Fill My Pills Now

Does your local pharmacy refuse to fill perscriptions based on religious beliefs of the pharmacist?

Here is a letter I wrote to Target after receiving an update email from Planned Parenthood:

Dear Target,
As a consumer, I expect your pharmacies to guarantee women the right to obtain their prescriptions -- in-store, without delay or personal judgment.
I shop regularly at my local Target store and even registered for my bridal shower with your company. I cannot continue to shop at a store that does not fill legal perscriptions.

Pharmacists have the right to their own opinions, but not to discriminate. It is no more appropirate to ask a customer to get their perscription elsewhere because of the worker's religious beliefs than it is to refuse to serve a customer due to racism.

Why does your company hire workers who can refuse to perform their job? Do you hire stockboys who can refuse to work on friday nights because it is a date night? Do you hire cashiers who refuse to "check-out" customers who are of a different belief system? I see this as a slippery slope where Catholic cashiers can refuse to let customers purchase condoms, Mormons refuse purchases of coffee, and Muslims refuse purchase of pork products.

Target should do the right thing (and the economic one!) and hire people that do the job they were hired to do. If the company as a whole wishes to support a religious method of business decisions, do not carry birth control or condoms or anything else that may be offensive to the workers. Then it can be a simple explanation of why you don't fill legal perscriptions. You simply don't carry that product. One worker on duty refusing to take the legal product off the shelf and charge the customer for it does not make sense.

I don't agree with a religious exception for pharmacists to refuse legal perscriptions because they think it shouldn't be legal. Cops can't ticket you for doing something legal if they personally disagree with it. Realtors can't encourage discriminatory housing by only selling certain houses to African-Americans (or any other group). Why should pharmacists get a free ride? If you disagree with your profession, get a new job. If you want to work for a place that only follows your religious rules, go work for a church. The next time you go to the hospital look out, a doctor might decide he has a newly found faith in a religion that doesn't believe in blood transfusion, and you might bleed to death on the table.

Bloody Jack

I've been reading a YA book series by Louis A. Meyer. (Yes, some adults do read kids books. I work in a library. Excuse enough.) The "Bloody Jack Adventures" are about Mary "Jacky" Faber, a girl who disguised herself as a boy to go to sea (but got caught), got stuck at a prim girls school (but not for long), became a pirate(but not really, just officially), and got into all sorts of trouble in between (and always seems to get out of it just in time). I highly recommend the series. The official website isn't much, but it does give a release date for the next book, In the Belly of the Bloodhound.

Buy the whole series:

Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy

Curse of the Blue Tattoo : Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady

Under the Jolly Roger : Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber

waiting

No change in Dad. They are putting a feeding tube in his stomach instead of just down his nose, so I fear that recovery will take longer than expected. They are also putting a filter in his groin artery to catch any clots. I have been sinking lower just thinking about him, wondering how long it could be until he shows any sign of improvement. Days? Weeks? Months?

So I just wait.

no change

By Saturday they knew he had bruised lungs, bruising on both sides of his brain, and a broken rib. He didn't even know what is going on around him, he just stuggled to sit up and rip off all the monitors and IVs whenever he came out of sedation. It was heartbreaking to hear him ask me to help him, to let him go (out of the restraints). Even when I told him I couldn't, that he was in the hospital and needed to stay in bed, he didn't remember it 20 seconds later.

Now he's wearing mitts to keep him from grabbing any tubes or wires. He wakes up less often and doesn't talk when he does. At least he seems more at rest, hopefully the calm times will let him sleep enough to heal. I sat with him for 15 minutes, watching him struggle even in his sleep. I hope he comes out of it soon, but it could be days until he is even aware of his surroundings or remembers anything we tell him.

Dad in the hospital

Yesterday I got a call at work just as I was going on my lunch break. My Mom was frantic, Dad fell off a 6 foot ladder at work and was being rushed to the hospital. My boss told me just go, she would cover the desk for the rest of the day. I beat my Mom and the abulance (or at least the patient registration in the computer) to the hosptial. It was bad. He fractured his skull and had an irregular heartbeat. The doctors don't know if the heart problem was caused by the fall, or if it caused him to fall.
By the time I went home from the hospital that night I was a worn-out wreck. I can keep my calm while it is needed, but that is hard to keep up for more than 8 hours. My husband met me and drove me home, thank goodness. On the way another car cut us off. I usually get an adrenaline rush from near misses that makes my hands tingle, but there was nothing left. I barely even reacted.

Fire! Fire!

I'm a traditional wood-fire kind of person. I love big blazing logs in a nice brick fireplace, and generally dislike those fake looking gas flames that flare out of the stacked faux logs in gas fireplaces. I have found an exception. This "firewall" from Esse is so cool. I could have fire in any room! I would give up the smell and sound of a real fireplace (and the cold drafts too) in excange for framed fire. It isn't really a replacement, but a feature of a different type.

Link via BoingBoing.

word verification

I hate to have to do it, but I just turned on the word verification option for my comments. Spammers are annoying enough in email, but now they hit blogs too. Bleh.

Serenity

On Friday & Sunday I went to see Serentiy. The Friday night late show was tons of fun, the crowd was very responsive. They laughed at the jokes, cheered the battles & gasped at plot twists. I highly suspect it was mostly fans of the tv series Firefly. On Sunday I saw it again with friends who couldn't go on Friday. I think our group were the only ones to laugh at all through the whole movie, the rest of the crowd didn't catch the set-ups from the tv series. I didn't hear any great reactions or any bad ones, so I don't know how the general public likes Serenity.

The movie stuck to the character development of the tv show, no changes in personality or behavior is good. They did a great job of setting up a little explanation at the beginning so a viewer would know what is going on without having seen the tv series, although not everything was covered. Of course that could be bad too if the plot was dragged down by setting up more background that is necessary to move it along. Without giving too much away, the focus was on the history of River rather than the battle of serentiy valley or how the crew all met each other or what exactly is a Companion. Plenty left for a sequel or another tv series.

Hanzi Smatter found a mistake in the Hanzi characters used in the movie, but I'd say that's pretty good to only have one language mistake (and at least it's just a reversal, not a completely wrong translation) in the set design. I would be more embarassed for the film makers for that MS Windows screen.

Fans should check out Browncoats: the official Serenity Fansite.
If you missed the tv show Firefly and want to catch up, it is available on DVD.

At What Age?

A minor cannot legally make decisions for themselves. They cannot vote, enlist in the armed services, smoke, or consent to sex. The ages for these privileges are generally 18 but vary by state. The age of majority for various activities is a point of contention for teenagers. I heard many arguments in high school of why drinking & smoking should be the same as that of the draft. My male friends often cheered statements such as “old enough to shoot the enemy, old enough to drink a beer.”

At what age can a person think for themselves? A developmentally disabled person can vote at 18 but a 16 year old with a high IQ cannot. Intelligence is not the deciding factor. A 16 year old cannot consent to sex based on their own decision, but can marry with parental permission. Their own emotional development or a personal sense of responsibility is not the deciding factor. Most states consider sex with a minor legal if it is within the bonds of marriage; effectively giving parents the right to say when their offspring is ready to have sex. Parents cannot override the age of consent for voting or drinking, but they can provide legal sex through marriage. This impression of breeding chattel dates back to medieval times when parents gave away young virgin brides to bring together family real estate holdings or cement an economic/trade relationship with another family.

Parents fear their loss of control over their offspring’s sexuality. Statutory rape laws are a flawed method of exerting societal control over a minor’s sexuality. The book Harmful to Minors: the Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by Judith Levine discusses the repression of sex education in schools over the past twenty years. In a book review titled “Pelvic Issues” Catherine Madsen writes that Levine thinks “that statutory rape laws are a bad way to deal with relations that are consensual from the younger person’s point of view….young people ought to be listened to and given the means to think about their developing sexual experience.” Madsen also stats that Levine “objects to the basing of public policy on oversimplification and hysterical rage – faults to which every parent confronting the sexuality of his or her child is susceptive, and which should not be written uncritically into law.”

In the article Issues in Statutory Rape Law Enforcement: the Views of District Attorneys in Kansas by H. Miller, C. Miller, L. Kenny & J. Clark the authors state “The U.S. Congress made the prevention of teenage pregnancies a major objective of the 1996 federal welfare reform law, which recommends that ‘the states and local jurisdictions should aggressively enforce statutory rape laws’ as one way to achieve this end….Can aggressive enforcement of statutory rape laws reduce adolescent pregnancy rates? While federal reform policy argues that it can, many recent studies and commentaries either suggest that it cannot or show no consensus on this topic. According to the article, in 1996 there were 4,772 births to women in Kansas who were aged ten to nineteen. One hundred and five district attorneys were surveyed regarding statutory rape laws for the article. “Only 24% of the respondents believed enforcement would reduce adolescent pregnancy. Fifty-seven percent supported the current legal age of consent in Kansas (16 years). Fifty-three percent thought the law should not specify age differences between the partners. Most (77%) believed the law should protect sexually active minors, and that paternity acknowledgements should be admissible evidence in prosecutions (78%).”

Age should not be a magic number that bestows the ability to control our own bodies. Statutory rape laws are not the cure for teen pregnancy or a control for teenage sexuality. The law needs to be changed to reflect the difference between a teen growing into their own sexuality and a non-consensual act of rape or abuse. The current restrictions on people labeled as sex offenders only underscores the importance of society thinking carefully before branding a teenager with a scarlet letter.