McIlheran Monday: Conscience This

Sorry this had to wait until today; this is partly because I'm busy, and partly because Patrick McIlheran's latest abomination seems not to be available on-line (really--scroll down, click the link, and you'll get a 404 error). Perhaps the Journal-Sentinel web team saw what I did to David Gelernter, and voted not to make the article available. Sadly, I still pay them for their Sunday coupons, so I was able to soil my hands with his column.

It's titled "Yes, pharmacists have--and can use--a conscience." He's referring to Wisconsin Senate Bill 155 (.pdf), the bill that prohibits discrimination against pharmacists who won't dispense The Pill, and absolves them of any liability for their decision not to do their jobs. For more information see Planned Parenthood.

Anyway, McIlheran starts with what has to be the World's Most Labored Analogy: If you were working at Home Depot (I'm paraphrasing), would you sell a white supremacist ingredients for a flaming cross? To be fair, this is only barely more labored than the unconvincing analogies I've heard on my side--the vegan waitress refusing to take your order for steak, for example. But both of these analogies demonstrate just how far away from the central, frightening point of this discussion both sides are straying.

McIlheran wants you to think he finally gets to the meat, though:

Two bills--one on the Senate, one in the Assembly--state it explicitly: Employers and state regulators wouldn't be able to make a pharmacist dispense a drug he [or she?--ed] believes will be used with the purpose of causing an abortion.

In practice, it's called "emergency contraception": after-the-fact birth control, a high dose of birth-control hormones, usually within three to five days of sex [or following a rape, where emergency contraceptive is SOP--ed]. In at least one Milwaukee case [link mine--ed], the state's investigating a pharmacist who wouldn't fill such a prescription. [. . .]

Neither bill, remember, contains the least syllable about barring anyone from getting any emergency contraception or from distributing it. All they say is that you can't force a pharmacist to be the one to sell it.

Notice what's missing in those paragraphs, and, if you read the whole of the column, what's missing throughout: McIlheran talks about emergency contraception, but ignores the primary thrust of the bill, which is to enable pharmacists to deny women just plain old regular birth control pills, too. There's an elephant in the room, Pat, and it's standing on your common sense.

Before you go any further, please go read the actual bill (.pdf). The bill itself does not distinguish between The Pill and Plan B. It kind of makes me wonder if McIlheran actually read the bill, or merely pro-life press releases about it, since he also seems to lack further understanding of the realities of the bill--but more on that later.

Let us remember that The Pill is one of the single most-often prescribed medications in this country. Moreover, a significant number of girls and women take The Pill less for its birth-control effects and more for its other health benefits. In other words, pharmacists are now being given license to substitute their judgment for that of a woman's doctor. And I do mean judgment: There is no regulation in the bill that requires pharmacists to refuse treatment equally. They can decide that a 19-year-old unmarried woman has no business being on The Pill, but that a 35-year-old housewife with five kids can take it. That truly is the equivalent of practicing medicine without a license.

McIlheran continues, in blissful ignorance of the true intent and eventual ramifications of this bill:

The practical answer for those who want their morning-after pills would seem to be simple, in that two of the four corners at your typical urban Wisconsin intersection are occupied by competing drugstores: Go to another pharmacy.

The two Wisconsin cases that have made this bill worthy of scrutiny (the one linked above and the Noesen case) both involved something that this bill does not prohibit: Pharmacists refused to transfer or give back the prescription. Again, McIlheran is living in the land of make-believe, since we know that these pharmacists are not going to say, "Oh, you know, let me just get Fred over here." Among the leaders in the Dark Side's fight is "Pharmacists for Life," who are unequivocal in their stance:

Brauer, of Pharmacists for Life, defends the right of pharmacists not only to decline to fill prescriptions themselves but also to refuse to refer customers elsewhere or transfer prescriptions.

"That's like saying, 'I don't kill people myself but let me tell you about the guy down the street who does.' What's that saying? 'I will not off your husband, but I know a buddy who will?' It's the same thing," said Brauer, who now works at a hospital pharmacy.

And yet, to hear McIlheran or other pro-lifers speaking of the bill--and I did hear one one the radio, while stuck in Marquette Interchange traffic last week--pharmacies will make certain to have someone else who can fill the prescription, or those nice pro-life pharmacists will kindly tell you where to go to get your Pill. And yet there are no such provisions in the bill passed by the Senate this week--nothing about requiring pharmacies to have someone willing to fill it or about making the pharmacist release the hostage prescription.

Besides, this is a bill that addresses only medicine taken by women. Your pharmacist can still be fired or fined for refusing to dispense Viagra, for example. It boils down to, in the end, further enervation for the crowd that can't get enough of controlling sex and women's access to it. This is the nut of the issue--no pun intended. Certain people have hang-ups about sex, and any tool they can find to add to their toolbox of denial is fair game. McIlheran, perhaps unwittingly, is a tool, too; maybe he honestly doesn't see this agenda at play, and really believed the pro-lifers/ anti-sexers when they said this was all just about Plan B, and women are guaranteed their prescriptions, anyway.

Full disclosure: My father is a pharmacist. We have not talked about his stance on this kind of bill; for one, he and I don't talk politics, as a rule. For another, he works in a different state and, for that matter, in a hospital, where The Pill is probably not in high demand. After watching my dad's grueling work my whole life, I have nothing but respect for these men and women who have to keep track of an absurdly vast store of knowledge and, in the case of the folks down at Walgreen's, have to put up with all manner of crazies. But their sole and only responsibility is to act as the dictates of a patient's doctor, and the science of pharmacology related to patient safety, determine. It is not theirs to stick up for zygotic life. It is not theirs to deny women legal medicine. It is not theirs to impose their victorian view of sex upon the rest of us.