Catholic pharmacists and doctors refusing to dispense birth control

[lightningandsnow]

http://www.canada.com/news/story.html?id=472559&p=1

This makes me angrier than you can ever imagine.

The sheer amount of stupid just hurts sometimes.

edit: I have nothing against Catholicism or Christianity in itself. Just asshattery.

[Ian David]

1. Birth control kills the tiny little babies that live in your sperm. n/t

[Breeze54]

4. So does masturbation.

:P

It's such a waste of a life. :eyes:

[Ian David]

7. I could have populated entire galaxies by now. n/t

[Breeze54]

12. LMAO!

:rofl:

[Horse with no Name]

16. I think we should counter this with

filing child abandonment charges on all these assholes who masturbate.

[Breeze54]

18. LOL... except some would probably go along with that!

:crazy:

[nichomachus]

24. You laugh, but

In old-time Catholic thought -- around the time of St. Thomas Aquinas, the great theologian -- the belief was that the sperm carried a "homunculus," which was a little tiny man. During intercourse, the homunculus was deposited in the "vault of the vagina." If everything went well, nine months later a little boy would be born. If something went wrong -- such as the wind blowing from the southwest at the time of intercourse -- or some other horrendous thing, the homunculus would be damaged and a little girl would be born.

Once you understand this, you understand a lot about Catholic moral theology regarding sex -- and the church's attitudes toward women.

[Wednesdays]

25. Don't laugh too hard...that once was the mainstream theory

...that sperm cells were actually tiny babies. Check out this woodcut from the 17th century, depicting how a baby sits inside the cell:

[roguevalley]

37. fuckers. don't dispense viagra. don't dispense anything. this

annoys me more than a lot of stuff because the condescension, the destruction of people's lives that they promote because some guy in a dress decided that life begins at conception chaffs my ass. assholes.

[Breeze54]

2. Wrong! I CAN imagine it...

but it's happening in Canada too? Yikes!

I know there have been many here and it's been an ongoing battle/argument here in the states.

[defendandprotect]

3. Recognizing this, I'd be sure not to vote any Catholics into office . . . !!!

Look at the Supreme Court with religous fanatics now . . . !!!

[Breeze54]

5. That's a ridiculous statement. - It's the RETHUG FUNDIES who started this crap!

MANY Catholics are already in office and are Pro-Choice!

:silly:

[Ian David]

8. You mean Catholics like Ted Kennedy, one of our most liberal senators? n/t

[lightningandsnow]

9. Please tell me this is missing a "sarcasm" tag.

[Marrah_G]

13. Like Kennedy and Kerry? Aweful conservatives like those?

The idiocy and ignorance of people never ceases to amaze me.

[Djinn]

26. I thought it was a broadbrush statement as well

but are we talking the same "pro-choice" Kerry who said he'd have no problem appointing anti-choice judges "as long as it didn't lead to overturning Roe v Wade". I guess it's like giving Bush authorization to go to war in the belief that he wouldn't. Strange leaps of logic Kerry makes.

[uppityperson]

15. Fundamentalists and Fundamentalism is the problem.

Don't vote any Fundies into office. Fundamentalists take the Fun out of everything.

[JerseygirlCT]

30. Misogyny is the problem

And that comes in all sorts of flavors.

[anitar1]

6. Perhaps it is wise to question one's Dr as to their religious befiefs..

How could we know that a religious zealot would honor any of our wishes ?

[Jade Fox]

10. It is truly an outrage......

in multiple ways.

The thing that pissed me off most is people believing they have the right to refuse to perform the job they have chosen because parts of it offend their moral beliefs. Do the rest of us get to do that? If so, I declare that working period offends my moral beliefs, and demand the state support me!

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. 6.65 billion humans competing for life saving resources

Can't be wrong.

[Warpy]

14. If you can't do your job, FIND ANOTHER JOB

If anybody had ever refused me a prescription on moral grounds, I'd have written formal complaints to the state professional licensing board and the attorney general's office with copies to his employer SO fast...

If one's moral scruples are such that health care for half the population must be neglected, then one's moral scruples should send one into another profession where human beings won't be harmed.

I turned down a lab job testing a dangerous product because I knew nothing would make that product safer. The research was dedicated only to giving its users a false sense of security. I knew my own scruples would be in conflict with that job SO I FOUND ANOTHER ONE!

What the hell is so hard for these people to understand?

If you ever run into one of them, WRITE LETTERS and LODGE FORMAL COMPLAINTS!

These people MUST be removed from contact with patients.

[Horse with no Name]

17. My thought is to ALLOW ANYONE to impose their personal beliefs at work

However...any pharmacy that refuses to dispense ANY legal drug should not be eligible for any third-party payer insurance, medicaid, or medicare reimbursement because they are refusing to follow a licensed physician's order.
THAT is how this crap should be handled because I guarantee that CVS, Walgreens, or any other retail pharmacy would cease to exist if they had to depend on a cash only business.
Force them to put their money where their mouth is and see what wins.
Values vs. Money.
I can pretty much tell you how this one will end.

[lightningandsnow]

19. I agree.

[JerseygirlCT]

31. Yes. These people are not only wrong, ethically

but dangerous to women's health. It cannot be allowed.

They absolutely have the right to refuse to do anything that offends their morals. They do NOT have the right to have a job that requires them to do so and then refuse to complete the job. Find another line of work if your morals so demand.

I don't understand why this is so difficult to understand, really. Or is it just that people want to feel moral and upright so long as the only person who has to sacrifice for *their* morals is someone else?

[lightningandsnow]

20. self-kick

I want more people to see this.

[NAO]

21. Their employers should refuse to dispense PAYCHECKS

they should be FIRED on the spot.

[lightningandsnow]

36. Indeed.

I like how you said it.

[crimsonblue]

22. Doctors have every right to decline to offer service to which they have ethical objections...

It's a basic premise of the hypocratic oath. That being said, doctors and pharmacies are obligated to assist individuals in finding the medical care that is being declined. I've talked to my dad about this before, and he said while he has never himself declined to offer a particular service, his office's practice has guidelines set up specifically for cases like this. It's usually as simple as walking 20 feet down the hall and asking a colleague to write a prescription or make a referal.

[Ilsa]

23. But they say they can't help the client get what they need...

they say it is the same as doing it for them. That is one big problem alot of clients have with them. Pharmacists refuse to dispense and refuse to return the prescription.

I won't do business with anyone that is going to try and exercise their beliefs on me.

[crimsonblue]

29. After a few minutes of googling, I found some new info..

The premise for my previous comment was an a new opinion issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) last fall stating that "who have religious or moral objections to "standard practices," such as abortion, sterilization or the prescribing of contraceptives, are not ethically obligated to provide those services but do owe patients a timely referral to another doctor willing to deliver them." (source: http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2008/04/14/gvsc0414.htm">AMA-assn.org)

However, it seems that the ACOG has backtracked a bit, because there were lots of doctors complaining that they couldn't perform medicine in accodance with their beliefs. IMO, this is BULLSHIT. The field of medicine is a field of Science, not Religion. Religious beliefs have no right or reason to be infused at all into medical decisions. Any and all decisions should be made according strictly to scientific standards. The doctor is merely the vessel for the healthcare. The patient, not the doctor is supposed to be in charge of their health care decisions.
Here is a breakdown for doctor conscientous refusal laws throughout the country:doctor refusal right's in the US

[riderinthestorm]

35. Those are some great links!

Whenever this debate comes up, I think of that scene in a movie where a westernized Afghani woman journalist was trying to find her sister in Kabul after the US bombing. She was trying to cross this deserted stretch of countryside and gets stranded. She finds a "doctor" who can't examine her because of the religious beliefs (no strange men can have contact with women etc.) and so he must peer at her through a small 1 inch hole in a screen to "treat" her.

Bottom line is that crazy religious beliefs often slide into crazy medical practices, and the situation in Afghanistan, while extreme, demonstrates what can happen when you let religion influence medicine.

The woman in the film wasn't really sick, just stranded, but what if she WERE really sick? And only a woman physician were "allowed" to examine/treat her per their religious beliefs? Well that woman would be shitouttaluck there. There's no other physician 20 feet down any hall. In reality, it's a known fact that there's less than a handful of women physicians in all of Afghanistan.

The US taliban wouldn't mind it one bit if we get on that slippery slope whereby religion can worm it's way into medical care. It's really a tragedy that this idea gets any traction.

[Djinn]

27. I hope for those doctors' sake

if they ever need a ambulance the paramedic isn't an atheist with ethical objections to treating religious fundamentalists.

Of course an atheist holding those objections wouldn't be considered so righteous in the land of the long white prayer.

[JerseygirlCT]

32. The problem with this is that those services are often NOT

available twenty feet away.

How about rape victims sent to a Catholic hospital? Is she supposed to order up that ambulance and head around town until she finds someone willing to explain emergency contraception?

No. If they are not willing to provide services, they need a different line of work. Someone not willing to offer birth control should not go into general medicine or gynocology. Someone not willing to dispense legal medications such as birth control might consider working only at retirement centers.

The patient is not the one who should be inconvenienced or put into danger. That's the practitioner's job, since it's the practitioner's moral choice we're dealing with here.

[EFerrari]

33. The Hippocratic Oath has no basis in science. It is a tradition

that cloaks science in mysticism and only that.

And for many women, getting the care they need is most certainly not as simple as walking down a hallway. Try, driving across the state or even, to another state, if you have the resources to do that.

"Ethics" means the greatest good for the greatest number. It has nothing to do with an individual's belief in a sky god. Any man of science that puts his personal beliefs ahead of his patient's material health should be stripped of his license.

[Monk06]

28. Dr. Rene Leiva is required by the Canada Health act to provide all

treatments and procedures covered by the Act
If he refuses to provide any treatment under
the act he should be barred from billing the
system for any of his services.

Oh and the Canadian Medical Association can
butt out. That cabal of reactionaries have
been trying to destroy Universal Health care
in Canada. Now they are using right wing
Catholics as a wedge.

You think they would have learned their lesson
after the Nazi Duplessis era in Quebec. After
30 years of Duplessis during which the Catholic
Church set public policy in the province, Quebecers
turned they're back on Catholicism. Now only 20% of
Quebecers attend church and the majority do not even
bother to get married.

[bean fidhleir]

34. Shades of the '50s!

And there are people who think there's something wrong with me for having run away from the Church and its medievalist, anti-rational idiocies. The finest minds of the dark ages, and you can recognize them by their period clothing.

[ZombieHorde]

38. This is like vegetarian pizza delivery people refusing to deliver pizza with meat on it.