Illinois takes a step to the Right on Plan B

In 2005, Governor Rod Blagojevich issued a executive order requiring Illinois pharmacists to dispense emergency birth control, regardless of any pharmacist's personal beliefs about birth control.

This past August U.S. District Judge Jeanne Scott ruled that the governor's order does not require individual pharmacists to dispense Plan B, but does requires pharmacy owners to make it available.

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Under the settlement, filed Friday without fanfare in the U.S. District Court in Springfield, Illinois pharmacies must fill prescriptions for Plan B and other emergency contraceptive pills "without delay," as Gov. Rod Blagojevich decreed in 2005. But individual pharmacists who believe dispensing the pills would violate their religious beliefs don't have to get involved. Instead, the customer can receive the medication from the pharmacy owner or another employee after an off-site pharmacist approves the prescription by phone or fax.

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Friday's settlement -- reached in mediation among the pharmacists, the state and Walgreen Co. -- emerged from one of those lawsuits and was hailed Wednesday by all parties as a win-win solution.

"This rule makes it easier for the pharmacies to comply with the law," said Robyn Ziegler, press secretary to Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan. "It will help to ensure that women are protected, as the law intended."

Francis Manion, who represents the anti-abortion pharmacists, called the settlement "a good step in the right direction."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-morningafteroct11,0,1905373.story

So women get the meds they want at the pharmacy of their choice, and anti-choice pharmacists get to salve their consciences. What's wrong with that?

Well, the pharmacists' refusal to dispense legal medication. Their refusal to execute all the duties of their job. The judgement they bring in refusing to dispense this particular medication, while making no such presumptions about any other meds.

I've never been to one Walgreens that didn't sell a wide variety of tobacco products and junk food. Many of them sell liquor too. Any cashier that refused to ring up those purchases would be out on his or her ass. But they are responsible for ending many more lives than Plan B is responsible for preventing.

I'm disgusted by this compromise. It is a chink in the wall of women's rights and - as comments from the pharmacists themselves make clear - only the first in what they view as more steps to the Right.

It's a drug, prescribed by a profesional and it's the duty of another professional to fill the scrip. They have a lock on that job description and to retain that license they should have to fill every damn scrip brought to them. We shouldn't allow personal preferences in professional services. Personally I think doctors that refuse to do abortions should lose their licenses and Catholic attorneys that won't do divorces should be de-barred. The state grants you the privelege to practice and you shouldn't be able to discriminate.

rather than de-barred.

And I know some pharmacies also specialize in their way, for instance a local pharmacy that was known to specialize in helping AIDS patients in the early years of that disease. And I don't suppose you can obtain any kind of birth control at a Catholic hospital pharmacy.

But drugstores like Walgreens and CVS are designed to serve the general public, so their staff should be obligated to do so.

What if you get raped and you need a plan B and the only Walgreens in town open has a Jesus Freek as the clerk. Could you sue Walgreens for forcing you to have your rapist's child? Or do zygotes now have more rights than women?