Uneasy Rhetoric

The Daily Kos has an excellent post on whether pharmacists should be allowed to refuse to dispense birth control pills on moral grounds.

Daniel Weintraub argues that the Kos has “exactly backward.” Weintraub says:

I support abortion rights and all kinds of birth control, but I fail to see a problem in private business owners deciding what products they want to sell in their store.

Wrong, Dan. The debate is not about a business decision, but about a personal decision. The legislation under consideration would allow individual pharmacists, regardless of company policy to refuse to sell birth control pills based on religious grounds. The pharmacist would not necessarily even be required to pass the prescription on to another pharmacist, and what would happen if there were only one pharmacist on staff that day? Kos’ post quotes a story which quotes a woman who missed a day of her pills because of her pharmacist’s decision. This increases her risk of unwanted pregnancy.

If a company wants to have a policy not allowing the dispensing of birth control pills, fine. However, I doubt major pharmacies would want to give up this multi-million (billion?) dollar business. Individual pharmacists should serve the wishes of the patient. At the very least, if a pharmacist is on staff who does not dispense birth control, that should be made clear, and an immediate alternative be made available.

I do agree with Weintraub when he says “Those of us who believe in birth control should patronize pharmacies that sell the products we want to buy while leaving the others alone…” How would a company feel if their pharmacy were boycotted because of the actions of their pharmacists refusing to sell a product the company chooses to carry?