The War Against Birth Control

Going to K-Mart to get your prescription filled? Think again you Commie Slut! The "culture of life" people are working overtime the week - not the overtime President Bush allowed companies to avoid paying their employees last year, but the kind of overtime where you have your children's' mouths duct taped, while they run across a police barrier, and establish an arrest record at age 10.

The latest gem from this group of completely pathetic assholes who need the culture of life beaten out of them, brings us to your local pharmacy. Let's say you and your wife - as opposed to your girlfriend - want to continue to have some intimacy together, but the bills are tight, the local factory is laying off another 100 of you tomorrow, and you're just not quite convinced now is the time for Junior to come into your life.

Or, perhaps you don't want children? After doing some soul-searching, praying, and questioning yourself as to why you're married in the first place, you realize this just might be the right decision for you.

Maybe you've just had a divorce, and after receiving your ripped up "Catholic Church Member since 1958 baptism" card in the mail, you've decided that you're a little iffy about Rex, your new boyfriend who works at Jiffy Lube, becoming the father of your child.

At any rate, you come to the conclusion that you'd like to have some birth control, because hey, you're a woman with more talents and aspirations than that of an incubator. You see your doctor, she writes a prescription, and you're off to CVS. You're denied. You ask the pharmacist to call your doctor, because you've got the prescription right in your hand. Denied. You phone your doctor, and she says there's nothing she can do. The next pharmacy is 35 miles away in the next town over, because hey, we don't all have Wal-Marts. You wonder if this is legal? You hop over the counter, grab the pharmacist by the throat and strangle her until the ghost of Pat Robertson seeps out of her ears...ok, enough about my fantasies.

Welcome to Red State America everyone. Take a seat and listen up, and damnit, keep those legs crossed. At least eleven states are considering laws in which this situation is completely plausible, and is already happening. Just ask Kmart Pharmacist and Jesus spokesperson Neil Noesen, who refused to fill a university student's birth control prescription because birth control is intrinsically evil. Again, I couldn't even make this stuff up.

So, allow me to pose some questions regarding this issue:

• Those on the Right would like to prevent abortions, so the access to the method of controlling unwanted pregnancies - namely birth control, according to that fancy-pants scientific evidence they hate so much - should be restricted to have more unwanted pregnancies, hence more abortions?
  
• This personal decision should not be left up to the doctor, or the actual person who will endure the pregnancy, birth and decades of child rearing, but to the anonymous, unknown pharmacist behind the counter at K-Mart, because THEY want YOU to get pregnant and have children?
  
• Why are the pharmacists objecting to birth control? What about the boner pills, the cholesterol lowering drugs, the heart medication, the over subscription of anti-depressants? All have risks associated with them that are greater than birth control - why are there no objections to these? What if, the next time you went to get heart medication, the pharmacist denied your request because they objected to the side effects it might have?
  
• Does anyone else think this is fucking insane?

I realize these people are in the minority, and they are a sick sliver of our population, like serial killers, mass murderers, and Bill O'Reilly. But for those of you in those 11 states, this anecdotal nightmare could easily become your reality.

I wonder if Neil the Pharmacist would like me to come over to his house, force him to eat nothing but bacon fat for the next 12 months, cut off his testicles and launch them out of a water balloon cannon into his neighbor's pool, because I've decided that is what is best for his health. Too dramatic? Hardly. Get all the safe sex you can, while it's not too late people.