[Sosfbay-discuss] Of Critical Concern for All Women!

[Andrea Dorey]

Pharmacist Pawns
Lynne K. Varner
May 01, 20

Lynne K. Varner's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The  
Seattle Times. She can be reached at lvarner at seattletimes.com.

Fixated as we all are on the war in Iraq, our nervous economy and  
soaring fuel prices, it is no wonder we didn't see the assault  
brewing on a distant flank.

Now we can't miss the signs of battle as conservatives move to  
criminalize abortion and restrict access to contraceptives.

A colleague once told me that President George W. Bush would be  
stupid to pursue an anti-choice agenda when most of the country  
supports abortion rights. Since then, Bush appointed two people  
hostile to abortion rights to the U.S. Supreme Court. The move  
emboldened South Dakota to institute the most-restrictive abortion  
law since Roe v. Wade stopped states from doing just that. A cousin  
to the South Dakota law is moving through the Mississippi legislature.

Wars are best fought on many levels, employing many strategies.

And so it is that the Washington State Pharmacy Board finds itself  
holding public hearings statewide to decide whether pharmacists  
deserve a "conscience clause" allowing them to withhold medications  
in conflict with their convictions.

Seventeen other states are considering "conscience clauses." Pharmacy  
boards in Wyoming, Nevada, North Carolina and Massachusetts did the  
right thing and told pharmacists they deserved no such rights.

I agree. Call me a cynic, but I'm presuming pharmacists aren't  
conflicted over dispensing, say, Viagra. This issue looks, smells and  
quacks like a politically motivated debate over emergency  
contraception, also known as Plan B. Peel back a few more layers of  
the onion and catch a whiff of the lingering fumes from RU486, the  
controversial pill designed to end unwanted pregnancies. It ought not  
be confused with Plan B, which prevents fertilization of an egg and  
prevents conception.

But enough of the science lesson. This war is political and  
pharmacists have been pulled in much as scientists were during the  
stem-cell debates. They ought to sit this one out. The average woman  
spends 23 years using contraceptives to avoid pregnancies. That's not  
a market share pharmacists should alienate.

With two-thirds of Americans supporting a woman's right to choose,  
focusing on emergency contraceptives is one way the anti-abortion  
movement has morphed in order to survive and fight another day.

"The abortion issue is a cover for a fundamentalist anti- 
contraception and anti-sex movement," argues Cristina Page, author of  
the aptly named tome, How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America .

Page is right. Opposition to abortion has broadened into an anti- 
contraception movement. Imagine if pharmacists were free to refuse to  
fill prescriptions. My fear would be standing before the strict  
pharmacist and enduring a lecture on the evils of birth control.  
Without contraception and legal abortion, sex would be fast-tracked  
back to the days of being for procreation only.

Pharmacists cannot be allowed to wiggle out of their professional  
responsibilities. My hunch is most probably don't want to. I'm  
thinking there are more conscientious objector bills floating around  
state Houses than pharmacists who want to object. This is less about  
morals and more about politics.

The timing of all this is no coincidence. Those with an anti-abortion  
agenda are emboldened by conservative appointments to key posts with  
the Federal Drug Administration and the federal Health and Human  
Services Department. They are encouraged by America's preoccupation  
with a protracted war.

And they are ignorant of this central fact: We're going to need  
contraceptives and other methods to prevent unwanted pregnancies. A  
UNICEF study put America's teen pregnancy rate — slowly falling —  
right between Thailand's and Rwanda's. Of the teen births happening  
in wealthy countries, two-thirds occur here.

A startling fact stands out in Cristina Page's book on the pro-choice  
movement: Seven in 10 American women are sexually active and do not  
want to become pregnant. These women are at risk of becoming pregnant  
should they or their partners fail to use a contraceptive or if the  
contraceptive failed to work.

Some of these women will end up at their neighborhood pharmacy. They  
ought to be assisted by pharmacists carrying out their professional  
duties and not the political agenda of the anti-abortion movement.


Andrea Dorey
Santa Clara County Green Party
408-306-1900  (cell phone: short messages please)

Chinese Proverbs:
"Serving the powerful is like sleeping with a tiger."
	and
"It is difficult to get off a tiger's back."

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