Dipping My Toe in the Controversy Pool

Yesterday the Washington Post ran a story about a new niche of pharmacies opening that cater to pharmacists who morally object to contraception...and feel it's their business to inject their personal beliefs into patients' lives. Yeah, I know, broad generalization, but when a professional who is trained and given the responsibility to dispense prescriptions objects to doing his or her job, then why should that person be given that responsibility in the first place? Why would that person want that responsibility?

During my last job, I had the opportunity to work with some pharmacists and learn about the pharmacy profession. What a lot of folks fail to realize is that pharmacists who earn their Pharm D have a lot of health and medical training. The job is not just about deciphering a doctor's scrawl, finding a bottle of pills on a shelf and counting out a particular number of those pills and putting them into a smaller bottle to give to a customer. What a lot of folks should realize is that if they really want to know about a drug, they should ask a pharmacist, not their doc(s) because more than likely, the pharmacist will have read and be aware of how a drug works in the body, how it can impact the body's functions, how it can screw up the body's functions and how it can interact with other drugs. Doctors? Eh, you can give 'em the benefit of the doubt--but I wouldn't stake my life and health on that.

So when I read about pharmacists refusing to dispense prescription contraception, I just get a wee bit infuriated. The pharmacist's job is to dispense a prescription drug and make sure the patient knows how to take it, knows what to do if she or he has reactions to it or misses a dose, answer questions the patient might have that are related to the prescription and, probably most importantly, do the best she or he can to make sure the prescription drug is right for the patient. It is not the pharmacist's duty to sit in moral judgment of the patient. Yeah, sure, you can pull the Nazi argument here--"Yeah, and the common Nazi soldiers at the concentration camps were just doing their jobs too!"--but that's not appropriate because we're not talking about killing, even if you belief life begins at conception (which is just to me a baffling and ignorant thing to believe based on what we know about fertilization and implantation and the odds for successful implantation). Contraception prevents fertilization or implantation or both (per good 'ol Merriam-Webster)--and one or both of these steps is part of conception. Therefore, if egg and sperm never have their little meeting or if their union never gets a toehold, if you will, then those folks who are who believe life begins at conception really don't have much life to protect.

So the way I see it, these pharmacists who claim to morally object to contraception are really morally objecting to sex. And it doesn't seem to matter who is having sex from what I've read because some of these pharmacists won't dispense contraception to married folks--and isn't within the bonds of marriage the only place where sex is supposed to be happening? These pharmacists are apparently really hung up on the notion that sex between humans is only for procreation purposes, and maybe they've been so busy reading about drugs (or praying and reading their holy books) that they've missed reading various scientific research reports indicating that within certain species on planet Earth--including us humans--sex isn't just about the act of procreating. Perhaps if we all were busy reading about pharmaceuticals (exciting, titillating stuff there, let me tell you) or busy praying and reading holy books, maybe we could ignore basic biological urges.

But here's what I'd like to ask these objecting pharmacists: You consider abortion wrong, therefore you didn't study to become a doctor who performs these procedures, yet you studied to become a pharmacist who has the duty to dispense contraception, which you morally object to--so what part of your logic and reasoning isn't functioning? I mean, math and I don't get along, therefore I didn't study to become an engineer or a math teacher or some other professional who relies on mathematics to conduct her work. Seems reasonable, right? What part of the reasoning flew right out the window when these persons decided to only partially fulfill the duties for which they've been trained and authorized to do? That's sort of like training and getting certified to work on death row (doubt such certification and training exists) but because you morally object to the death penalty, you only escort a condemned prisoner to the execution chamber but refuse to fulfill your duty to execute said prisoner.

Eh, I'm rambling here. Getting indignant and self-righteous with these issues ("Keep your morals out of my uterus!" and all that stuff) is far too easy, so I tend to analyze the thinking processes of these people I don't understand so that I might understand them better. But there's a hole, a leap, a something--a flaw, in my understanding of the logical progression that I would suspect has taken place--that defies my comprehension.

Something about the article itself (not the subject) irks me: "Many [birth control-free pharmacies] offer 'alternative' products, including individually compounded prescription drugs, as well as vitamins and homeopathic and herbal remedies."

Folks, compounded prescriptions are not alternative drugs. Many basic, common healthful items that we call drugs or nutritional supplements or health items have to be specially prepared and mixed through what is known as compounding. Compounded drugs aren't folksie, questionable, unresearched, unproven, potentially dangerous things. Hell, when one of my cats had her thyroid removed, the vet gave us a 'script for a calcium supplement that could only be filled by a compounding pharmacy because it had to be specially prepared. Calcium, folks. Nothing "alternative" there.

Also, there's an increasing amount of Western research indicating that those other "alternative" items do indeed have quantitative healthful effects and benefits. To associate these items in with, well, kooks who have a sexual hang-up and therefore won't sell a mother and father of four a pack of condoms because they can't afford to have kiddo #5 is just...bad writing and bad thinking.

Now that's something to really object to.