but they can’t make ANY rule or regulation of this one, particular thing, because it violates the right to privacy! An amazingly specific privacy which somehow covers no other medical issues.

Huh? Do you assume that women can just march up to the pharmacist and DEMAND birth control? Not quite. As far as I know, it requires a doctor’s permission and prescription same as any other controlled medication. So we’re not talking about some ‘amazingly specific privacy’ here and I can’t for the life of me figure out how you are concluding that. We just think we should be able to get our duly prescribed birth control in the same manner that you can get your duly prescribed Vicodin (or Viagra). Your gatekeeper straw issue is irrelevent to this discussion.

In some cases, yes. Do you know enough to be able to take Tylenol without a problem? Sure. Do you know enough to be able to diagnose anti-biotic resistent staph and to get your hands on floroquinolones? I seriously doubt it. If you’d like to try and figure out what pills you need, go right ahead and try. Personally, I don’t think the average person has enough information or ready access to enough information to make those choices safely.

(Incidentially, your right to bodily autonomy is tempered by public health concerns. This means not taking penicilin for every sniffle and not being strung out on Oxycontin 7 days a week.)

Does pennyroyal need permission from me to exist?

My point with all this is that feminists don’t appear to be arguing for bodily autonomy, except as a rhetorical device. Instead, you’re arguing for a specific, gender-based, one-off privilege under a hierarchical system of other-dominated health care. The government and civil society can make all kinds of rules that restrain our right to treat our health as we wish – but they can’t make ANY rule or regulation of this one, particular thing, because it violates the right to privacy! An amazingly specific privacy which somehow covers no other medical issues.

This is statist feminism, that wants a dominating centrum that disperses power, but grants women a special privilege and power. Which is fine, I guess (you fascists) – but you’d get a lot more support from (for example) libertarians like me who would have a very difficult time arguing against an abortion-rights case presented on the grounds of positive universal liberty.

Zuzu, thanks for the advice that I can achieve my rights through the black market if civil society won’t respect them.

Babydoll, I’d love to be able to achieve my rights to bodily autonomy by having cannabis readily available, but I can accept that I need other sources for that.

BTW, what do you think of pennyroyal tea?

Nope. Antabuse was mentioned above, for example; it’s a drug used to treat addiction; naltrexone, a similar drug, has been involved in similar disputes, as have buprenorphine and methadone. So has Valtrex, used to treat herpes. And guess what the American Pharmacist’s Association’s “conscience clause” policy was in reaction to? Yup, physician assisted suicide in Oregon, where the issue has come up in court multiple times.

On a personal note, I went through a period immediately after major leg surgery where I would have excruciating leg spasms late at night that would keep me up for hours. I was eight at the time, and it was so bad that I made my mother call the doctor immediately (yes, at 3 in the morning) after the first time it happened – and I have an incredibly high pain threshold. Over the course of the next two or three weeks, I switched from drug to drug, as none of them worked – I believe I tried valium, codeine, percocet, morphine, and one or two others. We became familiar faces at the pharmacy … I honestly believe that the only reason they filled the later prescriptions was that I was there, clad in a cast from my sternum to my toes, and that we were your stereotypical white suburbanite mother and son.

This is a serious issue for women *and* for men. Women may be subject to more judgment based on their sexual choices, and they may have more at stake (medically, at least) when there is a potential for pregnancy. But access to prompt and honest medical care is important enough that there’s no need for hyperbole. And the right-wingnut pharmacists who refuse to fill BCP and EC prescriptions don’t need to be given any ideas with respect to Viagra, Valtrex, condoms, or anything else along those lines …

The only medicines that seem to be “problematic” for certain pharmacists, or pharmacies, to stock and dispense are those medicines that just happen to be the ones that prevent pregnancy in women. Funny, that.

If I don’t stock the kind of medicine you want, you are welcome to find another pharmacy that will provide you the medicines you want and your doctor prescribed.

Spoken like someone who lives in a large city where there is a pharmacy on every block. Rural and small town women don’t have the luxury of “pharmacy shopping”. Also, refusal to fill prescriptions isn’t generally something that a pharmacy promotes as a business strategy. You won’t know a pharmacist isn’t going to fill your prescription until you go up to the counter, and your pharmacist rips up your prescription on “moral grounds”. Perhaps pharmacies should be required to post on their front doors whether they are a “full-service” pharmacy (“we provide birth control”) or a partial-service pharmacy (“we provide every medication under the sun except birth control”). That way, the pharmacist would have right-of-conscience, and so would the customer—the customer would have the ability to vote with his or her wallet, which pharmacy to spend money with, no?

I can’t either. If you refuse to do something your employer wants you to do, you should be fired. There are times when you have to choose between doing the right thing and remaining employed.

If I own a pharmacy, nobody should be telling me what medicines I have to stock and dispense. If I don’t stock the kind of medicine you want, you are welcome to find another pharmacy that will provide you the medicines you want and your doctor prescribed.

All the rhetoric about emergency rooms, and treating dying people are just that, rhetoric. Pregnancy isn’t a life threatening condition (at least in the pre-implantation stage). As a matter of fact, it isn’t even an illness. So comparing it to Osama bin Laden walking into the emergency room is somewhat incorrect.

There are doctors who refuse to perform abortions. Nobody has proposed forcing them to do that (though they are talking about that in the EU).

I would imagine that once the number of doctors who will perform abortions shrink to unsustainable levels, there will be an outcry, but then people who have a problem with certain procedures simply will not become doctors.