Birth Control and Moral Outrage

What's YOUR favorite court case?

Ask anybody, and they may remember something from their high school civics class. Miranda is popular among would-be criminals, Roe v. Wade among would-be feminists, and Brown v. Board of Education is always a favorite as a hallmark case of the surprisingly liberal Warren Court.

What's mine, you ask? Why, that teensy, sometimes overlooked case on which so many of our rights hinge: Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965, a landmark decision that secured an individual's right to privacy. While ostensibly the case was about contraception and its availability to married couples, according to Justice Douglas, who wrote the majority opinion, the rights people have are more than what can be read in the literal language of the Constitutional text. Griswold paved the way for numerous decisions that have direct impact on our everyday lives:

1. Stanley v. Georgia – Upheld an individual's right to watch porn in the privacy of his own home. Jenna Jameson had a career thanks to Stanley. We can debate the yay or nay factor of that all day long, but a whole generation of pubescent boys will not be spending their formative years in jail because of this important privacy case.

2. Eisenstadt v. Baird – Upheld an UNMARRIED couple's right to use birth control. This is huge -- the case virtually secured an individual's (especially a FEMALE individual's) sexual privacy. What you do with your body is your business, etc. Is it any surprise Roe appeared the following year?

3. Roe v. Wade – Nobody can stand on a pile of dead babies and say, "Whoopee for Abortion!", but the upshot of this case is that it's not the responsibility of old farts in Washington to make a young woman's reproductive choices for her. Roe v. Wade is why we have emergency contraception today…ever had a bad scare because the condom broke? Thank Roe and Griswold and Eisenstadt for that prescription you got filled at the local pharmacy that kept your butt out of 18 years of parental hell.

But wait…

DID you get that prescription filled at the local pharmacy, or were you turned away?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4425603.stm

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-11-08-druggists-pill_x.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5490-2005Mar27.html

Pharmacists across the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraception, in some cases refusing to turn over the prescription or transfer it to another pharmacy, subjecting the women involved to lectures about their moral fiber instead.

Please join me in a collective, "What the fuck??"

These pharmacists are taking refuge in little known "conscience laws" that most states have which allow medical practitioners to refuse to perform procedures (like abortion) if they are against their religious beliefs. Pharmacists don't technically fall under the protections of these laws, but some groups are lobbying hard to change all that. Some people are seeing this as a victory for personal belief…I see it as a major infringement of my privacy, my reproductive rights, and the entire structure of personal privacy protection that we all currently know and enjoy.

The insidious thing is that conservative lawmakers aren't going after Roe anymore…it's too obvious of a target. These guys are going after Griswold, and with it the entire underpinning of our conception of privacy. If pharmacists can refuse to fill birth control prescriptions, what's next? Doctors can refuse to prescribe them? Wait, that happens too.

http://www.prevention.com/article/0,,s1-1-93-35-4130-1,00.html

This is absolutely the most appalling thing I've heard recently. Who in the hell do these people think they are? What's next? "No, you may not have your Viagra"? "I am not filling this prescription for Zithromax because you shouldn't have gotten that STD in the first place"? This is not about personal belief, this is about PUBLIC HEALTH, and NOT imposing a certain brand of morality on a woman's body when she comes in with a legitimate prescription from her doctor.

Friggin' IDIOTS.