A new low:

A nurse practitioner at an Idaho Planned Parenthood called a local Walgreen’s pharmacy to fill a prescription for Methergine, a medicine used to prevent or control bleeding of the uterus following childbirth or an abortion. The pharmacists refused to fill the prescription unless the nurse told her whether or not the patient had an abortion. Because of patient confidentiality laws, the nurse refused to disclose that information, and asked for a referral to another pharmacy. The pharmacist hung up.

Let’s recap: A nurse practitioner needed a medication to prevent bleeding. The pharmacist refused to fill it without knowing if the patient had an abortion because… why? If the patient had terminated a pregnancy, the pharmacist would refuse to give her medicine to stop bleeding? That is how you kill people.

75 replies on “Situational Pro-Life Ethics”

  3. I don’t understand why we, as a society allow this sort of thing. There’s been a big flap here over some marriage commissioners in Saskatchewan refusing to marry same sex couples, and the court ruled against them, saying as public employees, they could not allow their religious beliefs to interfere with their ability to do their job. Can you imagine what would happen if an atheist employee at Borders refused to sell a customer a bible?

  6. Hatefilled christianists are everywhere. The ‘good’ christians will jump up to counter this bullshit amongst their own, right?
    [crickets chirping]

  7. Those people should be out of a job. Also, the permalink link on the above post is broken, and it’s messing up the visual style of SLOG. I shall refrain from tagbombing this time, as I have faith in the mods’ ability to notice this post without it.

  10. Is there a reliable way to determine if a particular pharmacy does this kind of bullshit? I’ve never needed EC, and don’t foresee ever needing it, but I don’t want to give my business to anyone that does this kind of shit.

  11. Isn’t this allowable in Washington state? Did they change the rules that a pharmacist can refuse to fill a prescription (with a few guidelines, sure)? This is outrageous. And you can’t sit back and say, well that’s Idaho for you. It’s not just Idaho, people, it’s our whole country (minus a few states).

  13. @ 1, 10, 11/12, from the linked article:

    Legislation was passed last year giving pharmacists and other health care providers the right to refuse to provide any health care service or dispense any drugs that violates their conscience.

  14. @13 Yep, read that. I think that can happen in WA, too. How about Colorado?

    Also, if you’re in Nampa, you’re much more likely to find a right-wing nut job on the other end of the phone, since NNU *is* the town.

  15. @3 Well, it’s hard for me to imagine an atheist refusing to sell someone a Bible, Canuck. Reading the Bible is how you make atheists. Xtian employees should be the ones afraid of giving Bibles to people who actually intend to read them. I think it hurts their numbers.

  17. So, I guess healthcare service providers can now stop treating Christians (or non-believers, too) because it violates their conscience.

  18. I have been an ObGyn for over 25 years now and am very familiar with this drug. It is most commonly used to decrease bleeding after a delivery or a miscarriage. Any competent pharmacist should know this. This pharmacist could have been responsible for this patient requiring hospitalization, a blood transfusion, surgery, or dying. This is unacceptable.

  19. Just another addition to the heap of evidence that “anti-abortion” has nothing to do with “pro-life” and everything to do with “pro-negative-consequences-for-women-enjoying-sex.” That’s the only thing they’re ever consistently for, anyway.

    They don’t deserve this, but maybe someone should invest in hiring a mob of hookers to get all these sad sacks laid so they’ll stop resenting those of us with a sex life?

  20. Your argument would be valid, OuterCow, if the words “reading” and “Christian” appeared in the same sentence more than twice a year. (…perhaps they just want them for thumping?…ba dum bum…)

  22. Dearest Canuck and OuterCow,

    Virtual hugs, darlings. At present I’m working my way through all 22 gospels (the scholars version, of course).

    Ps. They work great for pressing leaves, too. Thick and heavy. Plus the erotic poetry makes for more interesting reading than the phone book does. “Awake, north wind, and come, south wind! Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread abroad. Let my lover come into his garden and taste its choice fruits…

    Now… back to that bass line. 😉

  23. Kim, we few oxymoronic logical people of faith salute your efforts to bring Christianity down to the human level again.
    Goodness knows how difficult it can be to have a scientific mind sometimes in the pagan world.

    That being said, Fuck all those hypocritical conservative bastards. I’ve had arguments with seemingly level headed people about how pro-life is a marketing term for the right wing. They call me a brain washed lefty. And then articles like this show up to add to my side.

  24. Kim, you are, of course, the exceptional exception to the rule! I like the sound of those Gospels…throw in a few randy Scotsmen in kilts, and you’d just the sort of thing I’d want to curl up with on a rainy day…:)

  27. Kim, you rock! We’ve never met, so why am I so sure that…
    “Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.”

  29. If your “conscience” makes you unable to do your job, you should find yourself a new job. As a pharmacist your job is to dispense drugs that are prescribed by a Dr not to judge the patient.

    I sell computers. If I were Amish and it was against my religion to use a computer I could not keep my job.

    If you’re a Scientologist your faith is against Psychiatry so you couldn’t be a psychiatrist.

    If your faith says you can’t give out the drugs that a Dr prescribes then you can’t be a pharmacist.

    The most ridiculous part about this is that nobody was asking this pharmacist to give out a med that caused an abortion. It was a drug to stop internal bleeding. This supposedly “pro-life” pharmacist was going to give this woman a death sentence because she didn’t approve of how she got her injuries.

    I can’t say this enough. If your religion restricts you from doing your job you need a new job.

  30. @25
    Not allowing someone to buy a drug that will save their life.
    That is how you kill people and still pretend that you give a damn about “life”.

  31. This is so Fucked up…

    So I’m at the big rally.

    And I empty my Glok into the crowd.

    but damn! the slide pinches my hand like a mutherfucker! and makes it bleed….

    so I go into the drugstore next to the rally but the guy looks at me in disgust and is all “dude- get your own freakin’ bandaid…”

    Is that Fucked Up?!

    It’s, like, his Job, dude, to get me a fuckin bandaid!

  34. Actually, #29, a pharmacist’s job is not simply to dispense whatever the doctor prescribes. If that were true people would be dropping dead or at least becoming gravely ill as a result of a doctor’s prescribing the wrong med, writing the incorrect dose, etc. Luckily, a good pharmacist intervenes as needed to correct those situations. That said, I agree with your comment that a pharmacist’s religious ‘conscience’ should not interfere with his/her ability to ensure proper care and safety of patients.

  37. I suspect that this pharmacist felt that since anyone who had an abortion is already hellbound, the rest of their life is meaningless. The sooner that person dies and stops negatively influencing others, the better. And if they can provide an example of why abortion is dangerous by bleeding to death, why, all the better!

    I rather hope I am wrong, because that is deeply sick.

  38. So it turned out the Arizona shooter was an atheist.
    Just like you, Dan.

    And very critical of religion.
    Just like Dan.

    He is a registered Independent who did not vote in 2010.

    And he does not watch Fox News or listen to talk radio.

    Slog/Danny spent days pissing themselves into a rabid lather blaming the shootings on Palin/Beck/GOP/etc.

    We must have missed the post where it was all retracted.
    Where Danny said “sorry I am a hysterical bigoted little pussy and I got it all WRONG but that didn’t keep me from shooting my mouth off…..”

    Don’t you think Atheists Spoil EVERYTHING, Danny?

  40. Maybe I miss read it, but the reason for the prescription was not given. The pharmicist refused, because the nurse refused to betray the patient’s confidentiality. Yes, an abortion could be the cause, but so could other conditions like a D&C for a tumor or a spontaneous miscarriage of a wanted fetus. This person acted like an arse, a controlling and judgemental arsehole, in my opinion. Hopefully, the woman didn’t have to suffer.

  41. Dear troll,
    Funny. Dismissable.

    Anyway, my cousin needed this drug, she just told me, after each of her children were born. In Nampa. While her husband attended NNU.

  42. Ta Sloggers. xo

    And, I forgot to mention post childbirth is another reason. I don’t remember the name of what they gave me, but I required medication to stop the bleeding. Very frustrating after having a “natural” L&D.

  43. And the unregistered troll proves my point perfectly. Your ilk doesn’t want to “save babies.” You want to kill women. Hence all your talk about “karma” and “what goes around comes around” in reference to medicine that saves lives, does not kill fetuses, and for all you know was being used on a person who just gave BIRTH.

    Unless she should die anyway for choosing to give birth at Planned Parenthood instead of in a Church? It’s amazing how you morons pull the trigger with such ease in the name of “life.”

  44. @22 – in my former life as an in-all-ways-repressed christian, i remember the first time i read ALL the way through the bible. song of songs freaked me the FUCK out. there’s no way that shit isn’t sex, but that so didn’t jive with the SEX IS BAAAAAAAD ideology i’d been taught. i just skimmed it and moved on to the next with a confused shudder. it’s sort of amusing to me now. 🙂

  45. @10: I don’t know if it’s reliable, but before filling a script at a new pharmacy I always ask if Plan B is available there. They’ve always said yes so far, and I tell them plainly and clearly, “Good, because I will not do business with a pharmacy that doesn’t provide it.”

    Shit, maybe I need to add this drug to my speech. *shaking head*

  46. AmyC @ 44,

    I think I like sex way too much, so reading it didn’t freak me out. There is too many other things that pissed me off or freaked me out found within those pages. So many mistranslations and interpolations, too. One of my favorite is the parable of the leaven. To read it literally is provocative to say the least. I guess it isn’t read literally and gets a cherry picked meaning or is ignored all together.

    When speaking of the kingdom, Jesus would say: “What does God’s imperial rule remind me of? It is like leaven (or yeast) that a woman took and concealed in forty pounds of flour until it was all leavened.” Luke 2:21-22

    Provocative, because leaven is a symbol of moral evil, impurity, and the unclean in the Bible. Unleaven is the proper symbol of the divine (Exodus 12:19; Mark 8:15; Galatians 5:9; 1 Corinthians 5:7). Provocative, because their is no claim that the dough becomes unleavened or is made clean. Literally it says that the divine has been redefined, so it is no longer clean, and that the divine now identifies with the impure. To a crowd that obsesses over holiness, purity, conformity…, and uses guilt as a compliance and sometimes a fund raising tool, it is provocative if not a blasphemous thing to consider. Hence, Song of Songs was an enjoyable read.

  47. This is appalling…how many people have to die before the fundies are satiated?? I wish that law saying pharmacists could refuse medication hadn’t been passed…what possible good could come out of that?!

  49. Wouldn’t this legislation mean that every pharmacist in the state of Idaho could refuse to fill this RX? Isn’t HIPAA a federal law, how do they get around it?

  50. Well, get a clue, folks. If your gyn doesn’t do abortions, ask why the hell not, and switch. If your pharmacy doesn’t stock Plan B speak up and find a new one. Unless you hit these people in their pocketbooks they will happily continue with their penny-ante prejudices and attitudes. As an abortion provider I get the opposite all the time, losing obstetrical patients to the local white-bread middle-of-the-road provider, even when those patients have had abortions in the past. After all, they say, how can I trust you to save my baby when you kill babies?

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