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I was listening to the radio a few days ago. I think it was Monday morning, NPR, but I'm not quite sure. That's part of the reason I'm grumbling at you, rather than at them. The other part is that I'm not sure how to call them out for one example of something so common. The radio news program was doing a piece about the legal status of "health care workers" who refused to provide care that conflicted with their consciences.
I think that one-sentence summary would be pretty baffling, if I had approached it with no background knowledge. But I heard it and recognized the context. I've read lots of stories of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control pills or pain management drugs. (In some cases, they say outright that nobody should have such drugs, and refuse to refer to other providers.) I've read about women being raped and going to doctors, or emergency rooms, and being unable to obtain emergency contraception soon enough for it to have helped. I thought the controversy was mostly about pharmacists not filling prescriptions--how can drugstores protect patient safety and employee religious freedom? I thought something might have been decided recently, some new law or court decision about whether they had to fill the prescription or make a referral or get fired or whatever. Nope.
The story wasn't about that at all. Some new decision is expected, sometime in the forseeable future, so they wanted to give listeners a sense of the background. Why would anybody want these conscience protection laws? What sort of situations are covered? They didn't present statistics--it's hard to get a sense of the background from hearing somebody read statistics over the radio. They told anecdotes. The trouble is, their anecdotes didn't fit with the background knowledge I brought in. They weren't talking about filling prescriptions, or even about writing them. There was an ob-gyn who talked about being turned away from medical residency programs because he wouldn't do abortions. At the time, he didn't know hospitals that received federal funds were required not to discriminate, so he thinks the conscience protection laws will help young doctors in his position, by making them more aware of their rights. The announcer talked about other people, always in terms of performing abortions. I got the impression "health care workers" was supposed to mean "doctors, medical students, nurse practitioners, and maybe nurse midwives."
It's hard to muster up much sympathy for pharmacists who don't approve of all the prescriptions they fill. When I've heard anecdotes about conscientious objectors to women's health, I felt sorry for the patients and resentful towards the health care workers who are blocking their access to medications. It's a different story if the conscience-protection laws are about doctors, getting in trouble because they don't want to do surgery. If a doctor really doesn't want to do a particular kind of surgery, thinks it's a terrible idea and nobody should ever do it, I wouldn't want that doctor doing the surgery on ME. There's a limit to how hard one can push, and I'm not sure anybody knows exactly where it is. (Especially as there are some religious extremists who went into obstetrics because they wanted to protect pregnancies.) I don't know why I haven't heard about any conscience-protection cases involving surgical abortion. Other than this one, of course. I wonder if it had to do with a hospital merger or something. I hadn't even thought of abortions as happening in hospitals anymore. There are so many hospitals that won't do them, and so many doctors that don't know how, I thought they mostly happened in specialty clinics. Except in emergencies. And some of those emergencies aren't much like the abortions a conscience might object to in good faith.
However the law ends up, I doubt it will distinguish between a doctor doing surgery and a pharmacist filling a prescription. (If it does, the distinction would be about being a doctor, rather than about doing surgery.) The collection of anecdotes in my head, about the pharmacists, were mostly told by patients, and handed around through various feminist sources. I don't know how respectable those sources are in the rest of the world. I certainly don't remember them all well enough to cite them. They just blur into The Esteemed Journal of I Read It Somewhere. (But with this story, I read it a lot.)
I think that one-sentence summary would be pretty baffling, if I had approached it with no background knowledge. But I heard it and recognized the context. I've read lots of stories of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control pills or pain management drugs. (In some cases, they say outright that nobody should have such drugs, and refuse to refer to other providers.) I've read about women being raped and going to doctors, or emergency rooms, and being unable to obtain emergency contraception soon enough for it to have helped. I thought the controversy was mostly about pharmacists not filling prescriptions--how can drugstores protect patient safety and employee religious freedom? I thought something might have been decided recently, some new law or court decision about whether they had to fill the prescription or make a referral or get fired or whatever. Nope.
The story wasn't about that at all. Some new decision is expected, sometime in the forseeable future, so they wanted to give listeners a sense of the background. Why would anybody want these conscience protection laws? What sort of situations are covered? They didn't present statistics--it's hard to get a sense of the background from hearing somebody read statistics over the radio. They told anecdotes. The trouble is, their anecdotes didn't fit with the background knowledge I brought in. They weren't talking about filling prescriptions, or even about writing them. There was an ob-gyn who talked about being turned away from medical residency programs because he wouldn't do abortions. At the time, he didn't know hospitals that received federal funds were required not to discriminate, so he thinks the conscience protection laws will help young doctors in his position, by making them more aware of their rights. The announcer talked about other people, always in terms of performing abortions. I got the impression "health care workers" was supposed to mean "doctors, medical students, nurse practitioners, and maybe nurse midwives."
It's hard to muster up much sympathy for pharmacists who don't approve of all the prescriptions they fill. When I've heard anecdotes about conscientious objectors to women's health, I felt sorry for the patients and resentful towards the health care workers who are blocking their access to medications. It's a different story if the conscience-protection laws are about doctors, getting in trouble because they don't want to do surgery. If a doctor really doesn't want to do a particular kind of surgery, thinks it's a terrible idea and nobody should ever do it, I wouldn't want that doctor doing the surgery on ME. There's a limit to how hard one can push, and I'm not sure anybody knows exactly where it is. (Especially as there are some religious extremists who went into obstetrics because they wanted to protect pregnancies.) I don't know why I haven't heard about any conscience-protection cases involving surgical abortion. Other than this one, of course. I wonder if it had to do with a hospital merger or something. I hadn't even thought of abortions as happening in hospitals anymore. There are so many hospitals that won't do them, and so many doctors that don't know how, I thought they mostly happened in specialty clinics. Except in emergencies. And some of those emergencies aren't much like the abortions a conscience might object to in good faith.
However the law ends up, I doubt it will distinguish between a doctor doing surgery and a pharmacist filling a prescription. (If it does, the distinction would be about being a doctor, rather than about doing surgery.) The collection of anecdotes in my head, about the pharmacists, were mostly told by patients, and handed around through various feminist sources. I don't know how respectable those sources are in the rest of the world. I certainly don't remember them all well enough to cite them. They just blur into The Esteemed Journal of I Read It Somewhere. (But with this story, I read it a lot.)
