As if there are more than four people who have ever read this blog- (P, R, R, N, M- maybe five of you), I'm still going to do a little link-n-sum of my personal Plan B brigade.
Basically, here's what's going on. On 11/01/05, Dan Savage wrote, in his column "Savage Love" of a dispute between Planned Parenthood and Target. It seems a pharmacist in a Fenton, MO Target refused to fill a 26 year old Planned Parenthood Patient's prescription. Target says that their policy is to allow pharmacists to refuse to fill emercency contraceptive prescriptions. I wrote an entry that day, threatening a boycott and linking to Target's website so readers could write to Target themselves.
I pondered this, and made a plan for further research. I went to the Planned Parenthood website, and found that a major point of contention between Target and Planned Parenthood is whether Target's policy allowing pharmacists to 'opt out' of filling prescriptions is standard for the industry.
I decided to investigate pharmacy procedures, other large chain pharmacies' policies, and the original incident in Fenton. So far, I've recieved replies from Brooks and Walgreens and CVS, while KMart gave me the brush-off. Today, I wrote about pharmacy procedures.
I've also written about the silent part of the debate behind this whole mess.
Friday, November 25, 2005
CVS Replies
Dear (Hobo Barista):
Thank you for contacting us about our prescription filling policies.
At CVS/pharmacy, we are committed to helping people live longer,
healthier, happier lives. In pursuing that goal, our pharmacists work
hard to ensure that our customers' prescription needs are promptly and
completely satisfied.
We remain committed to providing reasonable accommodations to our
pharmacists that have sincerely held religious beliefs that conflict
with their duty to fill prescriptions. However, we also remain focused
and committed to patient care. So in order to meet the prescription
needs of all of our patients in a prompt and timely manner, our policy
requires that a pharmacist who wants an accommodation for a sincerely
held religious conviction notify us before being asked to dispense a
medication to which they object. In this way, alternate arrangements
can be made in advance to ensure that these prescriptions will be filled
promptly in our stores.
Again, thank you for taking the time to share your comments with us.
Sincerely,
Christine Fleuette
CVS Customer Relations
Thank you for contacting us about our prescription filling policies.
At CVS/pharmacy, we are committed to helping people live longer,
healthier, happier lives. In pursuing that goal, our pharmacists work
hard to ensure that our customers' prescription needs are promptly and
completely satisfied.
We remain committed to providing reasonable accommodations to our
pharmacists that have sincerely held religious beliefs that conflict
with their duty to fill prescriptions. However, we also remain focused
and committed to patient care. So in order to meet the prescription
needs of all of our patients in a prompt and timely manner, our policy
requires that a pharmacist who wants an accommodation for a sincerely
held religious conviction notify us before being asked to dispense a
medication to which they object. In this way, alternate arrangements
can be made in advance to ensure that these prescriptions will be filled
promptly in our stores.
Again, thank you for taking the time to share your comments with us.
Sincerely,
Christine Fleuette
CVS Customer Relations
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Walgreens Replies
November 22, 2005
Dear (Hobobarista),
Thank you for taking your time to contact our Corporate Offices. We
appreciate hearing from our
customers and value all comments received.
Thank you for sharing your opinion with us in regard to dispensing of
contraceptive medication by our
pharmacists. Walgreens believes it has an obligation to meet the medical
needs of all of its patients. We
also believe we have an obligation to respect the wide spectrum of views
and beliefs of our 163,000
employees. At rare times these may differ.
To fairly resolve these situations, and where allowed by state law, we
believe it's reasonable to respect the
individual pharmacist's beliefs by not requiring them to fill a
prescription they object to on moral or
religious grounds. We also believe it's reasonable to meet our obligation
to the patient by having another
pharmacist at the store fill the prescription. If another pharmacist is not
on duty, we will arrange to have the
prescription filled at a nearby pharmacy before the patient leaves the
store.
Thank you for giving us an opportunity to respond to your concern.
Sincerely,
Kari G.
Consumer Response Representative
For those keeping score, we're waiting for CVS and Planned Parenthood to reply. After that, I'm going to talk a little bit about pharmacy procedures, to clarify exactly what is so morally repugnant to these christian pharmacists.
Dear (Hobobarista),
Thank you for taking your time to contact our Corporate Offices. We
appreciate hearing from our
customers and value all comments received.
Thank you for sharing your opinion with us in regard to dispensing of
contraceptive medication by our
pharmacists. Walgreens believes it has an obligation to meet the medical
needs of all of its patients. We
also believe we have an obligation to respect the wide spectrum of views
and beliefs of our 163,000
employees. At rare times these may differ.
To fairly resolve these situations, and where allowed by state law, we
believe it's reasonable to respect the
individual pharmacist's beliefs by not requiring them to fill a
prescription they object to on moral or
religious grounds. We also believe it's reasonable to meet our obligation
to the patient by having another
pharmacist at the store fill the prescription. If another pharmacist is not
on duty, we will arrange to have the
prescription filled at a nearby pharmacy before the patient leaves the
store.
Thank you for giving us an opportunity to respond to your concern.
Sincerely,
Kari G.
Consumer Response Representative
For those keeping score, we're waiting for CVS and Planned Parenthood to reply. After that, I'm going to talk a little bit about pharmacy procedures, to clarify exactly what is so morally repugnant to these christian pharmacists.
What we're afraid to say about sex
So there's the hpv vaccine.
There's emergency contraception.
There's abstinence only sex education.
And there are teenagers.
The HPV vaccine has been shown to be effective against Human Papilloma Virus (Genital Warts). HPV has been shown to be a cause of cervical cancers in young women. And yet there's a push-back against it. It is believed that parents wouldn't want their daughters vaccinated, for fear of giving them the "green light" to have sex.
Emergency contraception has been shown to prevent pregnancy up to 72 hours after unprotected sex. (Or, after contraceptive failure- makes it seem more responsible to say it that way)Emergency contraception has further been shown to be extraordinarily safe. (Let's remember, kids, tylenol can kill you when used improperly, as can coffee, and, if you're unlucky, peanut butter). But there's a reluctance to allow it to be sold over the counter. It is believed that if it were available over the counter, more teenagers (and women) might engage in unprotected sex.
The only sex education programs allowed to benefit from federal health education funding are abstinence only programs- programs that teach nothing about contraception or barrier methods of disease prevention, and emphasize the risks (mental AND physical) of premarital sex. The rationale behind this is that if you tell teenagers that they can have sex in a safer manner, they will perceive that as permission or even encouragement to have sex.
I'm going to say something groundbreaking here.
Get ready.
So what?
So what if teenagers are encouraged, by availability of contraceptives and tools of disease prevention to have sex? If these teenagers are making the decision that with the HPV vaccine banishing the risk of cervical cancer, condoms prevent aids and pregnancy, and the morning after pill, when used correctly, can prevent a broken condom from becoming a pregnancy- more power to them. How adult. How correct.
Basically, the prevailing argument about teens and sex from the right (and, by extension, everyone else and sex- there is a certain population that WOULD deny adult women access to these items in order to deny teenagers access to these items- they're called social conservatives), is that sex is too dangerous for teenagers, thus, we must make sure to let them know how dangerous it is so that fear will override libido. If we do anything to create the impression that sex can be at all safe, kids will start fucking immediately. So the best thing to do is make sure that sex has plenty of consequences, if they do have it. The left's weak, whinging counter-argument in recent years is that sex is dangerous, but if we give teenagers all the information and resources available, they still won't have sex any earlier than if we hadn't, and maybe when they do, it won't be so bad.
The left fails because their message isn't consistant. They weaken their own argument by conceding too much to the other side. And that's how the right is able to appear to beat them. The left says, and rightly, and logically, and bestly- that teenagers should be able to have safe sex, but that they really won't have any sex at all. That's silly. That's a contradiction. The right has easily been able to make that message look stupid. Of course, the right has only been able to do that because somehow, Americans have forgotten that teenagers become adults, and quickly. And the only way that screwing up sexually (discounting any religious beliefs) as a teen is going to seriously affect your adult life is by getting serious AIDs, HPV, or pregnant (or impregnating someone else). * Yes, your feelings might get hurt. You might find yourself emotionally scarred. But nearly everything you do as an adolescent might leave you emotionally hurt or scarred. People used to call that building character.
The right fails because their message only works on a moral playing field. Plus, they're the homogay. The reason their message works is what goes without saying after it, and what the left is too fucking pussy to contradict. The conservative message about sex is that we should keep it dangerous, and make the dangers clear, because teenagers (unmarried adults, gay people, etc) should not be having it. That implies that there is a reason, beyond the explicit dangers of sex, that teenagers should not have sex. And that reason, always unspoken, is that it is morally wrong.
And the left won't come out and say "We don't care if teenagers have sex or not". Or even "It's not wrong for teenagers to have sex" or even "It should not be public policy to prevent teenagers from having sex". That last one is my favorite. Pretend I put that last one first.
And why SHOULD it be public policy to prevent teenagers from having sex? Especially if the tools to make it at least as safe as adult sex exist and are widely available and instruction in their proper use is easily available?
There are reasons for teenagers not to have sex, but those have to do with the teenagers themselves, their culture, their beliefs, and most fundamentally, their family. It is the family's place to say "I know, it seems like you can have sex safely, but your dad and I believe that if you or anyone else touches your clitoris for fun, you'll burn in hell forever and ever". Or in another situation, "You know, knowing you, Suzy, and having been your mother for 16 years, I really wish you'd put off sexual intercourse and serious sexual contact for another few years. That's why your curfew is 8pm and you're not allowed to have boys in rooms with closed doors".
These conversations are similar to other conversations families have to pass on their values to young people who are gaining their independence. Imagine a young man entering high school. His family are observant jews or muslims or hindus. One of his parents might have a heartfelt talk with him (or fire-and-brimstone) about how he's gaining more independance now, but, as he's able to make more choices outside of the house, it's very important to them that he continue observing their dietary traditions (kosher or halal or other). Or even imagine a child raised by strict vegan parents-
their personal morals would dictate that the cheese sandwich in the lunch line was wrong. The child would know their parents beliefs, and the rationale behind those beliefs, even as her parents taught her and gave her the tools to act on those beliefs independently. (For example, learning to read labels and scan for casein and lecithin). Just the same, a christian family must be comfortable telling their child that even though sex might be safe, it is their belief, and very important to them, that they not indulge.
The only difference is that the vegan parents don't campaign for looser milk pasteurization standards, so that omnivorous children come down with a nice case of food poisoning every now and again, so their child can learn the dangers of eating animal products. The Hindu parent does not write to the television station demanding that they run more stories on bovine spongiform encephelopathy so that their children know that it's not just wrong, but dangerous to eat meat.
So why sex? Why do we, as a country, believe that the moral persuasive power of parents is so weak that we need to rely on scare tactics to force this one issue? It is just as morally subjective as whether or not to eat animal products, but we pretend that it is not. No one wants to say that it's ok for teenagers to have sex, because it is perceived as so potentially destructive to them. No one wants to say that we could make it less destructive for teenagers to have sex, because no one wants to be heard to say that it's ok.
And that, my friend is circular logic.
So I'm fucking breaking that circle.
INSOFAR AS IT IS SAFE, IT IS OK FOR TEENAGERS TO HAVE SEX.
Whether their families choose to encourage them not to, forbid them to, or punish them for- is none of my or anyone elses business.
*Why am I discounting other STD's here? Well, because proper access to healthcare will counterract the most serious effects of most other STD's. If girls have a good, open relationship with a physician, Gonorrhea and Chlamydia will be detected before reproductive damage would occur, just as in an adult woman. Same with boys. Same with syphillis. And herpes, while an effective scare tactic, just doesn't ruin your life the way people would like you to believe. The other varietal diseases- shigella, crabs, etc...same as one or the other.
There's emergency contraception.
There's abstinence only sex education.
And there are teenagers.
The HPV vaccine has been shown to be effective against Human Papilloma Virus (Genital Warts). HPV has been shown to be a cause of cervical cancers in young women. And yet there's a push-back against it. It is believed that parents wouldn't want their daughters vaccinated, for fear of giving them the "green light" to have sex.
Emergency contraception has been shown to prevent pregnancy up to 72 hours after unprotected sex. (Or, after contraceptive failure- makes it seem more responsible to say it that way)Emergency contraception has further been shown to be extraordinarily safe. (Let's remember, kids, tylenol can kill you when used improperly, as can coffee, and, if you're unlucky, peanut butter). But there's a reluctance to allow it to be sold over the counter. It is believed that if it were available over the counter, more teenagers (and women) might engage in unprotected sex.
The only sex education programs allowed to benefit from federal health education funding are abstinence only programs- programs that teach nothing about contraception or barrier methods of disease prevention, and emphasize the risks (mental AND physical) of premarital sex. The rationale behind this is that if you tell teenagers that they can have sex in a safer manner, they will perceive that as permission or even encouragement to have sex.
I'm going to say something groundbreaking here.
Get ready.
So what?
So what if teenagers are encouraged, by availability of contraceptives and tools of disease prevention to have sex? If these teenagers are making the decision that with the HPV vaccine banishing the risk of cervical cancer, condoms prevent aids and pregnancy, and the morning after pill, when used correctly, can prevent a broken condom from becoming a pregnancy- more power to them. How adult. How correct.
Basically, the prevailing argument about teens and sex from the right (and, by extension, everyone else and sex- there is a certain population that WOULD deny adult women access to these items in order to deny teenagers access to these items- they're called social conservatives), is that sex is too dangerous for teenagers, thus, we must make sure to let them know how dangerous it is so that fear will override libido. If we do anything to create the impression that sex can be at all safe, kids will start fucking immediately. So the best thing to do is make sure that sex has plenty of consequences, if they do have it. The left's weak, whinging counter-argument in recent years is that sex is dangerous, but if we give teenagers all the information and resources available, they still won't have sex any earlier than if we hadn't, and maybe when they do, it won't be so bad.
The left fails because their message isn't consistant. They weaken their own argument by conceding too much to the other side. And that's how the right is able to appear to beat them. The left says, and rightly, and logically, and bestly- that teenagers should be able to have safe sex, but that they really won't have any sex at all. That's silly. That's a contradiction. The right has easily been able to make that message look stupid. Of course, the right has only been able to do that because somehow, Americans have forgotten that teenagers become adults, and quickly. And the only way that screwing up sexually (discounting any religious beliefs) as a teen is going to seriously affect your adult life is by getting serious AIDs, HPV, or pregnant (or impregnating someone else). * Yes, your feelings might get hurt. You might find yourself emotionally scarred. But nearly everything you do as an adolescent might leave you emotionally hurt or scarred. People used to call that building character.
The right fails because their message only works on a moral playing field. Plus, they're the homogay. The reason their message works is what goes without saying after it, and what the left is too fucking pussy to contradict. The conservative message about sex is that we should keep it dangerous, and make the dangers clear, because teenagers (unmarried adults, gay people, etc) should not be having it. That implies that there is a reason, beyond the explicit dangers of sex, that teenagers should not have sex. And that reason, always unspoken, is that it is morally wrong.
And the left won't come out and say "We don't care if teenagers have sex or not". Or even "It's not wrong for teenagers to have sex" or even "It should not be public policy to prevent teenagers from having sex". That last one is my favorite. Pretend I put that last one first.
And why SHOULD it be public policy to prevent teenagers from having sex? Especially if the tools to make it at least as safe as adult sex exist and are widely available and instruction in their proper use is easily available?
There are reasons for teenagers not to have sex, but those have to do with the teenagers themselves, their culture, their beliefs, and most fundamentally, their family. It is the family's place to say "I know, it seems like you can have sex safely, but your dad and I believe that if you or anyone else touches your clitoris for fun, you'll burn in hell forever and ever". Or in another situation, "You know, knowing you, Suzy, and having been your mother for 16 years, I really wish you'd put off sexual intercourse and serious sexual contact for another few years. That's why your curfew is 8pm and you're not allowed to have boys in rooms with closed doors".
These conversations are similar to other conversations families have to pass on their values to young people who are gaining their independence. Imagine a young man entering high school. His family are observant jews or muslims or hindus. One of his parents might have a heartfelt talk with him (or fire-and-brimstone) about how he's gaining more independance now, but, as he's able to make more choices outside of the house, it's very important to them that he continue observing their dietary traditions (kosher or halal or other). Or even imagine a child raised by strict vegan parents-
their personal morals would dictate that the cheese sandwich in the lunch line was wrong. The child would know their parents beliefs, and the rationale behind those beliefs, even as her parents taught her and gave her the tools to act on those beliefs independently. (For example, learning to read labels and scan for casein and lecithin). Just the same, a christian family must be comfortable telling their child that even though sex might be safe, it is their belief, and very important to them, that they not indulge.
The only difference is that the vegan parents don't campaign for looser milk pasteurization standards, so that omnivorous children come down with a nice case of food poisoning every now and again, so their child can learn the dangers of eating animal products. The Hindu parent does not write to the television station demanding that they run more stories on bovine spongiform encephelopathy so that their children know that it's not just wrong, but dangerous to eat meat.
So why sex? Why do we, as a country, believe that the moral persuasive power of parents is so weak that we need to rely on scare tactics to force this one issue? It is just as morally subjective as whether or not to eat animal products, but we pretend that it is not. No one wants to say that it's ok for teenagers to have sex, because it is perceived as so potentially destructive to them. No one wants to say that we could make it less destructive for teenagers to have sex, because no one wants to be heard to say that it's ok.
And that, my friend is circular logic.
So I'm fucking breaking that circle.
INSOFAR AS IT IS SAFE, IT IS OK FOR TEENAGERS TO HAVE SEX.
Whether their families choose to encourage them not to, forbid them to, or punish them for- is none of my or anyone elses business.
*Why am I discounting other STD's here? Well, because proper access to healthcare will counterract the most serious effects of most other STD's. If girls have a good, open relationship with a physician, Gonorrhea and Chlamydia will be detected before reproductive damage would occur, just as in an adult woman. Same with boys. Same with syphillis. And herpes, while an effective scare tactic, just doesn't ruin your life the way people would like you to believe. The other varietal diseases- shigella, crabs, etc...same as one or the other.
Monday, November 21, 2005
KMart declines to reply.
Dear (Hobobarista),
Thank you for contacting Kmart.
Regretfully, we are unable to assist you with your request through this
department. Please contact your local Kmart pharmacy for further
assistance.
To locate the closest Kmart pharmacy, please visit www.kmart.com and click
on the store finder link located in the upper right of every page.
We appreciate your inquiry and apologize for any inconvenience.
Look for great bargains throughout the store and find Kmart exclusive
brands like Martha Stewart Everyday, Thalia Sodi, Joe Boxer, Route 66 and
Jaclyn Smith.
Angela M.
Kmart Customer Care
Thank you for contacting Kmart.
Regretfully, we are unable to assist you with your request through this
department. Please contact your local Kmart pharmacy for further
assistance.
To locate the closest Kmart pharmacy, please visit www.kmart.com and click
on the store finder link located in the upper right of every page.
We appreciate your inquiry and apologize for any inconvenience.
Look for great bargains throughout the store and find Kmart exclusive
brands like Martha Stewart Everyday, Thalia Sodi, Joe Boxer, Route 66 and
Jaclyn Smith.
Angela M.
Kmart Customer Care
Brooks Replies
Dear Brooks Pharmacy Customer -
As healthcare professionals, our pharmacists' primary objective is to provide our patients with superior health information and unmatched standards of care.
Our company position is that our pharmacists comply with the policies and procedures to ensure that appropriate care is delivered to our patients. This prohibits a pharmacist from refusing to fill a prescription based on any religious, political or moral beliefs.
Brooks Pharmacy has traditionally carried and dispensed the Plan B product in question to our patients who present prescriptions, and will continue to provide it.
Cordially,
Customer Care Dept.
As healthcare professionals, our pharmacists' primary objective is to provide our patients with superior health information and unmatched standards of care.
Our company position is that our pharmacists comply with the policies and procedures to ensure that appropriate care is delivered to our patients. This prohibits a pharmacist from refusing to fill a prescription based on any religious, political or moral beliefs.
Brooks Pharmacy has traditionally carried and dispensed the Plan B product in question to our patients who present prescriptions, and will continue to provide it.
Cordially,
Customer Care Dept.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Target, continued.
I really don't feel as if that letter told the whole story.
But I really, really need to be able to buy a three-pack of underpants for $3.46 without going to Wal-Mart.
I hate Wal-Mart.Let's have some honesty. I don't hate them for their recent healthcare scandal. Nor for theelitist traditional reasons of suburban sprawl, decimated town centers, the homogenization of America, musical censorship, and everything else that makes college students from recently arrived large square states insist that they patronize the Salvation Army while actually burning through Daddy's credit at Urban Outfitters.
I hate Wal-Mart because there is always some enormous woman in irregular stretch jeans and a stained kitten sweatshirt hefting her massive arms to swat at her equally disproportionate cracker-clotted children, who are frequently industriously working at leaving oily spots on each and every-ahem. There's always some fat bitch hitting her fat kids. And I don't need to see that. So Target it is. I'm poor, I need somewhere to buy things, and Goodwill isn't good for anything that needs to touch the goody bits or get plugged in to the wall.
This emergency contraception thing needs to be resolved.
Thus, I investigate.
Target says "As an Equal Opportunity Employer, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also requires us to accommodate our team members’ sincerely held religious beliefs...Our policy is similar to that of many other retailers and follows the recommendations of the American Pharmacists Association.", while Planned Parenthood interim president Karen Pearl insists "If Kmart, CVS, Costco and other chains can find a way to accommodate employees while still ensuring that patients receive timely, on-site access to their prescription medication, why can't Target?"
First step- resolve paradoxical information. I wrote to several large pharmacy chains, including two of those mentioned by the fine Ms. Pearl. I wrote to CVS, Brooks, Walgreens, and KMart. I suspect that their policies can't be uniform. CVS and Brooks/Eckerd are based in solidly blue-state New England, while Walgreens and KMart are based in Iowa and founded in Michigan, respectively. It seems to me that the further from the coast a state is, the more authority figures want women in that state to be pregnant. Of course, that's an absurd assumption.
But we'll see how it plays out.
Other areas of investigation-
a. pharmacy procedures.
What exactly does a pharmacist do? How is that qualitatively morally different than a catholic cashier selling condoms?
b. the missouri incident-
What exactly was at issue? was there a resolution? was the prescription transferred?
c. accessibility-
Are targets more likely to be located in rural areas? That might be a factor. Not a stated factor, but a possibility.
But I really, really need to be able to buy a three-pack of underpants for $3.46 without going to Wal-Mart.
I hate Wal-Mart.Let's have some honesty. I don't hate them for their recent healthcare scandal. Nor for the
I hate Wal-Mart because there is always some enormous woman in irregular stretch jeans and a stained kitten sweatshirt hefting her massive arms to swat at her equally disproportionate cracker-clotted children, who are frequently industriously working at leaving oily spots on each and every-ahem. There's always some fat bitch hitting her fat kids. And I don't need to see that. So Target it is. I'm poor, I need somewhere to buy things, and Goodwill isn't good for anything that needs to touch the goody bits or get plugged in to the wall.
This emergency contraception thing needs to be resolved.
Thus, I investigate.
Target says "As an Equal Opportunity Employer, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also requires us to accommodate our team members’ sincerely held religious beliefs...Our policy is similar to that of many other retailers and follows the recommendations of the American Pharmacists Association.", while Planned Parenthood interim president Karen Pearl insists "If Kmart, CVS, Costco and other chains can find a way to accommodate employees while still ensuring that patients receive timely, on-site access to their prescription medication, why can't Target?"
First step- resolve paradoxical information. I wrote to several large pharmacy chains, including two of those mentioned by the fine Ms. Pearl. I wrote to CVS, Brooks, Walgreens, and KMart. I suspect that their policies can't be uniform. CVS and Brooks/Eckerd are based in solidly blue-state New England, while Walgreens and KMart are based in Iowa and founded in Michigan, respectively. It seems to me that the further from the coast a state is, the more authority figures want women in that state to be pregnant. Of course, that's an absurd assumption.
But we'll see how it plays out.
Other areas of investigation-
a. pharmacy procedures.
What exactly does a pharmacist do? How is that qualitatively morally different than a catholic cashier selling condoms?
b. the missouri incident-
What exactly was at issue? was there a resolution? was the prescription transferred?
c. accessibility-
Are targets more likely to be located in rural areas? That might be a factor. Not a stated factor, but a possibility.
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