Fill My Rx or Get a New Job

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All of these pharmacists who are refusing to give women life-saving medication are the most ridiculous pieces of crap on the planet. I don’t give a damn about their religion. If you are so religious that you allow your beliefs to interfere with your work—and your duty to save lives—then you shouldn’t be in medicine. I also don’t think that people actively against abortion or birth control should be doctors, but that’s another post.

I just read about a pharmacist in Idaho who refused to fill a patient’s prescription for a medication that would help her if she had bleeding problems following an abortion. Where does this medical misogyny end? Why is it legal for a person to deny another the medicine—that she is paying for, no less—that could save her life on “moral grounds”? Why must women always jump through hoops when it comes to their health?

Thankfully Planned Parenthood is suing, but that’s just as infuriating because they shouldn’t have to. It’s freaking 2011; by now we should have safe, foolproof birth control, 99.99% safe pregnancies, and a plethora of other health breakthroughs for women largely due; since we don’t—and since things like breast augmentation medicines and boner inducers take precedence over all of these things—we’re going to be stuck with the best we can do, which includes the medications that pharmacists so reluctantly dole out.

I know it’s a double standard and I know that it’s simply out of anger, but I wish I could work as a pharmacist just for a week and randomly deny prescriptions—or, better yet, those that I’m morally against.

Your kid has ADHD? Well, maybe, but what if it’s just that he needs more time with you and less with homework and TV and processed food? Yeah, I’m morally against over-diagnosing kids and medding them up with drugs. I’ll have to ethically deny your prescription. You want Viagra? No way, dude, what if you’re a rapist? I can’t help you rape someone. You want hormones? What if you’re chemically castrated for being a sex offender and you’re trying to reverse the effects to strike again? Hey, it might sound far-fetched but it’s a possibility. What if you’re popping pain pills because your doctor is really just your legalized pusher, and you’re addicted, and you’re an ass to your kids and family while you get high on vicodin all the time? Yeah, it might be a long shot, but why take the chance, sir?

There should be no politics in medicine, period. Too bad that’s pretty much all it is in this country. And though I'm not one to normally cry for litigation, as far as any women who get sick or face health complications from being denied a prescription, they should be able to sue the pants off any pharmacist (as well as his or her company) who denied her medication.