Can anyone remember the last time a seemingly-obscure policy issue went from isolated regional dust-ups to national policy debate as quickly as the “pharmacists’ rights” issue has?<\/p>\n
One month ago today, the Washington Post ran a front-page article<\/a> on the issue of pharmacists, in an unknown number of cases, refusing to fill prescriptions when medications violate their “personal moral or religious beliefs.” Since then, it’s led to two new statewide conflicts (in Illinois<\/a> and Arizona<\/a>) and proposed legislation in the House of Representatives with bi-partisan support.<\/p>\n Yesterday, the issue reached the Senate<\/a>.<\/p>\n During an outdoor rally today on Capitol Hill, United States Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Debbie Wasserman-Schwartz (D-FL) and other lawmakers and supporters introduced legislation to STOP pharmacies from denying the sale of physician prescribed prescription medications because of their employees religious beliefs. <\/p>\n A number of women around the country have recently been denied important family planning prescriptions by individual pharmacists who were personally against them. Representatives from NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood of America and the National Women’s Law Center also spoke during the event.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For those interested in the details, the bill is S. 809<\/a> and is being co-sponsored by Lautenberg, Barbara Boxer, and Jon Corzine. The companion bill in the House is H. R. 1652<\/a> and has already picked up 43 sponsors. The bill is pretty straightforward: all pharmacies (though not necessarily all pharmacists) would be required to fill all prescriptions or refer customers to an outlet who will.<\/p>\n Substance aside, I’m stunned to see the speed with which this issue has worked its way up the policy ladder. It usually takes more than a month for a controversy to go from the newspaper to proposed legislation in both chambers of Congress. The issue clearly touched a nerve. Though CNN apparently considered Pharmacists for Life a significant enough organization to invite its president to appear on American Morning unopposed, the organization is rather obscure. Pharmacists for Life’s most recent IRS filings indicate that the organization has no paid employees and raised and spent less than $30,000 in 2003 (the most recent year for which figures are available), with more than half going for “VIT, GLOVES, SUPPLIES.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For that matter, Pharmacists for Life president Karen Brauer — who recently told CNN<\/a> that those who want pharmacists to do their jobs are going to “force women to kill their children” — was fired from a previous job after she lied to a patient<\/a> about prescribed medication. Something to keep in mind when considering her credibility the next time she’s on TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Can anyone remember the last time a seemingly-obscure policy issue went from isolated regional dust-ups to national policy debate as quickly as the “pharmacists’ rights” issue has? One month ago today, the Washington Post ran a front-page article on the issue of pharmacists, in an unknown number of cases, refusing to fill prescriptions when medications […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4082\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nPost Script<\/em>: As long as we’re on the topic, I wanted to add that “Pharmacists for Life” is a group that gets a lot of attention whenever this issue is discussed in the media. It’s worth noting, therefore, that the group doesn’t appear to exist beyond one radical spokesperson who’s been hitting the talk-show circuit lately. Media Matters recently explained<\/a>:<\/p>\n