An update and some old stuff

Heard back from the doctor today. Seems my ANA screen came back positive and they needed more blood to get a better idea of a diagnosis. Holy shit! A diagnosis! Flippin’ amazing. I guess I really did waste a year of my life/health with that wench. Kind of feels good to be right. At any rate, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for an official diagnosis and the follow up medicines that are sure to make my life a little more interesting.

In other news, I’m an idiot. I only just today found the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Yes, I’m slow. I freely and proudly admit that. What’s the problem? Anyway, I decided to see if they had my old blog archived. Oh, yes, they do. Unfortunately it wasn’t any of the really good stuff. Still, I found a decent post that I thought was good enough to republish. I still miss that old blog. Oh well.

The old post is below the fold.

I was wondering when the collective conscience of the rightwing nuts would prevent them from killing even the smallest bacteria. Apparently, it’s now immoral to prescribe antibiotics to someone who may have had an abortion. Some pharmacists in Washington State are refusing to fill prescriptions written from a clinic known for performing abortions.

According to the complaint, someone at the Swedish pharmacy said she was “morally unable” to fill a Cedar River patient’s prescription for abortion-related antibiotics. Cedar River’s complaint quotes its Renton clinic manager’s May 17, 2005, e-mail account: “Today, one of our clients asked us to call in her prescription… to Swedish outpatient pharmacy. [We] called the prescription in… and spoke with an efficient staff person who took down the prescription. A few minutes later, this pharmacy person called us back and told us she had found out who we were and she morally was unable to fill the prescription.” (Cedar River thinks their client eventually got her prescription filled.)

Because this clinic is known to perform abortions, local activist pharmacists have taken it upon themselves to refuse to fill any prescription coming from them. Including prenatal vitamins.

The complaint also includes an incident from November 2005 in Yakima, in which a pharmacist at a Safeway reportedly refused to fill a Cedar River patient’s prescription for pregnancy-related vitamins. The pharmacist reportedly asked the customer why she had gone to Cedar River Clinics and then told the patient she “didn’t need them if she wasn’t pregnant.”

WTF? First and foremost, it’s the job of a pharmacist to dispense prescriptions written by doctors. They should assume that the doctor knows what he/she is doing in regards to the patient, and not take it upon themselves to make moral decisions for said patients. Shut up, fill the prescription, and then fall to your knees to pray really hard- if you find filling prescriptions for women so abhorrent. Don’t like it? Find another profession.

Secondly, this is absolutely getting out of hand. Refusing to fill antibiotics and prenatal vitamins? Have churches gotten so hard-core that even germs are protected from evil doctors and their harlot patients? What about the health and life of the patient?

However, the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian group based in Arizona that was cofounded by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, has jumped into the debate. In a March 10 letter to the WSBP, the group argued: “The right of conscience is a fundamental right recognized in the Washington Constitution. No citizen can be forced to yield that right when he or she enters the profession of his choice.“

Ok, so instead of picking a profession that wouldn’t challenge their “morals” they are supposed to be given free rein over the health and welfare of the customer, a bona fide patient of the doctors that wrote the prescriptions? These numbskulls didn’t choose to become pharmacists because they care for the health and welfare of the general public. They chose this profession so that they can attempt to push their irrational beliefs down someone else’s throat. They chose this profession so that they would have a platform on which to be able to control the lives of the women that walk in to get their medications. The same reason the fucks refusing to fill birth control prescriptions are pharmacists. What better way to fight in the War on Women than to be the one to refuse to give them antibiotics and vitamins.

When do the living, breathing mothers/daughters/wives/sisters get the respect of these nuts? When do their lives matter as much as the life of bacteria? Or does this mean that only married women get the drugs that ward off infection and prevent vitamin deficiency? Where, oh where, in the Bible does it state that “Thou shall not kill infection unless thou has a nice sturdy husband”? Where in the scriptures does it say “Thou cannot obtain prenatal vitamins from a certain clinic because you may not be pregnant”?

Of course, the “logic” here is that these pharmacists are against abortion and cannot in good conscience fill a prescription that condones abortion. Too late, dumbass. If you’re going to sabotage a woman’s reproductive rights then perhaps you should find a position that would accomplish that before the deed is done. And, honestly, what is a good excuse for refusing to fill a prenatal vitamin? Worried that the mother might be trying to keep her fetus healthy so she can get rid of it later? Well, shit, now that I think of it that makes complete sense. Yeah, right.

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