What's going on in Missouri

So I've been doing more research.

I did a lexis-nexis search of newspapers from MO, looking for newspaper articles about what actually happened in the Fenton incident. I haven't found one yet that tells me what happened AFTER the phamacist refused the prescription (it was a paper one), and BEFORE the media shitstorm.

But I did find this, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.


Group forms to fight Blunt's Plan B proposal

St. Louis-More than a dozen Missouri union and women's rights groups, along with some religious organizations, announced Wednesday that they've formed a new coalition to fight what they call Gov. Matt Blunt's "war on women."

"Governor Blunt has named his next target in his war on women -- and that target is birth control," said spokeswoman Stacey Newman after the new coalition's news conference at the Salad Bowl, 3949 Lindell Boulevard.

Called the "Coalition Against War on Women," the group is attacking Blunt's plan to push for a state law during the next legislative session that would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for Plan B, commonly known as the "morning-after pill."

The pill prevents pregnancy if taken within a few days after unprotected sex. It cannot disrupt an established pregnancy, but critics oppose Plan B because it can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus.

Planned Parenthood and other members of the coalition say that the pill contains the same ingredients as ordinary birth-control pills.

Replied Blunt spokesman Spence Jackson: "The majority of Missourians will disagree . . . and see it as a drug to abort an unwanted child."

.(St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Metro Digest, 11/10/05).

Emergency contraception is an issue at all MO pharmacies, not just at Target. This is some serious peril, folks. Why is it that the fight over the policy of a single corporation has been allowed to overshadow (maybe even play understudy to) potential legislation of an entire state?

Nobody has to shop at Target. Some people have to live in Missouri. I assume so, at least, because it's still claiming a population. I wonder, though, if Target might not have been so targetted if they didn't have an incident in the right state at the right time.

Maybe, too, it's easier for Planned Parenthood to start a campaign against a corporation beloved by and familiar to us east-coast blue-state abortion-lovin' sensitive folks, than it is to go out and start a campaign in a population that may or may not believe that the morning after pill is an abortifacient.