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Archive for May, 2005
words : panic and fury
Women in at least 12 states, including Wisconsin, Texas, North Carolina and California, have reported encountering pharmacists unwilling to fill their [birth control] prescriptions. “We’ve heard stories about them being turned away or referred to other pharmacies,” said Karen Pearl, national president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “And even more alarmingly, some women are being denied birth control and the pharmacist keeps their prescription. They are also being given moral lectures, religious lectures. Women are being told contraception is abortion, which it is not.” — Pharmacies Required to Fill Prescriptions for Birth Control
, Washington Post, April 1st 2005.
My panic continues, turned red hot with fury. I forgot to mention in my last panic post about another insidious angle of the world closing in: the fact that the ultra-conservative Christian right is clearly becoming more powerful and starting to share their “message” through lobbying, legislation, and biased media tools.
I heard about this story divx gunfight at the o k corral
on NPR’s All Things Considered this evening. True to form, they included interview segments with people on both sides of the issue. On the conservative side was the representative of an organization (I can’t remember which one, check the audio) that said they have been openly lobbying for legislation that permits pharmacists to not fill prescriptions based on the pharmacist’s own beliefs. On the other side, the interviewee (again check the audio for the name) said that not only have pharmacists refused to give birth control to unmarried women because they believe pre-marital sex is a sin, but that they also have refused to give birth control to married women, for some insane reason I can’t remember now. So pharmacists can now put a total kibosh on any sort of thoughtful family planning if they choose to, and there are people out there supporting their right to do this. INSANITY. Insidious insanity. Insidious scary red insanity.
I’m glad to see that the Governor of Illinois realizes how ludicrous this all is. He has issued an emergency ruling requiring that pharmacists fill all birth control prescriptions without delay
, in his state. But I’m really concerned about those lobbyists and the continued shift of this country’s values to the ultra-conservative Fundamentalist Christian, to the degree that the rest of us will be forced to live by their moral code whether we agree with it or not. The First Amendment right to freedom of religion will just be a sham. Or freedom of anything for that matter. How different will it be from living in a Fundamentalist Islamic state? Like those ones that Bush wants to turn into democracies. Help! When can we have our overthowing invasion???
In related news, it’s heartening to see that former Republican Sen. John Danforth says the Republican Party has become the political arm of Christian Conservatives.
