The war on birth control has never been more asinine.

Posted on | by Mike

Here's an AP article that should make you angry. Evidently several anti-birth control pharmacists are refusing to dispense out birth control pill prescriptions based on personal moral grounds. Mind you it will often take a women at least a full-day to get the mess sorted out, in which case she may miss one of her pills. What's worse, state governments are moving to protect these actions:

Mississippi enacted a sweeping statute that went into effect in July that allows health care providers, including pharmacists, to not participate in procedures that go against their conscience. South Dakota and Arkansas already had laws that protect a pharmacist's right to refuse to dispense medicines. Ten other states considered similar bills this year.

Listen. A quick word for the pharmacists out there: We understand that this is a major issue for you, in which dozens of academic articles about your integrity and professional responsibility and everything else will provide fodder for your discussions. Let me give you ginandtacos.com's (and by us, I mean everyone who isn't a pharmacist) opinion: we don't care what you think. You have about as much say in our moral lives as the waiter at the Olive Garden. To us you are the person at the dry cleaner's with an advanced degree – we show up, hand you a sheet of paper, and you get us our product. That's it.

If you wanted to advise people on their health decisions and options, you should have studied harder and gone to med school. If you hate the idea of people using birth control picket a Planned Parenthood in your free time. But when you are behind that counter, you are a service-industry worker, and you better do whatever the customer tells you.

There are dozens of policemen, prosecutors and judges who object to The War on Drugs, but they don't refuse to arrest people or put them in jail because of their personal beliefs. Nobody is paying you the $$$ that pharmacists make to give you a soapbox – they are paying you to do your job and you should be fired for not doing it. I hate to tell you this (no wait, I love to tell you this), but birth control is perfectly legal in this country, and it is your job to dispense it. Find another one if you had an objection to it. You are not the first people to realize you could object to the parts of a job you don't like by doing a half-assed job (that would be the employees of the White Castle in Chicago Ridge, circa 1957).

To state governments – you are lawyers; again if you wanted to be doctors you should have studied harder. If you want to pass laws against birth control by all means try – but don't sneak measures forcing the health care industry to do, or not do, whatever you want. Doctors are professionals; if they say that birth control is an appropriate medical solution for the patient's situation it is the job of other doctors, and distinctly not the job of state congressmen and pharmacists, to object.

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