The Manhattan Declaration








Your Comments

Syndicate (Full Text) XML

Syndicate (Excerpt) XML



WWW Mere Comments





« Francis Collins's "Devout" Views on Abortion | Main | More Conservative Protestant Thoughts on Caritas in Veritate »

July 10, 2009

Plan-B from Circuit Court Number 9

Any pharmacy owner and any pharmacist in Washington State MUST stock and distribute Plan-B "morning after" contraceptive/abortifacient pills, even if it violates their consciences to do so. It must be a constitutional right to demand that a privately owned pharmacy carry products the aid and abet abortion. Roe v. Wade consumes rights.

Posted by James M. Kushiner at 03:58 PM | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c5ee953ef011570fac51d970c

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Plan-B from Circuit Court Number 9:

Comments

I hope there are several pharmacists who are able and willing to simply refuse and take it as far as the Supreme Court if necessary to get a constitutional ruling. This is yet another of the many, many tyrannies being exercised in our country now.

Posted by: Beth from TN | Jul 10, 2009 4:11:04 PM

Let me second Beth's hope that there are pharmacists who will not bow to this most immoral and evil law.

Posted by: Fr Gregory | Jul 10, 2009 4:27:56 PM

I wonder what the applications to hospitals is? And what of Catholic healthcare institutions?

Kamilla

Posted by: Kamilla | Jul 10, 2009 4:47:02 PM

[sigh] I love loving where I do; it just doesn't love me back...

--A Washingtonian

Posted by: Michael | Jul 10, 2009 5:15:21 PM

Beth, that's quite right. 8 years of histrionics of the Left about how GWB was going to institute a police state is turning out to be a massive case of projection.

I hope the pharmacists hold their ground. Make the jackboots kick in their doors and drag them from their pharmacies - show the people the real face of the government here.

Posted by: Steve K. | Jul 10, 2009 11:31:13 PM

Let me recommend a recently published book by one of my colleagues, Leonard J. Nelson, Diagnosis Critical: The Urgent Threats Confronting Catholic Healthcare, available at http://www.amazon.com/Diagnosis-Critical-Confronting-Catholic-Healthcare/dp/1592760708/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247318353&sr=8-1. To hear Jack discuss his new book and the issues involved, listen to or view the July 5, 2009 episode of Bookmark on EWTN, http://www.ewtn.com/bookmark/

Posted by: GL | Jul 11, 2009 8:26:31 AM

"They can join the doctors who would not - in living memory - treat Black people, or Jews; the jackboots are on the other foot here."

I can't imagine a more nonsensical and uncharitable gloss of the dilemma facing any decent-minded pharmicist than what you wrote, Cyranorox.


Posted by: Benighted Savage | Jul 11, 2009 2:50:35 PM

"I wonder what the applications to hospitals is? And what of Catholic healthcare institutions?"

Will there be an appeal after the 9th Circus decision? If not, then we may soon find out.

Posted by: Benighted Savage | Jul 11, 2009 2:53:13 PM

CyranoRox--

The licensing of pharmacists is neither a benefit nor a protection to the profession. It is a protection and benefit to the consumer, the patient, on the other side of the counter, to insure that the pharmacist is aware of proper handling and drug mixing, properly trained in administration of a drug (such that they can instruct their clientele regarding to "take with food" or "with lots of water" and "don't mix with narcotics") as well as practiced (and practicing) safety procedures, such that the consumer is not endangered. That's like saying a doctor's medical license is to protect the profession--it's not, a license to practice anything is so that the consumer is not harmed in malpractice, or by a quack doesn't know the difference between a narcotic and an anti-inflammatory.

The jackboots are here on the foot of the government, which has issued a license to a pharmacist to properly dispense medication in the interest of human life. A pharmacist who wants to protect the human life of a fertilized embryo such that it may implant is living up to his end of the bargain.

As for the whole refusal to treat Jews and blacks...yes, of course this is the same thing. Because minority groups weren't living people. And embryos aren't eith...oh, I see what you did there.

Posted by: Michael | Jul 11, 2009 3:40:02 PM

CyranoRox, That would be my wife whom you are talking about. We believe the use of contraceptives is gravely sinful and, hence, so is dispensing them. As a result, her career options (when she is able to go back to work -- she is a stay-at-home mom right now) are very restricted. This is the case already, even without government mandates, as many employers insist that their pharmacist employees dispense the meds they stock -- which is their right. What I find interesting is that when those seeking to overturn the restrictions on contraceptives and abortions were the ones limited by the law, they assured everyone that all they really wanted was the freedom to get contraceptives or have an abortion from willing health care providers, and that they had no interesting in forcing those who had moral objections from providing these products and services. Congress easily enacted conscience protections. Forty years on, a generation not yet born insists that objecting health care providers provide them with such products and services because they have a right to those products and services. This tells us all we need to know about what will happen forty years hence when a new generation is ready to demand that ministers who object to same-sex marriage perform such marriages or lose their license from the state to perform any marriages. Forcing pharmacists to act against their morals is just a foretaste of what is on the horizon. As for my wife, she will permanently give up her career before compromising her loving duty to her Lord.

Posted by: GL | Jul 11, 2009 5:59:00 PM

CyranoRox: "They can join the doctors who would not - in living memory - treat Black people, or Jews; the jackboots are on the other foot here."

Benighted Savage: "I can't imagine a more nonsensical and uncharitable gloss of the dilemma facing any decent-minded pharmicist than what you wrote, Cyranorox."

Neither can I, Benighted Savage, neither can I. The true colors have emerged here.

Posted by: Truth Unites... and Divides | Jul 11, 2009 6:58:14 PM

The "Right" to destroy a child in the womb has been interpreted to exist in the Constitution as little more than "an emanation of a penumbra." While that same document rather clearly states that government shall make no law abridging the free exercise of religion. Apparently, in Washington State the former trumps the latter.

If the State hands you a license, allowing you to practice your trade, can the State then tell you just how far you can allow your faith to enter into your chosen vocation? In other words, and I hope folks take this as an honest question, are there parallels between a pharmacist not providing Plan B "morning after" pill and Muslim cab drivers not wanting to provide rides to people carrying alcohol or traveling with dogs?

Posted by: Daniel | Jul 12, 2009 2:55:49 AM

"...Muslim cab drivers not wanting to provide rides to people carrying alcohol or traveling with dogs?"

Is somebody killed when a Muslim cab driver provides a ride to someone carrying alcohol or traveling with a dog? Unlikely.

Posted by: Benighted Savage | Jul 12, 2009 10:29:57 AM

"Since the pharmacists are licensed, which is a benefit and protection to their profession, it is not unreasonable to ask that they provide any legal item; just as they must serve any paying customer, or hire without illegal discrimination. Those who cannot stand to do so need not secure the license." - Cyranorox

You are confused. There is no illegal discrimination at issue here. ALL persons seeking abortifacients or contraceptives are treated alike: their request is denied by the morally-sensitive pharmacist. As a lawyer I too am licensed by the state, but I am not compelled by the state or the Constitution to serve all clients, if I find the client's cause morally repugnant. I simply cannot treat any protected class differently when rejecting the potential client on moral grounds.

Posted by: Bill R | Jul 12, 2009 3:48:09 PM

I think Daniel's example of muslim cab drivers raises a more difficult challenge. Is it to the licensee what moral objections allow him to deny services the state assumes he will when liscencing him? For "reasonable" people, like benighted savage and myself and most people here I assume, being in the presense of a dog is not to be equated with facilitating a murder. But in the religious minds of some muslims that may not be so clear. What we are dealing with here is the collapse of Common Sense based upon the Christian teaching which underlies Western Civilization.

It used to be axiomatic in the first century of the Faith that a Christian could not be a soldier. But few here, I imagine, would think so now. That is not our Christian ethics have been corrupted but rather that the use of the military has been presumably put under Christian rules of Justice. The same exists for all professions a Christian civilization.

Yet now the culture is becoming decidedly unChristian and antiChristian. The rules that govern various professions within that culture are changing and the church may find that what have been morally "safe" professions no longer are. The State can't, like Cyranorox, tell the difference between discrimination between persons and discrimination between actions. Why should we expect it to distinguish any longer between a religious distaste for dogs and a religious dislike for killing innocents?

We are going to haveto fight tooth and nail to reassert the Christian sense that used to be fairly common to our culture.

Posted by: Christopher Hathaway | Jul 13, 2009 8:45:17 AM

>>>We are going to haveto fight tooth and nail to reassert the Christian sense that used to be fairly common to our culture.<<<

We must increase our influence in the culture before we can expect to regain our influence in the law. The secularist were busy reshaping the culture for decades while we appear to believe that defending the law was enough. By gaining influence over the former, they have been able to gain ascendancy over the latter. Law follows culture more than culture follows law.

Posted by: GL | Jul 13, 2009 9:45:20 AM

Christopher Hathaway: "We are going to have to fight tooth and nail to reassert the Christian sense that used to be fairly common to our culture."

Firstly, need to fight tooth and nail in a civil war within the various Faith Traditions of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. The church's witness is fractured. That poses problems for the church's witness to the society/culture, yes?

Posted by: Truth Unites... and Divides | Jul 13, 2009 11:13:10 AM

"The State can't, like Cyranorox, tell the difference between discrimination between persons and discrimination between actions. Why should we expect it to distinguish any longer between a religious distaste for dogs and a religious dislike for killing innocents?"

Because the liberal omnicompetent state will admit no transcendent grounds for its morality beyond the merely human, it has no means whereby to distinguish moral goods other than those that fit its ideology. Those moral claims that it cannot subvert into its system must be either stamped out or trivialized/marginalized to the point where they have no substantial cultural effect. Hence its penchant for silencing its opponents: if it can't shut them up, it will demonize them. If demonization doesn't work, it will trivialize them. Anything, really, to further its attempt to gain ever-increasing moral hegemony.

Posted by: Rob G | Jul 13, 2009 11:26:17 AM

TUAD - quite right, there is a sizable 5th column within Christianity itself, furthering the goals of the spirit of the age against the cause of Christ. Cyranorox is apparently one of these.

Posted by: Steve K. | Jul 13, 2009 10:55:18 PM

"quite right, there is a sizable 5th column within Christianity itself, furthering the goals of the spirit of the age against the cause of Christ. Cyranorox is apparently one of these."

I wouldn't be so quick to ascribe malice. Many on the so-called "Christian" Left haved simply been duped. Condorcet wrote about fooling the "enemies of reason" into thinking that progressives were just trimming back rank branches when in actuality they were hacking away at roots. It seems to me that many Christians who have bought into liberalism have been likewise fooled into doing the hacking.

Or to use another analogy, they have been fooled into chiseling away at the foundation by being told that they're just remodeling. I'm not saying that this applies to all on the "Christian" Left. There are definitely some who know exactly what they are doing. Point is though, hacking roots is hacking roots, whether you realize that's what you're doing or not.

Posted by: Rob G | Jul 14, 2009 7:38:57 AM

Daniel - the difference between pharmacists and Muslim cab drivers is who is doing the coercing. If the state were to require all cab drivers to pick up customers with pets and alcohol, I would be worried about it. However, if a cab company chooses not to accommodate its employees who have religious objections to dogs & alcohol, that is the company's responsibility. See GL's post earlier.

Posted by: YaknYeti | Jul 18, 2009 11:04:05 AM

Post a comment