Uppity-Negro.com

Right, think I'm finally starting to figure out how the other half thinks. Or fails spectacularly to think. Or something. Over at Body and Soul, please see the entry simply titled, Pills:

From Prevention.com, here's an interesting article on the increasing number of "pro-life" doctors and pharmacists who refuse to prescribe birth control or fill prescriptions. We're not talking about a genuine conflict between individual conscience and public health as much as an under the radar political movement, supported by some pretty powerful people, to argue that birth control is abortion[.]

Ok. There's was a brief piece in the current Bust about. . . well, from ReligiousTolerance.org: 2004 developments: emergency contraception ("Morning After Pill"):

Eckerd Corp. fires three pharmacists over EC: Fox News reported that Eckerd Corp fired three of their Denton, TX pharmacists because they refused to fill an emergency contraception prescription for a woman who had been raped. Gene Herr said that he and two coworkers were fired six days after their refusal . He said that his own refusal was based on religious grounds. He allegedly believes that the medication could have killed an embryo if the woman had already conceived. He had allegedly declined to fill prescriptions for EC at least five times in the past. However, this was the first time that a case had involved a rape victim. He is reported as saying: "I went in the back room and briefly prayed about it. I actually called my pastor ... and asked him what he thought about it." The other two pharmacists who were on duty also refused to fill the prescription.

I can almost, almost, if I squint a little, see someone mistaking (not equating, mistaking, because, um, it's wrong) EC and abortion. Not quite, but almost.

But them folks mentioned in the Prevention piece?

[Julee] Lacey's pharmacist and [Melissa] Kelley's doctors are among hundreds, perhaps thousands, of physicians and pharmacists who now adhere to a controversial belief that birth control pills and other forms of hormonal contraception--including the skin patch, the vaginal ring, and progesterone injections--cause tens of thousands of "silent" abortions every year. Consequently, they are refusing to prescribe or dispense them.

Scenarios like these--virtually unheard of 10 years ago--are happening with increasing frequency. However, until this spring, the issue received little attention outside the antiabortion community. It wasn't high on the agendas of reproductive rights advocates, who have been preoccupied with defending abortion rights and emergency contraception. But when Lacey's story was picked up by a Texas TV station and later made the national news, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and others took notice.

Their logic does not in the slightest resemble our Earth logic.

This does explain something else mentioned in Bust, the FDA rejection of over-the-counter sales of Plan B.

FDA acting drug chief Dr. Steven Galson overruled his own staff to issue the rejection last month. The FDA cited concern about young teenagers' use of emergency contraception without a doctor's guidance, but Galson said the agency will reconsider the decision if given more data.

Although "explain" may not be the word I'm grasping for there.

Between this, some of the arguments of defense counsel in that case I mentioned two entries back (but prefer not to quote, thanks) and the Jack Ryan thing (where the definition of "coercion" came up, regarding repeatedly taking your spouse to sex clubs when she [and, call me crazy, but I think gender kind'a enters into this]) has expressed zero interest. . . I'm starting to think there's a wee bit of confusion on some of these issues,

Well, that, or all this is actually about controlling women's sexuality, and all the medical data in the world isn't going to change minds. But that's just silly.