Illinois Governor Takes Action Against Self-Righteous Pharmacists

Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich filed a rule yesterday requiring Illinois pharmacies to accept and dispense birth-control prescriptions to women, specifying "No delays. No hassles. No lectures," and thereby flying in the face of the Sanctimonious Right which has been inducing "born-again" pharmacists to refuse birth-control to (immoral) women because of the pharmacists' presumed "moral superiority."

The Illinois Guv has clearly had it with self-righteousness.

Governor Blagojevich was acting on the basis of complaints from two Chicago women who were denied "morning-after" pills from an Osco pharmacy. "Our regulation says that if a woman goes to a pharmacy with a prescription for birth control, the pharmacy or the pharmacist is not allowed to discriminate or to choose who he sells it to or who he doesn't sell it to," said the Guv. He also said he suspected that the pattern of complaints over the past year was no coincidence, but rather "part of a concerted effort" to prevent women from getting the birth control they wanted.

Meanwhile, other states, primarily in the South, are moving in the other direction ... to explicitly empower blue-nosed pharmacists NOT to fill prescriptions they don't approve of. So far we haven't heard of that sort of legislation being introduced in North Carolina, but surely it's only a matter of time.