Now, some drug stores and supporters are taking it a step further. Besides not providing tobacco or porn, these places also refuse to provide birth control of any kind… even emergency contraception to rape victims (or just girls who *gasp* want to be responsible and not get pregnant before they’re ready to bring a child into the world — a little extra reading if you’d like). HOWEVER, these “pro-life” pharmacies will fill that Viagra prescription quick fast and in a hurry for you! [cjg131, "Prescription Predicaments," The "F" Word: Feminists in South Dakota, 2008.06.17]
In other words, the pharmacists who read Bob Ellis (heaven help us) will dole out drugs to prop up men's efforts to have sex, but they won't sell women protection against pregnancy from all those pharmaceutically hornified guys. Encourage men to have sex, discourage women: the only way that makes sense is if those noble pharmacists think the Viagra poppers are all homosexual.
Fire away, Feminists of South Dakota! Your state awaits your further contributions to the discussion.
Thanks for the bump!
ReplyDeleteLove,
F Word
I think it is an interesting cultural phenomenon that access to birth control pharmaceuticals is treated as a right and not a privilege. What happened to condoms? The stats for condoms are still at 99%, and one does not need a prescription for them (and they're less expensive). And are we such undisciplined savages that refraining from sex is an issue? Wait, yes yes we are.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that whenever a woman's access to birth control pills is limited, it is as if a war against a woman's right to have sex is being violated or tread upon? (Wait, is sex a right?)
My lovely wife brought up that since birth control pills are a maintenance drug, most health insurance companies will let a woman (or man I suppose) get said pills via the mail for a greatly reduced price, completely wiping out the middle man-ish pharmacist.
I don't think the issue can be boiled down to "Encourage men to have sex, discourage women". Isn't it really about business, and the rights of a proprietor towards his/her customers? Shouldn't a business owner be allowed to decide which products s/he sells, and which s/he doesn't?
I want to meet the couple that decides not to have sex because they are unable to obtain birth control pills.
Actually, Joe, boiling the issue down to the double standard society has with regards to sex for men versus women gets us to the point. Whether they cloak the decision in moral or business terms, the pharmacists are revealing the same double standard, the view that women are lesser beings, that makes the retread abortion ban so objectionable.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree, the double standard does exist, and perhaps that is the core issue that has found its way into pharmacies. I think I need some clarification. Are they pharmacists telling women "Yes, we have birth control pills but we are not going to give you any." or "We don't carry birth control pills"?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I was trying to think something out...Viagra (and similar drugs) are for men who are incapable of having sex....what is making women incapable of having sex?
I am trying to logic this issue out, and see what all the hub bub is about. My guy brain doesn't quite make the connection. Are there women out there incapable of getting access to birth control pills?
Why would this make women lesser beings? Because they get pregnant?
Separate but related train of thought... There used to not be birth control pills, were women lesser beings then? Has the introduction of birth control pills actually created a sense of entitlement for women, in that women should be able to have as much sex as they want and not have to get pregnant? And now that someone is restricting the pill, that artificial sense of entitlement that the pill helped create now rubs people they wrong way, because Gosh darn it, everyone should be able to have as much sex as they want and not have to be responsible for any secondary and tertiary effects.
Joe, it's not whether or not they have birth control pills that makes them lesser beings. The problem is that the pharmacists are viewing women as lesser beings who don't deserve a range of free will comparable to men's. Viagra and the pill require prescriptions. In both cases, the patients have obtained doctor's permission to use the desired drug. Yet pharmacists take it upon themselves to erect (sorry) another barrier to the women who walk in with prescriptions but not to the men.
ReplyDeleteInteresting note on entitlement -- sounds a lot like the aging men's sexual entitlement complex that fuels the impotency-drug industry. And Viagra isn't being marketed to men who want to conceive; the marketing is clearly aimed at other motives.