Comments on: Target Takes Aim at Reproductive Rights

By: janet

janet — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 19:23:31 +0000

I’m a bit surprised that doctors haven’t been more vocal about this. If I were a physician and something like this happened to a patient of mine, I would boycott the pharmacy and warn my patients away from it.

By: bittergradstudent

bittergradstudent — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 14:29:32 +0000

serial catowner has hit the nail on the head in (24). The essential point is that it's none of the pharmacist's damn business. I have never heard of any other case where a pharmacist decides that it is their responsibility to withold drugs from anyone. I have especially never heard of a pharmacist refusing to fill a prescription, and then refusing to return the prescription to a patient, as I have in this BC/EC "debate". In particular, I have never heard of pharmacists refusing to fill -valid- painkiller prescriptions. Painkillers clearly offer a much larger margin for abuse than BC, but for some reason, this is not an issue with anyone. If they want to "inform" patients about this implantation issue, then fine, I guess that is partially within thier purvue. Otherweise, they have no business withholding treatment from anyone. They are not doctors, and they are trying to override the direct advice of doctors. And that is why the pacifist argument is disingenuous. No doctor, or similarly qualified individual, has ever told anyone that they need a gun. Not so with BC. And the "take my business elsewhere" argument, as noted above has the problems of time-sensitivity, and is untenable for a relatively large segment of the population (i.e., rural people) anyway.

By: Arun

Arun — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 16:44:45 +0000

Here’s one more thing to consider – to build a new store, Target needs permission from the local township authorities. (Surely you’ve followed various localities’ resistance to Walmart stores?) So Target has to cater to local politics, even while being a national chain.

By: Moshe

Moshe — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 15:41:45 +0000

Our comments crossed, Mark, we are not in disagreement after all it seems. The idea that things will self-regulate by consumers shifting their business, and there is no need for other forms of regulation, this idea seems just absurd to me.

By: serial catowner

serial catowner — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 14:40:33 +0000

The point is that the pharmacy is a monopoly enforced by the state. Refusing to dispense a prescribed drug on the basis of the pharmacist’s opinion of the patient is, or should be, illegal.

You probably wouldn’t suppport a pharmacist who refused to fill prescriptions for black people. This case is no different.

Pharmacists are expected to behave professionally at a key link in the process of getting the right drug in the right patient. A doctor can hardly put a treatment plan in place if the next person in the line is going to usurp the doctor’s prescribing role.

Target’s assertion that their employees can substitute their own opinions for the doctor’s prescription is dangerous. The medical system is not designed to function with that kind of input.

And, frankly, we pay a lot extra for the supposed benefits of that sytem.

By: Moshe

Moshe — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 04:56:57 +0000

Once again I find myself in disagreement on the very basics. A business like target cannot have it both ways. If they are for-profit-only organization they should get out of public services like health care. If they want to present themselves as community service (which I don’t buy for one minute), they should be prepared to take the good of the community into consideration.

Either way, applying the usual consumer model of relationship to crucial services like health care has disastrous consequences. Once this model is taken to be the only truth, one is left with mild and ineffective course of action available, such as boycotts etc.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 04:44:03 +0000

eyehat. It is true that there is a wider issue here, which is that I do think that legal prescription drugs, prescribed by a doctor, should be available to patients. There is clearly a problem with our system in this regard, as discussed by Jacques in (8).

So I certianily think women have a right to have prescription medication readily obtainable. How this is achieved in our somewhat crazy system is up for discussion, but not what I was getting into here.

By: janet

janet — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 04:42:46 +0000

Mark — I agree with you about the public campaign. I think our posts crossed, so it looked like I was responding to you; actually I was responding to the previous post.

By: eyehat

eyehat — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 04:36:05 +0000

Mark – I seem to have misunderstood what you were saying. To me, at least, when you stated that “There is a law. It says that emergency contraception is a legal prescription drug. If you want to be a pharmacist, you should be prepared to fill those prescriptions. Otherwise, you are denying customers access to legally allowed medical treatment.” it seemed that you were implying a pharmacy should be legally required to fill EC prescriptions.

And as for complaining and such, there is nothing wrong with that. Again, from what you’d said I thought you were supporting legal requirements for a pharmacy to fill EC.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 04:28:51 +0000

I certainly agree Janet. Maybe I should have been more clear above – I meant take one’s business away for good, so that whenever one needs to, one would immediately go to another pharmacy. Obviously, what you point out is quite correct – that if a woman needs EC and goes to a place that is supposed to provide it and encounters one of these employees unprepared to do their job, it is entirely unacceptable.

I also agree with some other posters above that there is a real problem when a big store like this is the only game in town and either employs one of these people or doesn’t supply EC at all.