and who are you to decide that pharmacists have to help women to kill their babies?

Maybe giving drugs to help the sick is their thing and assisted murder not so much. Maybe.

And now that they’ve slautghtered George Tiller, there aren’t any abortion providers from North Dakota to Texas. They can’t overturn Roe v Wade (and why would they want to?), but they can make abortions and contraception completely unavailable outside of the coasts.

It’s quite an exaggeration to say there are no abortion providers from North Dakota to Texas. Even in Utah, there are two (legitimate, operating) clinics. It’s still a long drive or even a plane flight for a lot of women, but at least the clinics haven’t been shut down.

I think you mean RU 486. RU 486 (mifepristone) is a pill which causes an abortion. It is not Plan B, which prevents pregnancy (and abortion). Mifepristone is not available by prescription. It is gotten directly from a physician. I know this is off-topic, but the comment kind-of irked me.

The bigger question, though, would be why I decided to take that job in the first place.

It’s no secret – if you’re the only pharmacist within 50 miles, and you won’t sell condoms or birth control or plan B, you’ve made them effectively outlawed in your town.

I can’t imagine those silly pharmacists would prefer that women who couldn’t get the morning-after-pill resort to abortion instead. Plan B prevents abortions aplenty.

That’s the thing – they think Plan B is the abortion pill. It’s exactly the same thing to them as getting an abortion. And now that they’ve slautghtered George Tiller, there aren’t any abortion providers from North Dakota to Texas. They can’t overturn Roe v Wade (and why would they want to?), but they can make abortions and contraception completely unavailable outside of the coasts. Conscience clauses for pharmacists are one of their major weapons.

Jemand, I am certainly exercising my privilege but I do so from a position of someone who comes from a country with an average of 251 people per square mile rather than the 79.6 per square mile that the US apparently has. This is a disparity that I clearly have trouble getting my head around.

Noadi, thank you. Clearly pharmacists are not as ubiquitous as churches in the US. Maybe you should convert a few.

I also forgot that you don’t have a central health service that you can call on. In England a prescription can be delivered to those who are unable to collect them at no extra fee. OK the people pay for it in extra taxation but that’s a fair trade off isn’t it? Prescriptions are also subsidised so they are set at a flat fee no matter how expensive the drugs (or how cheap) and they are free to those on benefits.

Pharmacists are also licenced by a central body but I don’t think this is a state function. Rather than adding to the long waiting list of court cases there is a government appointed ombudsman who deals with complaints if they fail at a local level. As there are for just about any service you can think of. If the US doesn’t have any of that then the court is your only option which is a shame in a way. Ombudsmen act as a buffer between citizens and courts and seek to resolve issues before the courts get involved. You must have a lot of lawyers.

Oh well, it seems I was wrong about this but it’s good to be corrected. Thanks.