Un-conscience

In between watching with interest the disintegration of Tom DeLay, I still bristle at what is being done in this country by those who support him, namely the far-right theocracy that can only be called "the mainstream of the GOP" at this point. Never mind the hijacking of the legislative branch to try and force the courts to save Terri Schiavo (which, by the way, was supposedly all about denying her health care); how about this movement of pharmacists denying health care to women on religious grounds?

WASHINGTON, April 5, 2005 — Pharmacy counters are emerging as the latest battleground in the culture wars. Anecdotally, an increasing number of pharmacists have been refusing to fill prescriptions for the "morning-after" pill and other birth control medication they oppose on moral or religious grounds...

Charlie Green owns two pharmacies in Stockton, Calif., that do not carry emergency contraception — a high dosage of the birth control pill that is also known as the "morning-after pill" — because those medications can remove a fertilized egg.

"Life begins in my point of view when the sperm and the egg come together, and anything that stops that continued growth or the implantation — as far is I'm concerned — takes the life of that potential human being," Green said...

Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Dakota have laws allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research group. This includes birth control pills that can also remove an egg from the uterus after fertilization but before implantation.

They call these "conscience laws," and it almost fits, because you'd have to be unconscious to permit them. It must be hard to be conservative, arguing for health care on one side, against it on the other. I can't believe we've come to this point, where pharmacists are acting like the tribal elders from "Footloose" and stepping into a woman's personal decision-making process. Last I checked, Christians were under no federal obligation to be a pharmacist if it upsets them so much. In every country on Earth save Ceaucescu-era Romania and The Vatican, birth control is pretty much settled as legal, even here.

But this is the new tactic by the right, going individually, state-to-state, with their anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-evolution, anti-science agenda, creating ballot measures or legislative initiatives that make this country a patchwork quilt resembling Dark Ages-era Europe.

I have an idea for women up against this kind of nonsense; just fill some other prescription, and when they ask you to pay for it, just say "That's all right, I'm a Christian Scientist, I don't believe in medicine, I'm not going to pay for it." If they resist, just take them to court for violating your religious beliefs. I'm sure the "out of control" judiciary will oblige you.