Left In Lowell

I’m going to say this one time: AMERICA, WAKE THE HELL UP.

I don’t believe in using CAPS to “shout” unless it really needs to be shouted. I’m shouting. And you should be, too.

Because this is the America in which they, the religious right minority, want you to live.

After a sexual assault one recent weekend, a young Tucson woman spent three frantic days trying to obtain the drug to prevent a pregnancy, knowing that each passing day lowered the chance the drug would work.

While calling dozens of Tucson pharmacies trying to fill a prescription for emergency contraception, she found that most did not stock the drug.

When she finally did find a pharmacy with it, she said she was told the pharmacist on duty would not dispense it because of religious and moral objections.

“I was so shocked,” said the 20-year-old woman, who, as a victim of sexual assault, is not being named by the Star. “I just did not understand how they could legally refuse to do this.”

Readers should be grateful that I’m only using mild four-letter words.

Look, I have no problem with people who are pro-life. You have your beliefs, I understand that. I have family members who are passionately against abortion as much as I am passionately for a woman’s right to choose (whether or not to have one). But abortion, and the morning after pill, is LEGAL, SAFE, and it is NOT, I repeat, NOT the place of a pharmacist to decide FOR me or my doctor, or anyone else. Not now, not ever. Not unless you change the constitution and we go back to the dark, terrible days of back-ally abortions and arresting doctors who only want to help their desperate patients. And I have news for those of you who do want to outlaw it once again: You are not the majority of people in this country. You will not, in the end, prevail.

You will hurt a lot of people by your “moralizing” from behind the counter, behind the bench, and behind the law. But mark my words: you will make no friends with your fascist-religious goals. You will, now or later, be sent back to the very fringes of political society, where you belong. I will not stop fighting until this has come to pass.

(Via AMERICAblog.)

Update: Add THIS to the outrage:

Target is claiming the 1964 Civil Rights Act gives their employees the right to do whatever they want to any customer so long as the employee claims their actions are motivated by their religion. Funny, but when we studied civil rights in law school, I don’t remember that section of the Civil Rights Act.
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Here’s what Target is saying, then read my analysis below:
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Target consistently ensures that prescriptions for emergency contraception are filled. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we also are legally required to accommodate our team members’ sincerely held religious beliefs as required by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the unusual event that a Target pharmacist’s sincerely held religious beliefs conflict with filling a guest’s prescription for emergency contraception, Target policy requires our pharmacists to take responsibility for ensuring that the guest’s prescription is filled in a timely and respectful manner. If it is not done in this manner, disciplinary action will be taken.

Now, the 1964 Civil Rights Act certainly does protect religious folks against discrimination in the workplace. But the kind of discrimination it refers to would be, for example, Target saying “we’re not going to hire Christ killers,” or, “man we hate those Baptists, none of them get promoted at Target.” Yes, that would be illegal under the ‘64 act.

But Target is now saying, outright, that the 1964 Act covers any action a Target employee takes so long as the employee claims the action is motivated by his or her religion. Though, then they turn around and say that their religious employees have no such rights at all (see further down).

By that logic, a shop owner should be able to keep a Muslim out of his store - hey, he’s part of a wacky Christian sect that says all other religions are blasphemy and thou shalt have no dealings with them. A grocery store chain owner could, if he the had a thing against those “Christ-killers,” keep Jews from shopping at his outlets. Say, one might even imagine a KKK-Christian might cease to serve blacks because he believes they are a subhuman race. And one can easily manage to use the same logic to discriminate against gays.

I mean, why not stop at a woman’s right to make her own medical choices? Why not just let everyone discriminate - so long, of course, as they can justify it with their religious beliefs.

UPDATE II: And keep in mind, folks, these people are often the same ones that will not dispense birth control methods.