What are these emergency contraception pills? They’re “morning after” pills that can be taken up to five days after the act to “prevent pregnancy.” Wal-Mart had previously declined to carry these contraceptives in its pharmacies, simply saying that it “chooses not to carry many products for business reasons.”
Massachusetts is the second state that has forced Wal-Mart to carry these morning after pills; the other state is Illinois.
The decision by the state pharmacy board came two weeks after three women had filed suit against Wal-Mart for failing to stock the contraceptives. The three women—unsurprisingly, they were backed by various pro-abortion groups—claimed that state policy requires pharmacies to provide all “commonly prescribed medicines.”
Already we can see a major flaw in this argument. Dictionary.com defines “medicine” as meaning: 1) The science of diagnosing, treating, or preventing disease and other damage to the body or mind, and 2) An agent, such as a drug, used to treat disease or injury.
Does birth control treat any type of disease or injury? Clearly the answer is no, which means contraceptives do not fit under Massachusetts’ policy that pharmacies must provide all “commonly prescribed medicines.” To argue otherwise, one would have to essentially take the position that pregnancies are a form of injury or disease!
The ridiculous logical conclusion to this line of thinking didn’t stop these women and their pro-abortion advocates, however. Flush with success from their victory in Massachusetts, they are already threatening to sue in other states if Wal-Mart doesn’t completely reverse its policy.
“I’m proud to be able to tell my patients that they now can go anywhere for their prescriptions,” said Dr. Rebekah Gee*, one of the three women who filed the lawsuit. “My patients should not have to shop around.”
Dr. Gee feels her patients shouldn’t have to “shop around” for a form of birth control that many feel is a method of abortion, but she feels that private companies should be forced into selling these items against their will? Something has gone drastically, terribly wrong here.
Tucker Carlson of MSNBC’s The Situation feels the same way. He actually invited Dr. Gee and her attorney Sam Perkins onto his show to discuss the lawsuit and the decision. Carlson wanted to know why our government should be telling businesses what they can or cannot sell, or why anyone should be forcing a business to sell something that business does not want to sell.
Dr. Gee argued that pharmacies were part of the health care system, but Carlson against stressed that Gee didn’t own Wal-Mart, that stockholders owned Wal-Mart, and shouldn’t those stockholders be able to decide what Wal-Mart sells?
“You’re absolutely right,” Gee said. “What they sell on their shelves other than the pharmacy. But the pharmacy itself is critical to the care of patients.”
Sam Perkins repeated the same argument about contraceptives being an “integral part of the health care system.”
“As defined by whom?” Carlson wanted to know.
Both Perkins and Gee continued to refer to the birth control pills in question as “medication,” at one point comparing Wal-Mart’s decision to not sell them as akin to turning away someone from an emergency room. (Dictionary.com’s definiton of “medication”? A medicine; the act or process of treating with medicine.) Both refused to acknowledge as a problem the state’s authoritarian decision to force a privately-owned company to sell something it does not want to sell; and both refused to acknowledge their specific role in the decision.
Of course, their unwillingness to own up to the ugly reality of the situation isn’t surprising when you consider that the very object in question—”emergency” birth control—is largely born out of an unwillingness to own up to one’s own actions.
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*One news source lists the name as “Gee,” while the other source has “Guy.”
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Sources:
You should have just said “I don’t like the morning after pill” and gotten the same point across without rambling on about government and Walmart and not showing any other examples of government forcing its will upon corporations.