Mum refused emergency contraception. Because pharmacist doesn’t agree with it. Grrr.

[Evenquieterlife33]

I cannot get my head around this- if a medication is available for legal sale and use in the U.K no pharmacist should be imposing their personal beliefs on anybody and refusing to sell it to them. Absolute piss take in my opinion. It’s outrageous that this is legal. I have never heard of women being refused emergency contraception because it clashes with the pharmacists personal beliefs until I read this. I am got smacked. I bet I could find a pharmacist who doesn’t like to dispense antibiotics, I can’t see them being able to turn people away. The older I get the more of this shit seems to be visible. It’s either getting worse or I’ve had my eyes shut for a very long time.
apple.news/AsxAxgpzIQI-IZWwX5YbJRQ

I don't see how you could manage this at all

You cant really thats the point.

It's just that everyone knows that if there was a news paper headling that said " catholic father of 3 refused a job because of his beliefs" there would be outrage.

Because deep down they think.wonen.are nasty little sluts or can just have an abortion so they dont care if they are refused.

Sarah, I support the right to freedom of belief and and I do not think women are nasty little sluts, thankyou.

I think questioning the validity/logic people’s beliefs is a slippery slope and not useful to the debate at hand.

I absolutely think that if there were specific roles for pharmacists designated as emergency contraception providers then you could make a case-by-case exception and discriminate and require that the person in the role is able to prescribe accordingly.

I do not think you could require ALL pharmacists to do this though, as that effectively bars individuals from practicing.

I do think it's an important question though.

Do personal beliefs have to he backed up by a religion.

Could an atheist refuse to sell it for instance?

If people were asked at an interview, said no , then that could lead them to suspect they didnt get the job for that reason especially If the Interview went well.

So if you cant ask then how could you know? How could you reasonably ensure that you had a staff member on at all times who could sell the MAP.

And in a job that involves going against personal and religious beliefs on a daily basis , what with serving gay ,people lesbians, those who have had abortions, those who are not married and having sex, those who lie or steal or take drugs or drink or are convicts and have done unspeakable crimes, then why is it that one thing that causes a problem.

I think we need to ask that question in all homeslty . Why is it that one issue that someone can object to when they will serve everyone else everything else

Why aren't we allowed to ask that?

I think we need to ask that question in all homeslty . Why is it that one issue that someone can object to when they will serve everyone else everything else

Why aren't we allowed to ask that?

Because the powers that be don't want to admit the real answer which is misogyny.

If it weren't then their religious beliefs would affect their dispensing/selling many other products too.

Doing this job is a choice. When the vast majority of pharmacists decided to train as such they knew the law of the land, that emergency contraception and abortion are legal in this country.

If their religious beliefs are such that they don't want to dispense certain items they could have gone into a completely different job or into any number of other roles available to pharmacists which don't require them to deal with dispensing these items or the patients that require them.

Makes me wonder why they have CHOSEN to go into a role where dispensing such items is a regular part of the job.

Thanks Steve

Agreed graph

And the best thing about misogyny is that you can hide it behind absolutely anything.

Religious beliefs
Age
Lack of education
Jokes
Being drunk

And all of it can be explained out of or require being treated with sensitivity or understanding and with some of it we even legislate out of being able to call it out.

Well it's time we did...

Like I said, I think policing validity of beliefs such as this is a very slippery slope, freedom of belief is a fundamental human right and one we should value highly.

I accept that some people believe that emergency contraception is a sin (or whatever their terminology is) and do not feel able to be involved in it’s provision, that’s fine - it’s not my view but I can accept that is their belief, debating their reasoning is going to be unproductive and not help solve the problem at hand, which is access to healthcare for women. The provision for women still needs to be there, that’s the important thing, and that is a solvable problem that we could work on/campaign for solutions for that don’t involve effectively barring people with certain beliefs from an entire profession. Like I said the responsibility to ensure provision doesn’t (and shouldn’t) rest with private individuals/businesses - which almost all pharmacists/pharmacies are - rather with the healthcare authority/NHS. If abdicating to the private sector means provision isn’t sufficient then alternative solutions need to be found. For example, OOH or other designated services, online provision etc.

I think you are missing the point completely.

If contraception or emergency contraception are deemed a sin ( and emergency contraception delays ovulation so no baby) and Incidentally neither medication has been proven to he harmful to a baby. Pregnancies and foetus development have been found to be unaffected by the use if these drugs, then condoms would be deemed unacceptable also.

Those however are available in pub toilets as well as chemists.

Where are the men on here giving stories about being refused sale of condoms?

How sure are you this is a belief system and not just an excuse to control women and Express disapproval which has been proven to be happening to this day from atheists to jedis to string theorists.

Funny how despite having or not having a religious or personal beliefe and the gazillion differences between them all, the one consistent occurrence in all of it is that women are punished both for having sex and for not having sex.

We've already debunked the myth of the MAP being an abortifacient.

So why this is a conscientious objection issue? Because it is a medicine that allows women to remove the risk of them becoming pregnant. If that runs contrary to a pharmacist's religious beliefs, then that pharmacist should not be selling contraceptives of any sort including condoms to males.

This is discrimination. It needs a test case really; a woman to become pregnant after being refused the MAP and then to sue the pharmacy chain for denying her access to a legal medicine.

Believe what you want and apply your standards to YOURSELF. You cannot impose them on others, and prevent them from doing or accessing perfectly legal things which are a normal part of your job.

Yes Sarah, I think we are talking at cross purposes - I’m not debating whether people who hold a belief that ‘contraception is wrong’ are holding a misogynistic view or not, clearly masses of religious (and other) doctrines are patriarchal. I’m saying that people are entitled to hold views that we disagree with (and therefore conduct their own lives accordingly), that is freedom of belief.

I’m saying that’s a whole other, more philosophical debate and not one that I believe is useful to the more immediate issue of how can we ensure adequate provision of emergency contraception to women in the UK under current law/culture/society.

At it’s core this is a difference in radical (your point, demanding whole-scale revolution) vs liberal (mine, how can we effect change within current systems) approach to a problem. I don’t generally fit into what ‘liberal feminism’ has become (all pro-prostitution and TWAW etc - no thanks!) but I guess on this issue I take a liberal rather than radical view, at least how I understand those terms!

They’re free to believe what they want. LloydsPharmacy and other employers should be free to choose employees that choose to serve all their customers. If you don’t want to dispense certain medication maybe you should be looking for a job where that issue doesn’t arise.

Could an atheist refuse to sell it for instance?

As far as I am aware the abortion opt out doesn't require proof the person claiming it has a religious basis. It's perfectly possible to be an atheist and be opposed to abortion.

It is the thin end of the wedge. This has not been passed but it is an illustration of the pressure on our reproductive rights. If people refuse to refer, prescribe or dispense it will become harder to access the MAP.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/21/bill-to-give-medical-staff-right-to-refuse-role-in-abortions-condemned

Cwenthryth - there's one very simple solution - make it over the counter! No reason why this can't be done. That way girls and women can access as needed far more easily and the pharmacists with these beliefs needn't be involved in the sale of dispensing of it.

But while strictly speaking we have laws that mean that emergency contraception and abortion are supposedly available if needed there are still too many misogynists in govt and healthcare who are restricting how these are accessed and making judgments on women's sexuality.

Ultimately as with the abortion debate my stance is don't enforce your belief on others. Don't believe in abortion or emergency contraception don't use them and I won't make you personally use them as a way of enforcing my beliefs on you.

It's hypocrisy anyway as if they really believed in what they claimed they wouldn't dispense or sell any contraception, viagra to unmarried men or other meds with abortifacient effects to women of child bearing age - yet they don't have a problem with any of this. I suspect partly misogyny and partly because they know at that point they WOULD lose the support of wider society and probably their jobs!

I don't think an opt out should be allowed here ; or if it is the managers of the shop should ensure that the opted- out chemist is never the sole dispenser.

It would be interesting to see the rates of opting out among newly qualified medical personnel. It’s definitely on the rise.

I absolutely 100 percent support a person's right to believe in whatever they like.

I have my own beliefs and values.

What I dont support however is those views impacting my life when what I'm trying to do is perfectly legal.

Under what circumstances would anyone else be able to start a job somewhere and refuse to do part of it. Could a chef decide s/he was only going to do starters and not mains.

Could a kitchen assistant turn up and say I'll sweep the floors but I'm not washing up.

Or an office worker telling someone they will input the data but I wont send the emails.

How many bosses would go " sure that's ok I'll ask Susan to take on that part of your work load as well as her own for no extra money "

It wouldn't be tolerated.

If you dont want to wash up dont get a job in a cafe.

If you dont want to deal with nappies dont go work in a nursery

And if you dont agree with certain medications then dont get a job in a pharmacy.

If this was insulin and someone was refused it because they didnt believe in diabetes there would be outrage.

But somehow as it's only women affected it's ok and seen as reasonable.

there's one very simple solution - make it over the counter!
Yup I agree with that (although over the counter still requires someone to dispense it - off the shelf is what I’d go for, next to the pregnancy tests and condoms in the supermarket, order it from Amazon, that level of availability). I’ve lived in a country where it was available just on the shelf in a general store, at the time I was a little shocked - you could also just buy whatever antibiotics, painkillers, sleeping tablets etc that you fancied. But perhaps it was actually very forward thinking!

I doubt that will happen in the UK though, our prescription laws are pretty tight in general, there’s lots of things you can only get on prescription here that are off the shelf/over the counter abroad.

Sarah, it feels like you’re just ranting now to be honest, but at the risk of antagonising you, how about a common real-world example: I’m quite used to Muslim supermarket workers not being able to sell me alcohol. I might have to go to a different till or they’ll call a colleague over to put the sale through. Might just be my part of the world but no one blinks an eye (or seems to bitch about why is Brenda having to do extra work because Roshini can’t be bothered to scan the bottle of merlot). It’s just accepted and respected, and another way found to serve the customer. Their right to freedom of belief upheld, my right to get quietly sozzled of an evening taken care of as well . I know one corner shop that is completely dry due to the owner’s beliefs, I just don’t expect to buy wine there. Thankfully for the shopkeeper there’s no national wine-provision authority directing me to him expecting to sell me booze.

Personally I'd be annoyed at queuing only to have to go to another checkout. Stick that on the shop floor or clothes section or whatever.

Alcohol can be gotten anywhere these days anyway so it's not going to have the same impact on someone trying to get wine in their lunch break as it would a woman who's gonna get a slap when she gets home because she only should have taken ten mins to get from.her mums to home and shes 45 mins late as she had to go chemist hunting.

Note I said I'd be annoyed . But no one got pregnant or ended up in hospital with massive blood loss from a.miscarriage cos they couldn't get a bottle of bud.

And I have walked out of and others have walked out of supermarkets having been fucked about at the tills as supermarkets. Wasting peoples time.like that isn't really ok tbh

That person

Sarah to be clear I wasn’t directly comparing going to a different checkout for wine to the MAP issue, I was giving you a real world (in my experience, fairly widely accepted) example of freedom of belief in practice in a similar fashion (note not the same!), as you were listing things like nursery workers not doing nappies.

Anyway, we clearly disagree, my view is that freedom of belief is an important human right to uphold, and would seek to ensure free and easy access to emergency contraception without unduly impinging on that, as I’ve posted quite a few times. I’m going to disengage a little now as your posts are beginning to feel aggressive in tone, you don’t share my view that freedom of belief is important, and we probably won’t move this particular strand of the thread any further forward.

I apologise if you feel I'm being aggressive thats not my intention at all.

It's just a little fantastic world really though isnt it. Maybe a few years ago there would he the staff to deal with it.

However many shops are dying a death and those that are still there seem to set things up to have no customer interaction at all. Like the bank for example. Yshalky one person behind a desk and you queue for ages.

There are some things that are just part of a job. You were talking alcohol fir instance but that would apply to everyone.every person that used that check out would he refused. Not ideal but equal.

The chemist issue is different.it dictates that women cannot access the medicine they need.

So condoms ok
Viagra ok
Methadone.ok

Men can access everything and anything they need

Accepting it's a belief is accepting women are lesser and undeserving and that is the opinion of that person.that should not be a beliefe that's allowed to manifest itself in a business where 51 percent of their customers are women. And whis lives can depend on this medication.

Medications no one is forcing a person who doenst believe in it to take

The more Cwenthryth posts the more I think there should be no opt out - for anything.

In the case of alcohol should a sales assistant be allowed to opt out if they hold a genuine belief that alcohol is dangerous and damaging? What about an assistant with no special religious sensibilities but who was brought up by alcoholic parents and is traumatised by it? Should she be allowed to opt out? Currently she isn't.

Selling alcohol or MAP does not require the seller ever to use it. If you can't sell perfectly legal items as part of your job you're in the wrong job.

I agree lass

To many women have died or on some cases not even been blessed with the option to die thanks to mysoginistic legislation that allows women to be seen as nothing more than human incubators. Where they would rather they both died so they dont have to terminate or kept alive hooked up to machines cos God they turn off life support.

Basic human rights denied. To women. Even prisoners can access medication.

It has no place in a civilised society

@ControversialFerret good call about the test case, but I don’t think it would need to get that far as someone becoming pregnant. You could test it sufficiently by getting a women to be declined the MAP, then have a man go and buy condoms successfully a short while later. It would need to be tested both with the pharmacist ie get the pharmacist to sell condoms and also get a member of the team working under the responsible pharmacist to sell the condoms.

Can I just add that there is now an online petition at
www.change.org/p/general-pharmaceutical-council-stop-allowing-pharmacists-to-refuse-to-dispense-medicines-for-personal-reasons
If you want to register your disgust