Posted on 07/26/2005 6:20:19 PM PDT by kcvl
It's official: Americans can no longer take prescription birth control for granted. Yesterday, Monday, July 25, anti-choice representatives in the U.S. House made it clear that they support pharmacies that refuse to fill birth-control prescriptions - and that women have no right to birth control.
The radical right's campaign to stop birth control The House Small Business Committee held a hearing on whether pharmacies should be allowed to refuse to fill women's prescriptions. Anti-choice Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told a witness, who had been denied birth control and emergency contraception by her pharmacist, that she had no "right" to her prescriptions - she only believed she did. Anti-choice Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) told a witness whose prescription had also been rejected by a hostile pharmacist, that her "minor inconvenience" - that is, risking an unintended pregnancy - was nothing compared to the "conscience" of a pharmacist.
The right's anti-birth control campaign doesn't stop in Washington, DC. Across the country, the radical right has engaged pharmacies in its campaign to block women's access to birth control. Women like Julee Lacey, a 32-year-old married mother of two and first-grade teacher from Texas, are being turned away by vigilante pharmacists who think it's their job to dispense morals instead of medicine.
Now, as many as 20 states officially protect pharmacists like Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life, who says she'd lecture women customers to get off the pill. Other states are pursuing an even more aggressive strategy. Just last month Wisconsin passed a bill to block state universities from filling birth control prescriptions.
What you can do Tell your Member of Congress that you expect him or her to stand up for you - not right-wing pharmacies that oppose birth control. Click here to send a message today.
Send a letter to the following decision maker(s): Your Congressperson
Below is the sample letter:
Subject: Please protect women's access to birth control at the pharmacy
Dear [decision maker name automatically inserted here],
As your constituent, I am writing to urge you to oppose any attempts to shield pharmacists who deny women access to their legal birth control prescriptions. Instead, please cosponsor the proactive, common-sense Access to Legal Pharmaceuticals Act to ensure that women can get their birth control prescriptions filled without delay or harassment.
Women's access to prescription birth control is serious. Birth control prevents unintended pregnancy, and allows women to take responsibility for their reproductive health. However, as many as 20 states let pharmacists deny women their prescription contraception. Pharmacies have an ethical obligation not to endanger women's health by withholding basic health care. The Access to Legal Pharmaceuticals Act would ensure that pharmacies will fill all prescriptions, even if a different pharmacist has to do it.
I urge you to support women who use birth control, and cosponsor the Access to Legal Pharmaceuticals Act.
Sincerely,
This is what the PRO-ABORTION radicals want...
Eckerd Corporation Blasted For Doing Planned Parenthood's Bidding 3.31.2004
WASHINGTON, DC— In February, the Eckerd Corporation fired three pharmacists who refused to participate in the deaths of unborn children. Gene Herr of Denton, Ohio, said he and two coworkers were fired after refusing to fill a prescription for so-called emergency contraception. Morning-after pills are higher doses of the hormones in regular birth control pills and have been sold under the brand names Plan B and Preven since 1998. They work by preventing ovulation or fertilization of an egg. If fertilization already has occurred, they prevent it from implanting into the uterus (an early abortion).
******
Refused at the Counter
by Kara Loewentheil 10.20.04
When Angela was 22, desperate to find emergency contraception pills because the condom broke, she and her boyfriend drove around town in search of the drugs that could help prevent an unintended pregnancy. After two pharmacies and two hospitals refused to fill a prescription, she gave up. "I'll never forget how uncaring and nonchalant the pharmacists at those stores were," she wrote to PPFA. "[I felt] like my country hated me, and viewed me like a baby-machine."
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Wednesday, March 31, 2004 Pharmacists: Just Do Your Job!
A pharmacist refused to fill a North Richland Hills woman's prescription for birth-control pills this week, but the woman hopes her experience will provoke an examination of pharmacists' power over patient care.
Julee Lacey, 32, a first-grade teacher and mother of two, ran out of birth-control pills Sunday night and went to her local CVS pharmacy for a last-minute refill. The new pharmacist at the branch told her, "I'm sorry, but I personally do not believe in birth control, so I will not fill your prescription," Mrs. Lacey recalled.
Say, lady, just go to another drug store. Or maybe go to a dry cleaners and get a coat hanger.
It's not like there aren't hundreds of pharmacies and doctors who would prescribe and fill these precriptions. They just want to FORCE people to do what they want them to do!
******
10 Nov 2004 09:14 AM
Access Denied
Find out why growing numbers of doctors and pharmacists across the US are refusing to prescribe or dispense birth control pills
by Caroline Bollinger
In April, Julee Lacey, 33, a Fort Worth, TX, mother of two, went to her local CVS drugstore for a last-minute Pill refill. She had been getting her prescription filled there for a year, so she was astonished when the pharmacist told her, "I personally don't believe in birth control and therefore I'm not going to fill your prescription." Lacey, an elementary school teacher, was shocked. "The pharmacist had no idea why I was even taking the Pill. I might have needed it for a medical condition."
Melissa Kelley, 35, was just as stunned when her gynecologist told her she would not renew her prescription for birth control pills last fall.
"She told me she couldn't in good faith prescribe the Pill anymore," says Kelley, who lives with her husband and son in Allentown, PA. Then the gynecologist told Kelley she wouldn't be able to get a new prescription from her family doctor, either. "She said my primary care physician was the one who helped her make the decision." Lacey's pharmacist and Kelley's doctors are among thousands of physicians and pharmacists who now adhere to a controversial belief that birth control pills and other forms of hormonal contraception--including the skin patch, the vaginal ring, and progesterone injections--cause tens of thousands of "silent" abortions every year. Consequently, they are refusing to prescribe or dispense them.
Scenarios like these--virtually unheard of 10 years ago--are happening with increasing frequency. However, until this spring, the issue received little attention outside the antiabortion community. It wasn't high on the agendas of reproductive rights advocates, who have been preoccupied with defending abortion rights and emergency contraception.
I really don't consider killing an infant in the womb as a form of "birth control." Of course, I'm not a Leftist wacko from NARAL.
That's too easy. PRO-ABORTION radicals want to FORCE you to do what they demand, period!
It's not even about abortion alone. It's about the RADICAL LEFT FORCING people to do what they DEMAND! It is not suppose to matter what YOU believe, it's all about THEM!!!
If this line of reasoning is followed, NARAL should go to the Congress to try to make the performance of abortions a requirement for all ObGyns. After all, how could any of them refuse them the right to treatment because of their own moral beliefs.
Don't put it passed them.
But there are people here who DO want to ban birth control pills, right?
Nobody is trying to stop birth control. Several of the means to controlling births have been available since the time of Adam, and one way is invariably reliable - abstinence. Of course, that method carries its own awkward inconveniences, but there are ways to work around that set of limitations.
Abortion as birth control is courting serious repercussions that have NOT been adequately addressed by its major advocates. If it is threatening to the mental health of some of these prospective mothers who are unwilling to take up the burden of motherhood, consider also the opposite case of those prospective mothers who gave up the opportunity and later regretted their decision. Sure, there are the Andrea Yateses among some of this number, who probably should NOT have been mothers of large numbers of children close together. But there is also the woman who goes baby-crazy as the biological clock is ticking, then stops the mechanism, only to be unable to restart.
No one answer fits all, but if some of the parties involved will not even listen to alternatives, there may never be any accommodation between the factions.
---If this line of reasoning is followed, NARAL should go to the Congress to try to make the performance of abortions a requirement for all ObGyns. After all, how could any of them refuse them the right to treatment because of their own moral beliefs.---
Don't you remember Hillary care? They already have this plan.
I'm appalled at the ignorance of all these women. Birth control is cheap and easy. Take two aspirin, hold them tightly between the knees,...
Nevermind that the white Europeans are not replacing themselves to maintain current population levels while the European moslems are doing the opposite. Can one imagine that the numbers of moslems may surpass the numbers of current white Europeans at sometime in the future?
But do you want to see the birth control PILL banned?
I got banned from DU for suggesting that the true "pro-choice" position would be to let medical professionals choose whether or not to participate behavior they consider immoral.
Not that I am aware of. My husband is a pharmacist and he has never refused to fill a prescription for birth control. Of course, if someone called him at 2 a.m. and demanded he open our pharmacy and fill it because they FORGOT he probably would tell them to call the next day. DUH! That's not refusing to fill a prescription. That's COMMON SENSE which is something these people are lacking.
The authorities have banned a number of different medications, because of unexpected adverse side effects, and birth control pills in various formulations have a history of long-term medical conditions that may not show up for YEARS.
This may have been the reasoning behind withdrawal of a particular formulation. The regulation of hormone levels is a highly individualized application of the art of medication, and what works perfectly well throughout the lifetime of one woman may be the exact wrong thing for another. Have you ever heard the term, "contraindication"?
Of course you would not be expected to open for such a thing! And I fully support anyone who does not want to fill any prescription. But I have been on threads here and folks have said they want bc pills gone.
But do you want to get rid of all bc pills?
Of course there are contraindications for any medicine for SOME people.
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