just fill the prescription

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jun 02, 2006

I notice that NARAL is cackling gleefully, and with reason, over Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's latest. A pro-abortion Democrat (excuse the near-redundancy), he had earlier issued an executive order requiring pharmacies to provide contraceptives, including so-called "emergency contraceptives" that can be abortifacient. He also refused to permit a conscience-clause by which pharmacists with moral objections to contraceptives or anti-implantants might be exempted from their legal obligation to dispense them. This week Blagojevich ordered pharmacies to display posters informing customers of their rights -- or better, alerting customers to the rights the pharmacist does NOT have. As you can see, the poster positively encourages customers to kneecap non-compliant pharmacists by reporting them to the state authorities.

Note that the language of the poster is neither neutral nor official ("citizens have the right to purchase and be supplied with all legal pharmaceuticals ...") but blatantly ideological and tendentious ("pharmacies don't have the right to stand between you and your doctor"). Blagojevich is using his office not to execute laws impartially but to buy, at public expense, propaganda for the world-view in which his curtailment of liberties is justified. Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot, and Governor Jeb Bush (vindicating the First Amendment rights of Floridians) ordered that all bookstores -- even those owned by Muslims, Jews, or atheists -- were required to stock and sell Catholic bibles, and to display a non-compliance threat showing a crucified Christ and the words, "No one has the right to stand between you and Your Redeemer." Call me cynical, but I can't believe civil liberties groups would sit still for that.

The same Gov. Blagojevich puts those tax dollars to work with the government website in which he reminds us of his role as Illinois's champion of women's rights and tags himself with the motto, "Ensuring access to affordable contraceptives." Like a momma bird, he even swallows the rationalizations provided by NARAL and then spits them up for us half-digested:

You shouldn't have to wonder whether your local pharmacy will fill your doctor's prescription. That's why I recently issued an emergency rule that orders every pharmacy in Illinois that sells contraceptives to accept and fill all birth control prescriptions. No delays. No hassles. No lecture. Just fill the prescription.

Thank you, Governor. I think we get the point. But we're not quite finished with you yet. On the same web-page is a link to Illinois' Division of Professional Regulation, where we're meant to find an Online Complaint Form (clearly another way of putting uncooperative pharmacists on notice). Included in the form is a drop-down menu with some 180 professions against which complaints may be filed. In terms of the kinds of malpractice for which most citizens would seek remedies from the state, the listed professions range from the predictable (roofing contractor, nursing home administrator), through the baffling (geologist, massage therapist), and on to the bizarre (esthetician, euthanasia tech). Euthanasia tech...? But most interesting, and significant, are the omissions. No listing for "civil servant." No listing for "governor."

Probably not an accident.