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filkertomArrgh.
(Fair-use disclosure: I borrowed a few phrasings here and there from some wonderful bloggers, particularly some who hang out at Atrios.)
By way of huskiebear comes word of some lovely, simply lovely legislation:
http://tinyurl.com/2tnvy
The gist of it is, it would make it legal for pharmacists to decide not to give someone drugs based on what the pharmacists's beliefs are -- e.g., if the pharmacist thinks abortion is wicked, he or she can decide not to give a woman her prescription for birth control or morning-after pills, and can also refuse to transfer the prescription to a pharmacy that will.
Pharmaceutical activism, if you will.
As Les says, this is fucked up.
Y'know, it's been annoying me for a darn long time now that many conservatives, especially the Religious Right, say -- often in the same breath -- that they want both less government (i.e., privatization of potential profit centers, such as, oh, health care, prison management, education, pollution control, and even the military) and more government (i.e., the right to dictate people's personal behavior that would otherwise harm no one, such as, oh, homosexuality, birth control and abortion, religion or lack thereof, etc., etc., etc).
What they basically want is for their rules to apply to other people.
This would piss me off royally to begin with... but, at the risk of sounding flippant, the rules they invoke were thought up three thousand years ago by a bunch of illiterate goat-herders.
And, to this day, these morons see no contradiction -- logical, moral, or otherwise -- in taking away someone's legal rights because they, the morons, don't approve. Or believe their Big Invisible Superhero in the Sky doesn't approve.
Having believed, foolishly, for some years now that maybe religion wasn't so bad, as long as everyone kept it to themselves, I am now at the point of despising most major religions, because of the obvious intent of their followers to declare war on people who simply want to live their lives in their own way in conformance with the law but who happen not to belong to that religion.
And, to my friends who are religious: I love you dearly, but this is screwed up.
"An it Harm No One, Do What Thou Wilt shall be the Whole of the Law." Crowley was a nutcase, but he had that much right.
An embryo is not a baby.
A fetus is not more important than a mother.
A pharmacist is not a doctor.
A religious tenet, even a religious doctrine, is not more important than a law.
If you feel you must worship something, a god who directs you to hurt other people in any way is not a god worth worshipping.
A person who believes that a god directs them to hurt other people in any way needs help.
A person who hurts other people in any way in the name of his or her god is a criminal.
Perhaps most important of all: A person can have ethics, even morals, without belonging to a religion. And, according to the laws of our land as intended by the "Founding Fathers" the conservatives often invoke, freedom from religion is defended just as stringently as freedom of religion.
If you godly whackjobs want to run a country where you can oppress everybody who'll take it, go somewhere the fuck else.
Remember this, though: Your forebearers did just that, centuries ago. They were the Puritans, and they were so obnoxious and self-righteous that they pissed off the Dutch. They gave us such joys as the Salem Witch Trials, and were a perfect background for Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. They are the reason the First Amendment is worded the way it is ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances").
You, the religious conservatives of America, are completely in the wrong -- ethically and morally.
Leave us alone.
(Fair-use disclosure: I borrowed a few phrasings here and there from some wonderful bloggers, particularly some who hang out at Atrios.)
By way of huskiebear comes word of some lovely, simply lovely legislation:
http://tinyurl.com/2tnvy
The gist of it is, it would make it legal for pharmacists to decide not to give someone drugs based on what the pharmacists's beliefs are -- e.g., if the pharmacist thinks abortion is wicked, he or she can decide not to give a woman her prescription for birth control or morning-after pills, and can also refuse to transfer the prescription to a pharmacy that will.
Pharmaceutical activism, if you will.
As Les says, this is fucked up.
Y'know, it's been annoying me for a darn long time now that many conservatives, especially the Religious Right, say -- often in the same breath -- that they want both less government (i.e., privatization of potential profit centers, such as, oh, health care, prison management, education, pollution control, and even the military) and more government (i.e., the right to dictate people's personal behavior that would otherwise harm no one, such as, oh, homosexuality, birth control and abortion, religion or lack thereof, etc., etc., etc).
What they basically want is for their rules to apply to other people.
This would piss me off royally to begin with... but, at the risk of sounding flippant, the rules they invoke were thought up three thousand years ago by a bunch of illiterate goat-herders.
And, to this day, these morons see no contradiction -- logical, moral, or otherwise -- in taking away someone's legal rights because they, the morons, don't approve. Or believe their Big Invisible Superhero in the Sky doesn't approve.
Having believed, foolishly, for some years now that maybe religion wasn't so bad, as long as everyone kept it to themselves, I am now at the point of despising most major religions, because of the obvious intent of their followers to declare war on people who simply want to live their lives in their own way in conformance with the law but who happen not to belong to that religion.
And, to my friends who are religious: I love you dearly, but this is screwed up.
"An it Harm No One, Do What Thou Wilt shall be the Whole of the Law." Crowley was a nutcase, but he had that much right.
An embryo is not a baby.
A fetus is not more important than a mother.
A pharmacist is not a doctor.
A religious tenet, even a religious doctrine, is not more important than a law.
If you feel you must worship something, a god who directs you to hurt other people in any way is not a god worth worshipping.
A person who believes that a god directs them to hurt other people in any way needs help.
A person who hurts other people in any way in the name of his or her god is a criminal.
Perhaps most important of all: A person can have ethics, even morals, without belonging to a religion. And, according to the laws of our land as intended by the "Founding Fathers" the conservatives often invoke, freedom from religion is defended just as stringently as freedom of religion.
If you godly whackjobs want to run a country where you can oppress everybody who'll take it, go somewhere the fuck else.
Remember this, though: Your forebearers did just that, centuries ago. They were the Puritans, and they were so obnoxious and self-righteous that they pissed off the Dutch. They gave us such joys as the Salem Witch Trials, and were a perfect background for Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. They are the reason the First Amendment is worded the way it is ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances").
You, the religious conservatives of America, are completely in the wrong -- ethically and morally.
Leave us alone.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-18 08:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-18 09:04 am (UTC)Though in reality this won't bother women much because there are enough pharmacists to go to - it's the fact that there are people who try to get these things through, that's evil.
The right of one's own body must be defied. Rights can be taken away. It's a far more liberal climate here in Germany, but some years ago they started to force women who need an abortion to go to an "advice office" beforehand, where they can be talked out of it. Only then they get stamped papers which allow them to go to a clinic.
But I think George W. is on the right way with his space programme. Once they have a colony on Luna...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-18 09:11 am (UTC)As for the pharmacy bill, it's vile. Does this mean pharmacists with High Moral Standards can refuse to fill prescriptions for AIDs treatment drugs? Antibiotics and other drugs for STDs?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-18 10:25 am (UTC)Without spacesuits or supplies, of course.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-18 11:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-18 09:21 am (UTC)On the other hand, I do not think that either freedom or safety is served by forcing anyone to obey orders they believe are profoundly morally wrong. We have spent a long time drilling into people's heads that "I was just following orders" is not an excuse for their own behavior. We'd better expect those same people to insist on refusing orders when *they* -- not when you or I -- think it is morally necessary.
On the third tentacle, the correct way to do this if you are in a job which requires the performance of the duty in question is to resign and let your place be filled by someone who does not have the same qualms you do.
Upshot: I have plenty of sympathy for pharmacists who won't dispense abortofascients. I think they're stupid, but I don't require brains to sympathize with someone's moral dilemma. I think it is correctly solved by getting a different job, and they lose my sympathy fast if they try to stay in the one which requires them to dispense said drugs, while refusing to do the work.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-18 09:37 am (UTC)Pharmacists are not police.
Pharmacists are not part of the doctor-patient relationship.
Pharmacists aren't allowed to interpret law.
And, yes, it can be extended to lots of other things. Off the top of my head:
Is filling a scrip for Tylenol with codeine immoral because it potentially contributes to an addiction?
Will the pharmacist stop the sale of condoms, which might prevent a child from being conceived?
Howzabout not selling painkillers of any type to pregnant women because God said, "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children" (Genesis 3:16)?
Will grocers start enforcing dietary laws? Will clothing stores only carry garments approved before the sight of God? Where does it end?
Answer: It doesn't. These shitheads have, for their own reasons, given their lives over to Big Invisible Superhero in the Sky... and want to force the rest of us to kiss His nonexistent hems.
Upshot: I have no sympathy for someone who invades someone else's privacy, violates someone else's rights, and causes someone else harm -- in this case, potentially physical, emotional, financial, you name it -- because Big Kahuna Sez So.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-18 09:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-18 10:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-18 09:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-18 09:49 am (UTC)In Other News
Date: 2004-03-18 10:48 am (UTC)Getting back to pharmacists. I could understand if one of them decided that they could not morally distribute something for whatever reason, but they would have NO right to hold back the actual perscription.
Re: In Other News
Date: 2004-03-18 11:03 am (UTC)Again, the problem is Who decides? Since when does (as Les puts it) a clerk behind the counter at Walgreen's have the right, duty, privilege, and moxie to interfere in the doctor-patient relationship> On moral grounds, at that.
Re: In Other News
Date: 2004-03-18 11:10 am (UTC)I can hear it now: "Instead of the "Morning After" pill, take two asprin and call my priest in the morning"
The balls of Jesus
Date: 2004-03-18 11:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-18 12:09 pm (UTC)"Well, I don't care if it rains or freezes,
Long as I got my dribbling Jesus,
Making three-point-shots from our fore-court.."
I'm SO sorry. It was there. I had to let it out. :)
I seeeeeeeeeeriously doubt it will get anywhere. And even if it does, the courts will smack it down so fast it will make your head spin.
Personally, I'd like to somehow arrange it that, the next time the sponsors of this law visit, say, a steakhouse, they're served by vegetarian waitstaff. Who refuse to bring them dead animal because that would run counter to their deeply-held belief systems.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-18 01:51 pm (UTC)You know, three years and three months ago, I would have thought the exact same thing....
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-18 12:15 pm (UTC)If you feel you must worship something, a god who directs you to hurt other people in any way is not a god worth worshipping.
I agree. I have long held that if there is a god, he ought to care more about whether I'm a good person than whether I spend a lot of time praising him. I don't think he'd be that insecure. So basically I think it's most important to live an honorable and good life - that ought to be a good enough for any god worth his (or her or their...) salt. *grin*
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-19 12:40 am (UTC)True. But then very many of the "rules" discussed were not even thought of by the said goat-herders. They are merely based on the assumption that if they had written something about it, it would be what the self-appointed superpious would want. All written down on the lost stone slabs that contained the other 512 commandments.
My views - for what they are worth: Religion should help people to get along with each other in a reasonable way. Where it does not do that it fails its purpose and becomes nothing but a senseless power instrument to rule minds and manners. That has nothing to do with the divine.
And the relationship to God or whatever deity you believe or don't believe in is a private matter. To make it public is to draw attention and advertise it. And that's disgusting. Fortunately in Germany we do not have very many religious fundamentalists and they certainly do not rule the country, thank goodness.
Our constitution like yours guarantees freedom of religion. Of any religion. That can only be guaranteed if the law is above religion. Who otherwise would guarantee it?
I find the pharmacists legislation proposal very interesting.
Maybe a similar concept would help to abolish the death penalty? People who want to get rid of it should all apply for a job as an executioner and then refuse to carry out the death penalty on grounds of personal ethics. Fun idea?