“allowing pharmacists to withhold the morning after pill for religious beliefs is like allowing satanists to practice human sacrifice.”
both involve one person making a decision for another person,
based on their own religious beliefs,
that has a negative result on that other person.
except- one involves a religion that is more or less government sanctioned- christianity. cuz you know, this great, beautiful country was founded on GOD and his christian children young whippersnapper!
and the other is admittedly full of fucked up attention seekers wanting to hurt people. but still. religious beliefs.
p.s.- america was founded by lots of criminals, like debtors. the religious folk that came here came to escape having their lives run for them by the english church. but our athiests, agnostics, muslims, buddhists, etc- they have no new world. that means we must make the world free for any religion. and while you’re allowed to choose your religion, you’re still assaulted daily by ‘under god’, ‘in god we trust’, and the idea that your pharmacist may refuse you a pill to purge a few cells.
I am a pious person, but I agree with the majority of what you had to say here. One man’s religion should have every right to be practiced, but it should in no way force its beliefs upon other people–especially when those beliefs cause harm to others.
There are some things I’d like to go over, though:
Who is this quote from? You don’t cite anyone as saying it. Is of your own saying? What’s the context of the quote? When was it said? I saw the exact same quote on a DeviantArt post, but it didn’t cite an author of it either. Not that any of this really matters; I’m just curious.
In another light, it might be seen that sacrificial rites take away life and pharmacists withholding morning-after pills allow life to enter the world. The quote really demonizes these doctors, but with a little word play, the whole thing could be flipped around. I’m not vying for either end of the spectrum, though: I admire pharmacists and religion as much as I love my rights as a citizen. And, of course, in just a short, snappy one-liner, you can’t expect much logic; I just think it’s a bad analogy.
You said that even though we can decide for ourselves which religion we practice, we’re “still assaulted daily by ‘under god’ [and] ‘in god we trust”. Are we? What does the word ‘assault’ mean to you? Tiny lettering on our currencies? Yes, we are founded on Christian beliefs, and that shows, but the occasional sighting of a four-word, religious sentence does not count for assault.
Consider the fact that we have a pyramid on our dollar bills. Religious ties? Yes. Of the Christian nature? Not quite. The Washington Monument is an obelisk, and you’re welcome to go research all the religious tie-ins that has. The Lincoln Memorial? Polytheistic Greeks and Romans. The list goes on.
I admit, what I’m doing here is kind of stretching it, but hopefully it’ll get the point across.
If a citizen is so inclined, they’re welcome to remember that there is no specification as to which god our motto is referring to. In fact, the statement “in God we trust” itself is pretty vague and universal. Whether you want it to be Jehovah, Elohim, Ra, Jupiter, Mother Earth, Gaea, Thor, or any other god, you’re welcome to that opinion. Sure, the noun is in a singular form, so that places some limitations on our polytheists, and our atheists got gypped out of an “IN NO DEITY WE TRUST” motto (but that’s not very catchy).
This has been a long enough digression on a very short point you made, and I apologize (half-heartedly) for steering away from the topic.
Back to the topic at hand:
Should a pharmacist be allowed to “withhold” a morning-after pill? (By the by, I really hate the way “withhold” is being used in the quote. This word suggests that the pharmacist has these pills handy, but is discriminating against certain people, i.e., those that want them. Perhaps “sell” would be a better choice. If a pharmacy didn’t intend to sell certain medications, why would they carry them in the first place?) Should Wal-Mart be allowed to withhold video games with an AO rating?
If the retailer doesn’t sell the product because they don’t carry the product, is that discrimination at all? In what way are they “making a decision for someone else”?
The retailer (pharmacist) does not decide for its customers that their pharmacy is where they will purchase their medicines. The buyers make that decision. They are welcome to walk out the door and head over to another pharmacy. Use a different contraception next time. Buy morning-after pills from sleazy online stores. Do whatever. But do not say that a store should be forced to carry a certain good, whatever it may be.
This is not an argument of abortion, sex, or even religion. This is an argument on rights of store owners and rights of buyers.