Wednesday, June 08, 2005

 

Vigilante Pharmacy

You get some interesting phone calls when you work in TV master control. Why station management insists on allowing just any moron to call through to someone who's in the middle of what can be a stressful job is beyond me. SD Public TV was the worst since we had an 800 number, reached the entire state and were listed in every phone book in the state. I received a call while working on overnight shift from a man complaining that the work we were doing on one of our towers was INTERFERING with the messages we were beaming directly into his brain. While working at another station, a young lady wanted me to dump out of the NFL game I was running so we could join the season premeire of Star Trek: Voyager on time. She actually started crying when I told her I couldn't do that. This wasn't a little girl, it was a grown woman.

At a station in Rapid City we would run 1 minute and 2 minute spots paid for by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, you know, the Mormons. Subject matter aside, master control operators love 1 and 2 minute spots. Commercial breaks are usually two minutes long, getting to fill that whole time period with just one tape always made that break a lot easier. So when the phone rang at the master control board during a break containing one of these spots, I was actually able to answer it.

An angry Lutheran minister was on the other end. He wanted me to dump out of the LDS spot since he didn't believe that the Book of Mormon was "another testemant of Jesus Christ." I informed him that I couldn't do that and he started to preach to me. I didn't bother to tell him that, as a fellow Lutheran, I completely agreed with him, that would have only made him angrier, I'm guessing. Now, years later with a different view of a a particular Lutheran minister, he may have wanted God to strike me dead for "not believing " the same thing as him.

In any case, there are jobs you're going to do in your life where you have to do things that you don't particularly agree with. To use TV master control as an example again, I have had to run lots of TV ads for political candidates with views I didn't particularly agree with, I had to do it, though. I worked at one facility whose biggest client was Busch Brewing. I love beer, but I hate what those folks in St. Louis are doing to it. Then again, Mich, Mich Lite and Mich Ultra advertised specials for those beers on posters promoting a Patient 957 show at Cheers. Did it bother me? Hell yes! Did I ask the management to take down all the posters touting crappy beer? Had I done that I believe Patient 957 would have been looking for another place to play that night.

I thought about all of this while watching NBC Nightly News last night (yes, I sometimes get my news from the MSM, Sibby). There was a story about a pharmacist who refused to fill legal prescriptions for not only "The Morning After" pill, but for any contraceptives. He didn't believe in contraception of any kind, so he wouldn't fill those scripts. Now I'm never going to be that guy who fights against abortion. I don't like it, I wish it didn't happen, I would do anything I could to prevent any woman I was involved with not to have one but, in the end, I can never have one and therefore don't really think it's my business to deny it to a woman who feels it's nescessary. My problem with "The Morning After" pill is that is essentially an abortion, but we don't treat it that way. So I can understand the pharmacist's resistance to filling for a prescription for it. Hell, I can understand a pharmacist's resistance to filling any contraceptive prescription.

But it's his job.

That may sound a little crass, but it's true. As a pharmacist, you are liscensed by the government. Contraceptives are legal in this country, women have to undergo physical examinations before they are prescribed. A pharmacist who is given a prescription for a contraceptive can be assured that the prescription is legal and safe for the patient. The pharmacist should fill it regardless of his personal beliefs. But a few pharmacists are making trouble and California is being forced to create laws to force them to do their jobs. I've never been one who thought that more legislation is the answer, but in this case it has to be done.

This pharmacist is circumventing the law, essentially taking the law into his own hands. He's a vigilante pharmacist, his belief system doesn't agree with the law of the land, so he takes the law into his own hands. It's the same reasoning that leads to lynchings: "God hates gays (blacks - catholics - etc), so it's OK to kill them, screw the law of the land!" We have laws in this country for a reason. If you don't believe in contraception, then get a group together and try to change the law.

And good luck to you.

BOJ

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