Have you been following the ELCC?

[Seany-D]

Kudos to the East Lansing City Council for unanimously passing the resolution below on 8/17/04. It would be appropriate for us to write in our support to the council in a letter. The Board Members should contact me about this if they would like to do so. -- SED

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City of East Lansing
East Lansing, Michigan
RESOLUTION

Urging Defeat/Veto of Conscientious Objector Policy Act
House Bills 5006, 5276, 5277 and 5278

WHEREAS, the City of East Lansing is proud of the richness of the religious, racial, ethnic, and cultural differences represented within it; and,

WHEREAS, the City of East Lansing has a history of providing health benefits to employees whose beliefs and values are diverse; and,

WHEREAS, the City of East Lansing recognizes that religion, culture and values can be manifested in the individual choice of a health care provider; and,

WHEREAS, the City Council of the City of East Lansing supports equal access to health care for City employees; and,

WHEREAS, individual preference and morals in exercising access to health care benefits is the only appropriate method to be utilized in choosing a health care provider or service; and,

WHEREAS, the Michigan House of Representatives has proposed a package of bills commonly referred to as “The Conscientious Objector Policy Act,” that would allow health care providers, health facilities, health insurers, health maintenance organizations, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan to refuse to offer or provide a health care services on professional, ethical, religious or moral grounds even where such service is lawful; and,

WHEREAS, respect for the lawful decisions by an individual citizen is one of the founding principles of the City of East Lansing, and of our republic, and is a principle which must be balanced with the right of the general public to receive health care which is permitted by law and within the standard of practice for medical practitioners; and,

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the City Council of the City of East Lansing hereby reaffirms its commitment to equal access to health care services for all its employees and citizens and its opposition to government sponsored restrictions on lawful health care choices.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the City Council of the City of East Lansing hereby indicates its opposition to the “Conscientious Objector Policy Act” and urges its defeat.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the City Council of the City of East Lansing orders a copy of this resolution to be sent to each member of the Michigan legislature and to Governor Jennifer Granholm.

[profdunebastard]

That is really cool. I'm down with writing a letter to them showing our appreciation of this act.

[Rama]

So about the law at hand...what's to keep me from refusing to give any sort of medicine to black people because I believe them to be the accursed descendants of whatever-tribe and therefore want them all to die hideously grotesque deaths?
What if my dogmatic and religious misanthropy forbids me from helping ANYONE and instead I sit behind my medicine counter laughing at all the dirty ignorant people seeking my help?
What if I'm a Christian Scientist and I think that healthcare defies the will of God?

[the anti-myrmidon]

Rama said:

What if I'm a Christian Scientist and I think that healthcare defies the will of God?

I think that it's safe to say that if you believe that any sort of non-spiritual medicine is against the will of God, then you probably would not spend the time going through pharmacy or med school and subsequently getting a job in those fields.

As for the racial example, I think the law deals more with refusing a particular form of medicine, not refusing to sell to a particular subset of the population. The Civil Rights movement helped to make the latter illegal. Still, it's a pretty complicated situation when you think about all the possible implications if the law would pass.

[Sage1777]

While I am very pro-choice, I do not think that reproductive rights include having the government force someone else to do something they think is wrong, especially in the private sector. I have the right to have sex, but that right does not, and should not, allow me to use the government to force a woman against her will to have sex with me. There will always be plenty of people in the medical industry who do not object to abortive procedures and drugs. The increase in costs to a woman seeking an abortion or abortion drugs is tiny compared to the costs of enslaving medical personnel both to the personnel themselves, and in the higher costs of health care as fewer people will want to enter the field if they are forced to commit acts that they feel are wrong.

Urging SUPPORT of Conscientious Objector Policy Act House Bills 5006, 5276, 5277 and 5278

[Atsuko73]

Sage, I kinda get your point, but I feel like a pharmacist should have to give people medicine. I feel like girls may have a hard time in certain towns even getting birth control pills if pharmacists were allowed to "choose" what they give out. As for a doctor who may actually have to do the procedure...well...there I can see a reason for perhaps allowing her or him to "consciensciously object" because the procedure is a bit more traumatic for someone who may think it is "wrong." So I suppose I would support it for certain surgeons and people who actually perform procedures, but definately not for pharmacists or general practitioners.

[Susan in the lab]

Another interesting take on this is the refusal of some religiously-affiliated hospitals to issue emergency contraception, even in cases of rape. The problem here is that people may only have one hospital within a large area, or they may be taken to that specific hospital for treatment by an ambulance or the police. Furthermore, many such hospitals are non-profit, and thus are more affordable for those who have little or no health insurance. Should the hospitals be able to refuse to dispense medicines under such a conscientious objector policy? Obviously, there are more pharmacies than hospitals, but perhaps in a small town the options are again limited if pharmacists refuse to dispense prescribed drugs.

In addition to this, there is also the fact that the pharmacist in the original case was an employee of a company (Walgreen's, if I remember correctly?). As an employee, he is responsible for providing customer service in a manner that fits Walgreen's company policy....if he does not follow the policy, then the company should not have to keep an employee that refuses to act in a manner expected of all employees. People talk about businesses...if you get crappy service at a restaurant, you tell other people so that they won't go there. Same goes with pharmacies.

It's an interesting issue because you have to balance the rights of the customer who has been prescribed the drugs by a doctor, the employee who refuses to dispense them, and the company who hired and is being represented by that objecting employee.

[Seany-D]

Guest-Sage1777 said:

The increase in costs to a woman seeking an abortion or abortion drugs is tiny compared to the costs of enslaving medical personnel both to the personnel themselves, and in the higher costs of health care as fewer people will want to enter the field if they are forced to commit acts that they feel are wrong.

Where do you draw the line then? Abortion is indeed a touchy issue, but do you also say that drugs developed using stem cell research are verboten? What about medicines developed with clinical trials on animals? The reasoning just doesn't sound, well, sound to me.


Also, have you been hanging out with parsley, rosemary and thyme?

Sean "not as bald as Art G." Davis

[Rama]

My previous post wasn't actually meant to be answered, Susan. It was more of a hypothetical type of question, and I was extending the logic of the argument to absurd points to show how dangerous an argument like that can be if it's allowed to have merit.
I understand your points, Sage, but I still don't think they're right. I agree that a person shouldn't be forced to perform an act which they find to be immoral. Of course, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be fired for it. If I were an advertising executive and my company took on a tobacco company as a client, I do not believe I would be entitled to keep my job if I refused to work on the case. Granted, I wouldn't really want to stay at the firm in the first place if my coworkers were unable to accomodate my personal opinion on that sort of thing, but I certainly do not think that I would be entitled to any sort of protection from the law.
The point I was making from my earlier post is that morality is completely subjective and not rationally supported in almost every case. If one person thinks that abortions are wrong and refuses to do his job in helping the patient get his medicine, then what's to stop me from using the same argument to refuse HIV/AIDS medicine from a gay person? If I do in fact believe that "God hates fags", then is that not just as valid a concern as "God hates people who kill itty-bitty clumps of cells in a raped woman's belly"? I believe it is equally as valid; that is to say, not at all.
If you have problems fulfilling the duties of your job, then find a new job, or find an employer willing to accomodate your personal religious beliefs. Your job is to do your job (imagine that), not to foist your dogma on innocent bystanders.
And anyway, we're talking about a goddamn pharmacist here. It's not like he's been to med school for eleventy-twelve years or anything like that. If he has a problem with giving medicine to people, then he should pick another career.

[Sage1776]

The pharmacists who are upset about this do not view it as part of their job to involuntarily end life, but to engage in voluntary exchange of goods that will prolong life and/or make it better. As a student organization we should attempt to see issues from other points of view, even if we find them offensive. I notice that we want to be tolerated, but so far I have seen little tolerance for others.
Also, forcing pharmacists to involuntarily serve women is analogous to forcing women to serve fetuses. This involuntary servitude is the primary reason why I am pro-choice.

Allowing the women to order the pills online or through the mail would be the best solution (which they may already be able to do). The slight inconvenience to the women would be tiny compared to the emotional costs of forcing someone else to "murder a baby" which is how they see it. And some pharmacists are likely to stop offering their services totally if forced to "murder babies" which makes women (and everyone else) in small towns even worse off.

The area where total dynamic welfare is maximized is where the line is drawn. This area is different in emergency situations and for other different circumstances.
Consult courses and books on: Microeconomics (which also provides most of the models for evolutionary biology), Public Economics, and Law and Economics, for more on this concept.

[ebonywnd]

Sure pharmacists can refuse to sell the morning after pill, or even the birth control pill, but they should be fired immediately afterwards for violating company policy. They aren't being forced to work there, after all. In fact, to avoid getting fired, why don't they just not work there at all? They know it is part of the job description.

I can definitely see your point about not forcing people to do something they don't believe in, and these people aren't being forced. They have a choice. Anything else is imposing their morals on someone else. Women don't always have the option of going to another pharmacy, and waiting 1-2 weeks for delivery via the internet kind of defeats the purpose of the morning-after pill, which most women wouldn't even think to stockpile 'just in case'. In some cases, it may even be forcing a woman to look to more traumatic methods of abortion.

[Seany-D]

Oops, I missed the recent posts in this thread when I responded earlier. Whose idea was it to separate discussion and planning on this issue into two threads?

Concerning the particular pill in question, it must be received within 72 hrs. of the act in order to be effective, so I believe that mail-order or internet pharmacy options may be impractical or even impossible.

I disagree with the assertion that this is intolerance on my part. I see the rights of the patient/victim -- what they should be able to rightly expect out of health care -- as being superior to the rights of the pharmacist in this case. As I said before, categorically allowing a pharmacist to deny dispensation of any drug that they see as conflicting with their beliefs opens up a slippery slope. It allows for no flexibility in the treatment of extreme cases -- rape, for example.

Now, one could argue this point on the basis that pharmacists have the right to refuse a script that could interact with one's current medication, as it could cause the patient harm (assuming such an error isn't caught in a physician's office); refusing a script that causes an unborn fetus harm reduces this to the abortion debate, as I see it.

I'm interested on other viewpoints and arguments on the issue.

Sean "I guess I missed a career in pharmacology" Davis

[Sage1776]

So because the probability that a woman wants abortion pills, does not already have them, was not raped (emergency situations are different), was refused service by a very religious-right pharmacist (I assume they are rare), cannot get to a pharmacy or anyone else she knows with abortion pills in two days travel time, nor order them two-day delivery, and the woman does actually become pregnant, and she did not know of all these barriers before having sex;
times the increase in emotion distress and physical danger of getting a standard abortion
+ the normal inconvenience to the vast majority of women who will have to travel a few extra minutes in the rare situation that the first pharmacy she went to refuses to carry abortion pills;
Is greater than
the loss of workers’ rights not to be required to do something that he or she believes is highly immoral, as terms of employment to an entire field of employment,
+ the costs to society from having fewer pharmacists (higher healthcare costs and less convenience)
+ the weakening of the pro-choice argument that forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term is involuntary servitude, which is generally wrong
?

Perhaps she was mistaken, but I had a girlfriend that said taking several birth-control pills was the same as taking an abortion pill. Since the emotional costs to the pharmacists of supplying birth-control pills ("promoting sinful sex") is much less than supplying abortion pills ("assisting in baby killing") I do support requiring pharmacists to provide birth-control pills. Assuming this is true, it could solve the problem, assuming that women knew of this, as they could simply buy birth-control pills. This would require a "don't ask, don't tell" policy though for the situation where a customer asks for abortion pills, is refused, and then asks for birth-control pills. The uncertainty of the pharmacist would likely lower their emotional costs to the point where in the long-run; such a policy would still maximize total welfare.

Well I am starting to repeat myself (and have spent way too much time on this) so I will drop the argument so we don’t waste time arguing in circles (unless someone posts a really new idea). If all of you active on the message still wish to write the letter and refuse to allow a dissenting opinion on it (which would be the most honest), or refuse to say that only a majority of the members support the city council’s decision, I will simply not be a formal member of the organization.

At least we had a cool debate that created interest, even if no one altered their views.

[Atsuko73]

Just wanted to point out that I was talking about birth control, not morning after pills.

[profdunebastard]

Sage, the primary reason we wish to send a letter to the city council is a political one.Last year Mayor Meadows did us a big favor by approving our proposal for a seperation of church and state week. We were someone last minute in getting something drafted and into them, and were met with some opposition by other members. The mayor's support clinched us, and seemed to pull some of the wavering members over. His reference to constitutionality, not emotional appeals, certainly won us over. In sending a letter of support, we are showing our appreciation for support in the past. Seeing this announcement shows me th council perhaps has learned something from making bible week official last year, and shows that our group may be making a difference.

I understand you are opposed to this proposal, and while I disagree with some of your reasoning, I very much respect your right to disagree. In sending this letter of support, we aren't approving of the announcement per se, just it's secular nature and appeal to constitutional rights, we don't see pronouncements like that very often anymore. I think it is for the best. If pharmacists are allowed to deny aid on a whim instead of witho some sort of legislative deciding mechanism, what stops a fast food employee from serving fastfood because it will make me fat, or a doctor from saving the life of a criminal, or a firefighter from allowing a drughouse to burn? Like Sean said it is a slippery slope. We propose this letter, not to limit rights, but to ensure the maintenance of our country's limited liberty and secularism, albeit in a very tiny grassroots way. Our alliance doesn't want to exclude , ignore, or lose your support, and we encourage differing viewpoints, so we can put it to a vote next meeting. Just keep in mind we aren't simply trying to enforce and promote abortion and atheist rights, we are trying to make a political message by supporting the city council, and essentially we are thanking them and reminding them to stay on the ball, as we would hate to see another bible week endorsed. We just thought this was a step in the right direction for them. Feel free to disagree, but also understand.