Open letter to current and future pharmacists
Dear everyone out there considering a career as a pharmacist:
If you have religious objections to birth control or emergency contraception, if you believe it’s the same thing as abortion (which it isn’t), or if you think you should be allowed to refuse to dispense emergency contraception on account of your conscience, or if you think that it makes you a good, moral person to bully women who rely on you to do your job?
Believe what you want to. But please, for the love of God, choose another career. If you want to preach, go into the ministry. Don’t become a pharmacist and then decide to refuse birth control to someone who will then have to deal with an unwanted pregnancy just because you decided that you had to use your job as a platform for exercising your self-righteousness.
Do something else with your professional life. Don’t set yourself up to get into situations where your beliefs come into conflict with someone else’s need for an essential service. Please. I’m begging you.
(See Dahlia Lithwick’s Martyrs and Pestles – Should pharmacists be allowed to refuse to dispense birth control?, via Riba Rambles. See also: mediagirl, Clancy, Bitch. Ph.D., LiL, and Amanda at Pandagon.)
Amanda Marcotte (was Mouse Words, now Pandagon) has a number of posts about this, too.
Updated — thanks, wolfangel!
Yes, yes, yes!
Very nicely put.