If you live remotely or don't have much money to pay for transport, accessing the MAP will be more difficult than for someone who lives in a big urban area or who has plenty of money for transport etc. These arguments about finding the alternative pharmacy was shut, can apply to anyone, anywhere can't they. All pharmacies close at some point. If you live in a rural area, you simply do have to travel further for everything - shopping, banks, doctors, schools, pharmacies and everything else. There is no government provided solution to these issues of rural access - isn't it simply a fact that people in rural areas have to think ahead more than other people because there are less close by options of everything?
The emotion is this thing about seeking the MAP is so evident in this thread and the fear of judgement. Almost everyone who has mentioned seeking it starts with an explanation of why they were seeking it - they feel a need to do this. People seem to feel they need to tell us that the condom split or whatever - they are always keen to make clear they weren't having sex in a way which might be seen as irresponsible. I bet they often tell the pharmacist this stuff too. And I'm not questioning the truth of it, simply acknowledging that women who find themselves possibly pregnant who don't want to be, immediately feel themselves to be judged and a need to justify their behaviour or their conequent actions.....I know it's not everyone and some will happily stand up and say they had unprotected sex and are proud and have no qualms at all about the MAP or what anyone might think.....What I am saying is that this sense elf judgement that people feel can colour the way they view the pharmacists or their actions or their views.
If someone says they don't want to provide the MAP, another poster says, this means that they are thinking it is wrong,ntherefore this means I think you are wrong to take it and I think you are a bad person and you are a bad person. I can see how someone feeling a bit vulnerable having to go to the pharmacy and already needing to justify themselves makes these leaps and feels like this.....but I think we need to separate those feelings from the reality.
Pharmacists work with people taking all kind of drugs and with all kinds of issues. They give methadone to heroin addicts and see all kinds of things and behaviours. They are used to dealing with people and to showing compassion and to keeping personal feelings about all kinds of things to themselves. Probably the methadone collectors feel they are being judged,mor the people collecting anti depressants feel they are being judged. They probably aren't being judged.
And also I think we need to accept that not everyone will have the same belief or thought as us. Someone might think something we do is wrong or would openly say they wouldn't do it. We have to accept that. We don't have a right to praise or acceptance of our every behaviour, just because that is what we choose to do. Some people seem to think that their rights to access MAP extend to everyone in society having to say and believe that MAP is a good thing, or something that should be available, or they would use themselves.......they want vindication of their own choices. There is no right to that. Ntherefore is a right to access to MAP and pharmacists do t prevent that.
There are people who believe MAP is wrong and ending life. That is a fact and it is their view. Most of those people are not trying to prevent women having access to it, if that is what they want. However, those wishing to access MAP need to accept that not everyone thinks it is a good thing and that some people see it as ending life. That might be uncomfortable if you think you might be pregnant when you don't want to be, but it is a fact. I think some people believe no-one should be allowed to hold such views and this is all tangled into the pharmacist issue - the pharmacists who are allowed not to supply the MAP but to suggest an alternative place that will, are a reminder that not everyone supports MAP....and that's uncomfortable. Well it might be, but trying to either deny people's rights to hold that view or to run society in a way so those views are never heard isn't tolerance,mbut an attempt to deny freedom of speech and thought.
I will be clear, I think MAP should be available to women. Personally I don't think Inwould use it, but who knows what Inwould do if the circumstance arose. I think it's good it's available to women to access. I also think that pharmacists should have the right to do as they do now and not supply if their conscience tells them it is ending life - and let's not pretend it's not about that..lath at is the issue for the pharmacists who don't want to supply. I am happy for them to have that right and if it results in some awkwardness or having to travel across the road to another pharmacy, or even on a bus or car journey to the next pharmacy, then I'm satisfied because I feel it's possible to give both the women and pharmacists rights here.
Abortion and MAP are emotive issues. The women who find themselves having to seek these things feel it, those who agree and those who disagree feel it too. It's right that access to these things is legalised but it's not right to try and crush any voices that don't feel comfortable with abortion or MAP.....and that's what I think a lot of people would like to do.
Last post from me.