and other Democrats introduce bills that would force pharmacists to sell birth- control pills and emergency-contraception pills such as RU-486 and Plan B, even if the pharmacist is morally opposed to one of these forms of birth control.
The issue here isn't hypocrisy. The issue is that these laws can present serious consequences. Do Americans want the government to tell a business what it has to sell?
Some states have laws protecting pharmacists' objections of conscience. Do employees have a right to expect legal protections that allow them to say no to tasks to which they morally object?
And: How can feminists -- read Boxer -- say they support "choice," as they conspire to outlaw the right of pharmacists to make a choice they don't like?
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
How do you write a law that says someone HAS TO sell something they dont want to..?
I believe that there is a law that states that employers cannot force their employees to perform a task at work that goes against their religious beliefs. Looks like it should be amended to include the government, too.
Govenment shouldn't tell business what they should/shouldn't sell. But if the business sales a product and doesn't want to sell it to me,
1st, they shouldn't offer the product,
second, Employee shouldn't go work for that company if you don't want to sell the friggin product.
The reason I don't work for a place that sales crappy products is because i don't want to work for a business that sales crappy product. If my boss wants to sell crappy products, i'll go somehwere else. This isn't a perfect metaphore but you get the drift. Don't sell guns if you don't wanna sell me bullets.
I don't understand it either. Most pharmacies are big chains - on the east coast we have Rite Aid, CVS, Walgreens, I bet Wal-Mart has a pharmacies too. I am sure any of those big chains would fill that script.
Good article.
All this means is that people will find pharmacists who will fill their prescriptions. Business continues as it should.
It's actually very simple to write such a law, when one is dealing with a state-granted monopoly guild. Pharmacists, lawyers, physicians, psychologists, actuaries, school teachers in states w/o right to teach laws. . . are all subject to state pressure in a way the rest of us aren't: the state can declare that if they refuse a certain service, then their license is revoked.
(They could also have their fees set by the state, and there is an argument for doing so, since they do not really compete in a free market, drawing the advantage of their state-granted monopoly status. But that's a discussion for another time.)
It's not that simple. And a gun store is not required by law to sell every gun and ammo manufactured. This would force people who have spent years training to be pharmacists to choose between their conscience -- which tells them not to prescribe life-ending euthanasia drugs, abortion pill drugs, or things like that -- to choose between their job and their conscience, or go to jail. That's not right. That's enforcing a law that says only liberals can be Pharmacists.
If you can't find what you want at one business, or you don't like the service, go to another one. If you live in rural America, there are many things you can't get locally. Just add one to the list. Abortion and euthanasia drugs are not emergency drugs. You can kill whomever it is you want to kill next week just as well as you can this week.
I know CVS and Walgreens have policies that allows their pharmacists the option of filling certain perscriptions.
The illinois governor by executive order did this a couple weeks ago, and there were a couple Freepers actually defend the governor. Besides the fact a governor has no such authority to impose such a law, it is just wrong on so many levels.
The Ghost of FReepers Past wrote:
You can kill whomever it is you want to kill next week just as well as you can this week"
UUUM no thanks, then i'd have no friends to play with! hahaha.
This reminds me of those "Concscience objectors", Join the military then beg to get out. Come on, you knoww what your possibly going to get into. People aren't that dumb, they know sicko's are gonna wanna come in and purge their little babies out.
"I believe that there is a law that states that employers cannot force their employees to perform a task at work that goes against their religious beliefs."
There is. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act requires reasonable accommodation of employees' religious objections. We got into a long argument over this the other day.
It seems that some folks don't like Civil Rights, even though they be for people of faith, if they interfere with the employers' right to fire whomever they please. In some peoples' opinions, it appeared as though no amount of accommodation would be considered "reasonable".
Fortunately for people of faith, the law of the land nevertheless offers a modicum of protection against religious discrimination in the workplace. If a reasonable accommodation can be made - that is, one that won't hurt the employer too much - it must.
So you only want pharmacists with no conscience? As long as they have no moral sense they proceed with their training? Or do you just mean that they have to 100% agree with YOUR conscience? I want to be clear on what you expect the law to demand.
Where does your kind of logic end? Are pharmacists just mindless servants of the government? Your idea leads to Nazi Germany. My idea respects freedom of conscience. You can come up with all the far-fetched scenarios you want, but this is about pharmacists who respect life. What's wrong with that? I want a pharmacist, a doctor, and all other health related professionals to respect life. That's precisely the kind of pharmacist I want. But you think your desire to kill yourself or your unborn child should trump what everyone else wants -- by force of law. Why can't you just go find a pharmacist who dispenses your life-ending drugs and leave the rest of us alone? Why must you impose your beliefs on others? Wasn't that the argument for abortion and "assisted suicide" in the first place? So where's that argument now? Now YOU want to impose YOUR beliefs. At least our beliefs are about protecting life, not ending it. In the case of abortion, the baby has no rights. So now you think the doctors and pharmacists should have no rights either. Who's next on your list?
There are plenty of conservatives that do not approve of employees selecting which duties they will perform and which they will not.
If you can't find what you want at one business, or you don't like the service, go to another one.
That is not the point. If you want to work for a business that sells certain products, you should not be able to determine which of those products you will sell and which you will not. Would you hire workers who will not perform all the duties of the job? Should a food server be able to decline to serve food which he determines to be not appropriate for that customer?
No one is saying a company must hire one of these pharmacists. You are changing the argument. There is no MUST here. This is about whether or not the government can force all pharmacies and pharmacists to dispense these drugs when it violates their conscience. The MUST is on the side of the government. Can the government force people to choose between their job and their conscience? An employer can hire or not hire someone on these issues. Fine. But can (or should) the government trump them both and say "you must!"?
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