The shirt reads: “Plan B prevents abortion. Ask me how.” This shirt is available through Bitch Ph.D‘s store.
I’m calling for an immediate boycott of Covington (Washington) Pharmacy. The owner, Jim Ramseth, refuses to sell Plan B to anyone. Buy your Jujubees and US Weekly elsewhere.
From today’s article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
“Everybody draws their own lines,” Ramseth said. “And if a person’s purpose is to kill a fertilized egg, then I disagree with that. Regardless of where the practitioner draws that line, they should have the right.”
Plan B, essentially a high dose of the same ingredient in regular birth control pills, works by preventing ovulation and may stop fertilization or implantation of a fertilized egg. If a woman is already pregnant, the drug has no effect. But to Ramseth it still veers too close to abortion.
[Emphasis mine. And thank you, P-I, for immediately following that idiotic quote with the facts about Plan B, and for warning people away from his righteous judgement.]
Is denying emergency contraception to women going to cause them to reconsider? Or is it going to cause them to wait and have to have an abortion later? Impossible to say, but maybe it’s better to prevent the pregnancy in the first place.
I think I’m going to start forming opinions relating to body parts and health issues I don’t have. Prostate cancer? Testicular cancer? Yeah, sorry, it’s god’s will. I don’t feel like I should interfere with god’s will by treating that.
I hope turning away rape victims (among other legitimate clients) who could prevent a pregnancy won’t disturb Ramseth’s sleep at night.
THANK you! A million years ago (well, college in the early ’90s — same thing), I wrote a column countering one pro-life goon’s* abortion rhetoric that said how allowances would be made for men to have treatment for their weiners (I’m paraphrasing, obviously), and I was told the comparison couldn’t be made.
Great minds think alike.
[*Not ALL pro-lifers are goons; this particular guy WAS a goon, however, who also happened to pro-life.]
Personally, I think any pharmacist who refuses to dispense a medication, so long as the presciption is valid, ought to be fired. His job is to dispense medicine. If he has a moral objection to it, he should quit, and work in a field he doesn’t find objectionable. His morals should not enter into his job. Why is that so hard a concept?
I feel you on that, mb, but I also think it’s more complicated than that.
What about soldiers who get put on trial for war crimes? They get put on the stand and someone asks, “Now why did you think it was okay to bury that entire village alive?”
And they say, “I was just doing my job. As a soldier you don’t have room for moral objections. You just do what your C.O. tells you to do without question.”
Or what about cops who think a certain law is wrong or immoral… like busting people for possesion. The job of a cop is enforcement, not legislation.
So, under what circumstances can someone exercise their own judgement about what they will or won’t do as a part of their duties?
I think the guy is a fucking idiot too, don’t get me wrong, but I think he has the right not to stock products he finds objectionable. While pharmacists are licensed by the state, they are not directly representing the state like a police officer is (unless they are working FOR the state, at a public hospital/clinic/etc.)
Here’s a hypothetical situation: Jonah Jenkins has just become a licensed pharmacist. His entire schooling was paid for by the congregation of his church, who are all strict Fundacathlomentarians. He is a high poobah of the seventh order at his local church, and they paid for his schooling specifically so he could open a store “for the needs of the faithful”.
The fundacathlomentarians ardently believe that anyone using birth control, antacids, or listerine
breath strips will be smote from on high by Jesus his own bad self, swinging a chunk of the cross upside their noggins like Hacksaw Jim Duggan on a bad meth bender: eternally concussing their childless, calm stomached, minty-breathed asses (while chanting AYYYY-OOOHHHH!).
Jonah opens his own drug store, “Fundacathlomentarian Rx N’ Stuff”. He is a businessman. He buys the stock, pays the rent, etc. He gets no money from the government, except
when he fills perscriptions covered by a government program, which is fundamentally no different than a grocery store getting re-embursed by the state when someone buys stuff with food stamps. Anyone can shop there, they don’t discriminate, they just don’t stock certain items.
The law should leave him alone. If he isn’t directly drawing a paycheck from your tax dollars, you don’t have the right to tell him what he can or can’t do. If his stance pisses you off then shop somewhere else (or if you’re really pissed, start a boycott like SJ suggested) and let the free market decide. Before someone jumps my ass about it being an essential health issue (which I agree birth control is) remember that it’s a service/product that is provided by a wide, wide variety of other outlets.
The people acting like suddenly someone won’t have access to birth control because this guy (or a thousand just like him) don’t want to sell it need to get a grip.
Where there’s money to be made 99.9% of drug stores will fill that perscription.
Just give the other .1% the finger and take your business elsewhere.
If you still advocate the feds forcing the issue, just remember that once that precident is in place it can very easily be used in the opposite direction (IE: keep the government the fuck out of everything you can)
You look marvelous!
I’m more for boycotting, or choosing to take my bidness elsewhere, than forcing the government to do anything.
What bothers me A LOT is that this is the most recent event in a wave of people misrepresenting what Plan B actually does. It bothers me that people are equating it with abortion.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, Grau.
The only problem I see is, what if you live in rural South Dakota and this is the only pharmacy within 100 miles? And what if you only make $5.15 an hour and don’t have a car? Can one get Plan B over the internets?
Agree with you, except on the weiner treatment thing. A pregancy and ball cancer aren’t equatable, unless the pregnancy is life threatening to the woman.
Also, since Plan B is over the counter, I don’t see why it won’t be available in the internets.
Gah, I know I veered off into false analogy hell. That’s the problem with pregnancy though. There is no male equivalent.
Perhaps we’re looking at this the wrong way: any Pharmicist ignorant enough to somehow equate Plan B with abortion is not nearly smart enough to be dispensing meds to folks. This is not a boycott it’s common sense.
“I think I’m going to start forming opinions relating to body parts and health issues I don’t have.”
Okay, but you know what? No. Different. If you want to go to a parallel universe where fathers have no rights or responsibilities around their children, cool. Otherwise, men have a right to have an opinion about this issue and women have an obligation to respect that opinion.
There is no male equivalent to pregnancy. There’s no female equivalent to fatherhood.
You know what I’m really looking forward to, at least intellectually? The day when babies can be cooked up in jars, and women are legally obligated to give fathers the option of moving the peanut to a jar, decanting the kid nine months later, suing the mother for child support and denying her visitation. It’ll be interesting to see those cultural shockwaves ripple out across the pond, once womens’ monopoly on baby ovens has been broken. Somehow I imagine a huge majority of women objecting to something like that, but maybe I’m just not giving people enough credit.
Hmmm… JB has a good point there. While I totally disagree with having the federales force independant pharmacists to provide services they disagree with on religious/moral/”I just don’t wanna” grounds (see long ass comment above) if this jackass is using his position as a pharmacist to give misleading medical information to the public (either on purpose or through stupidity) a good case could be made for hauling his ass in front of the medical board for abusing his license.
IE: “I don’t provide Plan B because I disagree with birth control for religious reasons” = Legal
“I don’t provide Plan B because it murders a living fetus” = abusing his position to spread bullshit lies.
A fine distinction, but an important one, methinks.
ha! the hypocrisy of the crazy kooks on the left shows itself well: intolerant, anti-Christian bigots and houses full of hate describe the left abortoholics as seen on this website.
Jim Ramseth made his ‘choice’, too bad for you, go find your abortion drugs somewhere else you narrow minded bigot racists!
Wait, did I mention that by posting this I have no clue what Plan B is? Also, that I fuck puppies.
Yo Mama
Damn, man. Why don’t I get any crazy right-wingers over at my blog? WTF?
Actually I’m pretty close to a crazy right-winger. I’m just not a STUPID crazy right-winger. I’m also an Orthodox Agnostic, so I actually need a logical reason other than “Jesus will smite thee” to take a stance on an issue.
Unless the fetus involved happens to carry MY genetic material, I could really give a fuck less about abortion and abortion related issues for the most part.
Last time I looked I didn’t have a uterus.
If you think you’re mature enough to be having unprotected sex, then you should be able to handle the consequences. However, if you were raped or some other tragidy befell you, it should be your own choice to take Plan B. I agree with you 100%.
You made me laugh with the comment about prostate and testicular cancer. If you remove a man’s testicle, arent you killing hundreds of potential children? Couldnt that be considered the same thing?
Hello men.
I googled Ramseth. My last name & found this.
Hey Jim, I hope we aren’t related because you are an ASSHOLE!!!
Stupid ass fundie!