Controversy Over New 'Conscience' Rule (for health services)

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But it's not the only town... aside from the fact that there are also pharmacies that deliver by mail. The latter doesn't work for the morning after pill, but it works for birth control. So this would be a problem in the extraordinarily obscure and highly unlikely situation of a girl in a small town with no transportation who either has unprotected sex or gets raped and wants to get the morning after pill, and she can't find anyone to give her a lift to a pharmacy that carries it. That's what we're worried about here apparently, a situation that's maybe as likely as getting hit by a buss or struck by lightning. Imo of course, I certainly could be wrong, I just don't see the evidence that there's going to be a rash of people being abused by pharmacies. Inconvenienced maybe.

"Well only one in 600 people even receive electroconvulsive therapy and even those are both anesthetized and usually with consent. In the US specifically in order to perform ECT without consent, it has to be considered life-saving (a catatonic person who's not eating) and even then requires a judicial proceeding. It's not the same thing they were doing in the 50's. "

This guy isn't exactly comatose, unfortunately. Just thought I'd point it out.

http://thegimpparade.blogspot.com/2008/ ... again.html


As for the hospital personel being able to refuse treatment and referal now without explanation due to The Shrub's heavy hand, it's a hell of a problem. If people think others are going to shove over their oftentimes not so faint queasiness with groups they don't like (and the list, it is long) because they only have to do a little 'moral' stretching to make it seem like sense so as to boot patients out of the office, they're sorely mistaken. Trans people, women and disabilities are big ones and I wouldn't be surprised if race hit heavy in that area, too. Those populations have enough problems medically now, not like Shrub needed to give sanctioned encouragement.

Pardon, but yes they are. If someone is supposed to serve me goods or services in exchange for cash or credit at their job, - for which they are paid to serve me goods and services - , and they refuse to do so or call another pharmacist/assistant over, or refusing to release a script they are indeed imposing their views on me. Because, wait for it - They're not doing their job. Now if they got another pharmacist to come over and do their job, no harm no foul, script is filled. But see, that's not what the handy new law - says -. Shrub declared you don't have to refer people anymore, so no more slaps on the wrist from higher ups.

Your funny and not-in-a-good-way idea that none of this is worse than an incredibly minor inconvienence, that everyone and their brother can go doctor/pharmacy shopping and that it's merely out of the way instead of inaccessible is ludicrous. And speaking of pharmacy shopping, I don't know about you, but every pharmacy for me is a forty minute walk because I can't drive, and 'call your friends!' isn't an option. Do your friends drop everything to take you to the pharmacy? Hell, mine take a two week planning schedule because they have jobs and kids, among other things. So neither is shopping for pharmacies merely an inconvienence. There's a hell of a lot of people who get more than 'inconvienenced' by your 'hypothetical' situations.

Last edited by LemonDemon on 24 Dec 2008, 10:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Also, you've forgotten you need a script for birth control. You can't order it via mail if you've no script. and not everyone has paypal, either. And let's talk about insurance, you think everyone's paying for it out of pocket? Insurance companies fight tooth and nail to - avoid - paying for things, think of the joy when they get to decline, over and over, a previously unused mail order service. And under these shiny new regulations, the doctor doesn't have to give you s**t, let alone a simple birth control script. You might be unpleasantly surprised to find how often birth control falls under religious dislike, especially in a small town where I'm at. Or just prudish you-must-be-having-too-much-sex dislike, for that matter. And also, a relatively important bit - doctor visits cost money, and most of the people I know, myself included, don't exactly have enough of it, to put it mildly. We can't afford to shop around for doctors.

"Transgender community I would find surprising as well ... if the person is seeing a gender specialist I have a hard time imagining them objecting to gender therapies"

Well no, not really. The sheer fact we exist tends to put people off their work and make excuses for why they can't treat us for everyday things. Like, say, the dentist, or a pap smear, or any number of in and out procedures. Happens now, so it's not so much that we'll get new problems as that now it would be legal.

I actually got curious enough to read the entirety of the new rule and response to comments, and it turns out some of the fears being expressed here are completely unfounded. Specifically the "now it's legal to discriminate" idea. In addressing one of the comments, they specifically said that any anti-discrimination laws specifically override the conscience rule.

The law is written to allow them to object to a procedure.

You're talking about an objection to a person - that's still illegal.

What you're saying is basically that they're going to take this statement:

"A lion is a type of cat."

and turn it into this statement:

"A lion is a type of amphibian."

It doesn't matter how convicted you are about the idea that these people want to use this law that way, they can't. They are only allowed to choose to either carry the morning after pill or not, end of story. They're not allowed even to selectively choose who they want to give the morning after pill to -- if they choose to give it to anyone, then they're required to let everyone have it. Because if you went to court and said "I was denied the morning after pill" and there are records indicating that they sold it to other people, that's an immediate and unquestionable proof of discrimination. They wouldn't even be any potentially valid arguments they could give a judge for that behavior.

Umm... how is someone else not doing their job imposing their religion on you? You failed to explain that handy little tidbit. Bear in mind, that your answer must not only involve the one pharmacy or pharmacist, but must also explain how the conspiracy of pharmacists will prevent you from getting whatever it is you want.



You would be the exceptional person to begin with. Are you planning to need the morning after pill some time soon? If so then I might think about finding out which pharmacies supply them before hand and possibly making arrangements for someone to help you out in that emergency situation if it happens... Speaking of which, friends and family typically will drop everything in an emergency situation, which is what the morning after pill is designed for. They'll leave kids with a sitter or a relative and make an extra trip or potentially even call in to work and take a personal day (which everyone has). And I can think of far worse things than a 40 minute walk -- gee, that's almost... inconvenient. Sorry, you're going way out of your way to stretch the severity of your specific situation.

It's actually in the insurance company's best interest to pay for birth control, whether it's via a mail order pharmacy or otherwise. Mail order pharmacies don't all demand that you use paypal (as a matter of fact, I'd be surprised if any of them accept it even, as it's a somewhat problematic method of payment for a lot of companies). But from the stand point of the insurance company -- as a business -- it would be tragically stupid for them to deny claims for birth control, because they're not allowed to deny claims for pregnancies and children... The cost of birth control over the course of a person's life is something like 1/100,000 the cost of a child. So for the insurance carrier, that decision is a no-brainer - pay for the birth control. And if you happen to find that your company chose a really odd, Catholic owned insurance carrier who decided that denying birth control was important enough to damage their business financially, there are always condoms.



Shopping around for doctors doesn't actually cost anything. If you have insurance through a job, they'll generally give you a book or a tool you can use to look up doctors. A lot of them are developing or have developed on-line systems that allow you to pre-select all kinds of information about the kind of doctor you want to see like their gender. There are referral services that will give you information about doctors over the phone for free. You can call the doctor's office and ask any questions you have from their receptionist for free. And if you called and asked "what's your stance on birth control regarding the new law", any decent doctor's office will simply tell you "yes we prescribe birth control" or "no we don't". And if they lie to you on the phone, that's both a bad reputation for them and potentially something you can stick them with in court if you had to.

No, the law hasn't actually made their bad behavior legal. I'm sorry that's the case, it sucks that you have to deal with it and you shouldn't have to. It's like a variety of other things like the fact that I've been unable to keep a job because of my inability to interpret what people want to hear. Not my fault that I don't seem to have the same social apparatus that other people do - wish I did - it's not fair either but it's on my shoulders to cope with or change that situation anyway.

And then on top of that situation, merely because I'm a guy and because I worked in IT, the state has insisted that I pay almost $2k in child support per month over the course of the past year, under the expectation that I should earn no less than $40k/yr. My actual income has been about $25k/yr. The state refuses to accept being fired as a reason for not having income -- as a matter of fact, they assume that if I was fired, it was my fault, that I did it deliberately to avoid child support. Hence I'm now over $80k in arrearage because I didn't even know about the AS until recently. And yes I've talked to lawyers and none of them were ever willing to accept my case and the reason they gave me was because I'm a guy.

So I got to spend yesterday and today sitting at home with no money and very little food, wondering why it is that none of my family, who all have money and know my situation, even thought to send me a Fandango gift certificate so I could get out of the apartment, or even so much as pick up the phone to say "Merry Christmas". And why it is that I've been near to homeless for many years now while my ex got all kinds of financial support from both her family *and* mine. And I've mentioned on mailing lists and the like how royally screwed those laws are and that's mostly resulted in silence... and when it didn't result in silence, it resulted mostly in people taking the opportunity to tell me that I'm a screw up and I need to get my s**t together.

So ... these problems you describe getting a prescription filled strike me as being slightly less problematic than the fact that I've fought tooth and nail for 8 years now to be a good guy and do the right thing only to be constantly threatened with prison for doing it the best I could.

"extraordinarily obscure"?

If their religion causes them to take an action (or inaction) that affects someone else by the very definition the religion is being imposed on someone else.

Crime is a lot less common in small towns in general, because it's a lot harder to commit a crime, whether it's rape or something else, when everyone you associate with knows you very well, knows where you live, talks to you all the time... The level of intimacy in a small town makes it much more difficult for people to hurt each other and much easier for them actually to be roped into going out of their way to help each other in such emergency situations. And if it's not rape, and you simply chose not to use birth control, then it's not the pharmacists's fault, now is it?

Do you have any statistics to back up an alternative theory? I don't have any statistics admittedly. I could try and find some. But as much of the argument against the law has revolved around the already established to be incorrect assumption that it allows people to discriminate on the basis of who the consumer is and not the product or service sold, (which you yourself espoused), I would think that the onus of proof would be on your shoulders, since thus far you've been the one mostly mistaken about the situation.

I have however read quite a bit about well-respected cognitive science and human behavior studies, which is what many of these other assumptions are based on.

As someone who grew up in a small town and knows the level of crime there .... can I stop laughing now?

BTW, a lot of hate crimes are committed in small towns.



Ok, so time to put the ball in your court then. A lot of the populations most concerned are not protected categories in discrimination law at the federal level.

No, if their religion causes them to act or not act, then they are following their religion. If their decision happens to affect you, that's just a side effect. They can't stop anyone else from giving you whatever service. They are not determining what will happen to you, they are determining what will happen to them.

If I were a muslim and I said, "Convert, infidel, or I will chop your head off", then I would be imposing my religion. If I were a Catholic and I said, "You are no longer allowed to get a divorce, because my religion objects to such a thing.", then I would be imposing my religion.

If I say, "Sorry, I don't provide that service", then I haven't imposed anything on you.

Yes, you have imposed your religion if your religion is the sole thing stopping you from providing a service you would otherwise have provided. IE, if your beliefs mean you can not do all of what you are required to do you need a new job. If not fulfilling the duties of someone's job affects me then, yes, the views were imposed on me.