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Protect birth control!

mood: pissed off
music: When He Danced with Me
It's official: Americans can no longer take prescription birth control for granted. Yesterday, Monday, July 25, anti-choice representatives in the U.S. House made it clear that they support pharmacies that refuse to fill birth-control prescriptions - and that women have no right to birth control.

The radical right's campaign to stop birth control
The House Small Business Committee held a hearing on whether pharmacies should be allowed to refuse to fill women's prescriptions. Anti-choice Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told a witness, who had been denied birth control and emergency contraception by her pharmacist, that she had no "right" to her prescriptions - she only believed she did. Anti-choice Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) told a witness whose prescription had also been rejected by a hostile pharmacist, that her "minor inconvenience" - that is, risking an unintended pregnancy - was nothing compared to the "conscience" of a pharmacist.

The right's anti-birth control campaign doesn't stop in Washington, DC. Across the country, the radical right has engaged pharmacies in its campaign to block women's access to birth control. Women like Julee Lacey, a 32-year-old married mother of two and first-grade teacher from Texas, are being turned away by vigilante pharmacists who think it's their job to dispense morals instead of medicine.

Now, as many as 20 states officially protect pharmacists like Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life, who says she'd lecture women customers to get off the pill. Other states are pursuing an even more aggressive strategy. Just last month Wisconsin passed a bill to block state universities from filling birth control prescriptions.

What you can do
Tell your Member of Congress that you expect him or her to stand up for you - not right-wing pharmacies that oppose birth control. Click here to send a message today.

Posted on Jul. 27th, 2005 at 08:42 am | | Cast a spell? | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend

Comments


[info]menolie

Interesting - so it's illegal to have a copy of the 10 Commandments anywhere near a courthouse, but it's okay to pass bills/laws/etc. that allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions based on personal conviction? *sigh* (What's next, they decide that the only cure to obesity is to eat less, so they refuse to fill weight-loss related pills?)

Geesch, what's scary is that it sounds like they've decided that everybody only takes the pill for birth control and not for other medical reasons.

i.e. I was put on it when I was 16 after my stomach ulcers to keep me from having a period for x-many months because I was so anemic. I didn't have sex for the first time until almost 3 years later, so my going on the pill definitely had *nothing* to do with sex.

Heck, I'm on it again now - not (just) because we don't want kid#2 yet, but because I want to regulate my cycles after having a baby. After my first period lasting 3 weeks, I *wanted* something to get me back on track so that it would be more predictible.

My sister went on the pill back in HS because she, like my mother and I have *really* bad cramps, and the pill helped it.

I'd love to see them denying my mother her birth control pills several years ago...she had her tubes tied and stayed on the pill for the time between that operation and several years later (10?) when she had a hysterectomy. I would have loved to see a pharmacist doing their best to refuse birth control only to find out that it was being taken for cramps by a woman who didn't need to worry about birth control ;-)
Posted on Jul. 27th, 2005 04:23 pm (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]benkenobigal

When I was younger and my hormones were just starting to screw up, I was on birth control, too. I wasn't sexually active, I needed it to not have excrutiating cycles and for them to be regular. If I hadn't had them, I would have had a miserable time! I can't imagine what I would have done if a pharmacist just said I couldn't have them!!
Posted on Jul. 28th, 2005 03:09 am (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply

[info]meezergal

Yet most if not ALL of these people support insurance covering Viagra because "impotence is a disease, pregnancy is not"...and that is indeed a quote. Frightening, isn't it???

That's why I support NARAL and Planned Parenthood.
Posted on Jul. 27th, 2005 09:08 pm (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]benkenobigal

Oh for crying out...pardon me while I vomit!! If men got pregnant, abortions would be 25 cents!! I am so sick of this BS!
Posted on Jul. 28th, 2005 03:10 am (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply

[info]sajazz

Nice...talk about taking away another freedom of choice. You guys have a weird government. I thought ours was weird. ;)
Posted on Jul. 28th, 2005 03:00 am (UTC) | | Thread | Reply

[info]benkenobigal

It's the fundies who are in control that are weird!! I know the pendulum swings as time goes by, but this is ridiculous!! I don't want it to go back to how it was before Roe vs Wade!! :(

Heard that there are some places in Canada that have passed laws that allow pharmacists to refuse to fill BC prescriptions, too. Man alive...the idiocy is spreading!!
Posted on Jul. 28th, 2005 03:12 am (UTC) | | Parent | Thread | Reply