More pharmacists.

Oh, how I have missed Ken Blanchard, who responded to my last post about the conscience clause in South Dakota for pharmacists. The funny thing is, none of the right-wing bloggers who have responded to the posts on this issue on Dakota Women have any understanding of what this clause is, and what it means for consumers.

Hence, comments like this:

Target would be equally with its rights if it insisted that the pharmacists it employs be willing to dispense any legal product carried by its pharmacy.

Incorrect, Ken. South Dakota law states that pharmacists have the right to refuse to fill prescriptions to which they have a moral objection. Target in South Dakota has no right to insist that its employees "dispense any legal product carried by its pharmacy."

Just to make my position on this clear: as someone who has been personally affected by the "conscience clause" for pharmacists in this state, I could give a flying fuck whether an individual pharmacist wants to fill my prescription or not. I really don't care. I think it's kind of silly to go through the schooling required to be a pharmacist, and then suddenly act outraged when you're asked to fill a birth control prescription, but whatever.

What I want, as a patient, is the assurance that a pharmacist will either 1. fill my prescription OR 2. refuse to fill my prescription and either a. refer me elsewhere or b. allow me the ability to take the prescription to another pharmacy to be filled.

I really get annoyed discussing this, but here's my experience with a pharmacist who refused to fill my prescription at a large chain drugstore in Sioux Falls.

The doctor's office called the prescription in to my normal pharmacy. This was a refill of a prescription I'd had for a couple of years before this. My order was routed to a pharmacist who refused to fill it. As a customer, I was not notified of this until I went to the pharmacy to pick up my medication. I was asked to step out of the line and go to one of those little compartments where you consult with the pharmacist, where the pharmacist in question advised me that he wouldn't fill my prescription. He then turned away from me and went back to whatever he was doing. I spent a little time trying to get his attention, and finally a clerk pointed to me, indicating that I still had questions for him. When I asked him if he would give it to someone else at that location to fill, he said he would not. When I asked him if he would release the prescription so it could be sent to another business, he said he would not. This man was not just refusing to fill my prescription because he had moral objections, he was actually attempting to stop me from getting the prescription filled anywhere, by anyone. This goes far beyond a simple exercise of conscience on the part of a trained professional. He had no concerns with my health, with the possible side effects of the medication, nothing. This pharmacist was attempting to replace my own conscience and that of my doctor with his own. That is not the role of a pharmacist, ever. Period.

This was eventually settled in a way that was satisfactory to me, but it's entirely possible that it never would have turned out that way. First of all, I had the available time, money, and transportation to have meetings with the pharmacy manager for that branch of the chain, and eventually with the person who oversaw all of their local pharmacies. This process took about three days.

Secondly, since this was a refill of a prescription I already had, I did have a supply of pills and never went without the medication my doctor prescribed. I lived in a city with all kinds of pharmacies and all kinds of pharmacists. I was not requesting a time-sensitive medication like Plan B. I am not the only woman who has dealt with this kind of BS from a pharmacist, and many of them did not have the same advantages I had when I was fighting with these morons.

Honestly, if you think what happened to me is in any way acceptable, I really don't even know what to say to you. It was an awful, humiliating, annoying, unnecessary experience. It's not something anyone should have to go through just to get a legal prescription from a doctor filled.

So you all can keep talking about the importance of protecting the delicate flowers in the pharmacy world who can't handle filling prescriptions for sluts who want birth control. That's fine. I know how scary and unnerving it is to be the customer/patient in this situation, and my concern will always be for them.