There has been a very interesting story taking place in Illinois over the past few weeks. A certain group of pharmacists are not wanting to sell the morning after pill also know as "Plan B," due to the fact that their moral obligations prevent them from doing so. They believe that this pill could potentially exterminate an unborn child from the potential mother's womb. Such a pill would be murder and they do not want to take part in this type of medical treatment.
Fox news has an interesting story by Radley Balko on this here and he makes some very interesting points yet I cannot agree with everything he says. He seems to have the idea that we should just not make people do something. He feels that this would solve the issue. He says:
It seems to me that a good remedy for most of today's contentious issues is to let everyone live his or her life as they please, so long as they do no harm to anyone else.
My biggest problem with that is that there is still the allowance of abortion. That allows the murder of unborn children continue. However here are a few other things that he has said:
...it seems there are some pharmacists who have moral objections to dispensing medication they feel would make them party to an abortion, or at least to the taking of a potential human life. Anti-abortion groups have latched on to their cause, noting that the decision to become a pharmacist doesn't obligate one to facilitate treatments he or she finds morally abhorrent.
On the other side of the debate are the abortion rights groups. They want widespread access to these medications, arguing that ending a pregnancy essentially before it has begun ought to be more acceptable to anti-abortion groups than ending one when the fetus is more fully developed. We can't allow rogue pharmacists to leave women in a lurch (some not only refuse to fill prescriptions, they sometimes destroy them), they say.
Notice that the abortion rights groups are wanting us to compromise what we believe. Saying that ending the pregnancy "before it has begun" should be more acceptable to us. The probelm with that logic is that most people that hold to the anti-abortion side believe that life starts at conception. We do not think that it is any less malicous to kill a baby that is only a few hours old than we do one that is seven or eight or nine months old before it is born.
He continues:
Abortion-rights supporters are pushing for laws that would require every pharmacy to stock controversial medication (laws requiring the morning after pill to be on the shelves are already in place in Illinois and Massachusetts). They argue that because pharmacy is a heavily-regulated field in an area as important as health care, the state is obligated to ensure that everyone has access to all available treatments. Further, they argue, in some areas of the country, there may only be one pharmacy. Consumers don't have other options. If the only pharmacy in town won't stock birth control, they say, women in that town have effectively been denied their reproductive freedom.
What about that child's right to live? Is a woman's personal freedom to not have children more important than the sanctity of human life? Balko answers these questions about women's "rights" when he says:
This too is nonsense. The rights guaranteed to us in the Constitution are only guarantees against government trespasses. There is no "right" to goods, services, or care that someone else has to provide. Suppose, for example, that there is only one doctor in town. Would it also be acceptable to require him to perform abortions, even if he found them morally repugnant? What about breast augmentation? What if there were only one pharmacy in town, but it had to close for economic reasons? Could the town pass a law forcing its owners to operate the business at a loss, under the same justification that residents have a "right" to medication?
The solution is simple: If you don't like a particular pharmacy's policy regarding birth control or abortion-related medication, don't shop there. And if you're a pharmacist? Don't work there. But stop using the law to force everyone else to think, act, and believe as you do.
I agree with much that Balko says here but I have my disgreements as well. Over all I did like his article.
One time I had a teacher in school tell us that a single asprin could act as birth control that was 100% effective. If a woman would put the asprin between her knees anytime that she felt like having sex and hold it there until the urge passed, there is no way that she would ever get pregnant. What my teacher meant was absolutely right. The solution was very simple: If you do not want the possiblity of having children, don't have sex!
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