My response from Wal-Mart re: rw pharmacists

[eissa]

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for contacting us at Walmart.com regarding women's
prescriptions for birth control. Your comments and concerns are very
important to us as we strive to meet your needs.

Wal-Mart does not carry emergency contraceptives. Our pharmacists may
decline to fill a prescription based on personal convictions. However, they must find
another pharmacist, either at Wal-Mart or another pharmacy, who can assist you by filling your prescription.

Again, we thank you for your comments regarding this issue.

Sincerely,


Customer Service at Walmart.com

[nutshell2002]

1. What utter bullshit

As a physician, one of my deepest committments is to taking care of all people, regardless of why they seek care/treatment. Along the way I have learned compassion, tolerance and an appreciation for our diversity as people. To think that a pharmacist would refuse to fill a script that I wrote based on their own "moral values" makes me sick. The AMA really needs to speak up on this issue.

[liberal N proud]

2. My wife buys her birth control pills from Wal-Mart all the time

I don't know about the emergency BC but they carry condoms, spermicides and dispense birth control from all the Wal-Marts we have used.
Sounds like something you might find in Alabama or Texas, not California.

[Warpy]

3. It's corporate policy

and any woman who is denied a legal prescription there needs to write a letter of complaint to the state pharmacy board.

Only by attacking their licences to dispense can we get these guys either DOING THEIR JOBS or finding storefront churches to preach in.

Religious baggage has NO PLACE in a pharmacy, especially since a pharmacist is unqualified to practice medicine and second guess a doctor who has written a legal prescription in the appropriate dosage.

We need to get these guys out of practice.

[Tux]

5. Exactly

If it bothers to fill out emergenct BC prescriptions, they need to find a different field. If they want to preach at people, get a sign and yell on the street corner.

Definately go after these guys licesnes.

[Atman]

4. Dear Wal Mart;

Fuck off. Have you given a moment's thought to exactly WHY lately you have had to turn all of your advertising and promotional resources toward DEFENSIVE position statments, instead of the jingles and dancing smiley faces of your hey-day? Because America is waking up, dammit, and America is finally realizing that YOUR hey-day helped bring about OUR downfall, and we could give a flying fuck what "convictions" your bible-thumping pharmacists have, or what color panties your CEO wears, or weather your missus swallows, ducks, or opts out! It's no more my business than my family planning is yours. Just sell me my low-priced 12-gallon jug of Tide and tell your pharmacist to STFU and fill my 'scrip.

Despite your hack of a slogan, everything is not ALWAYS about low prices. You, as a corporation, have overstepped your bounds, taken your Congress-granted "Personhood" to an Orwellian extreme, and frankly, we're all just getting fed up.

You'll reap what you have sewn if you make the same foolish mistake the United States Congress just made...assuming that the religious extremists' VOLUME bears any relationship to their actual representation of mainstream American. As many Congressmen will find out in 2006 -- if America is truly up to the dirty task of confronting our demons -- is that if we don't like the crap you're selling, we'll go shopping somewhere else.

The dark futuristic irony will be the communities which will one day spring up inside the vacant big-boxes you leave behind as the very people you rip off can no longer afford even your cheap Chinese crap, let alone 22% mortgages and $3 heating oil.

Signed;
Just another Wal Martyr(TM)


</rant>

[DulceDecorum]

6. In other Wal-mart news

Mar 29, 2005
Wal-Mart said in a document filed with the Securities Exchange Commission that Coughlin's resignation arose over the unauthorized use of corporate gift cards and personal reimbursements involving third-party invoices and expense reports.
The amount in question is in the range of $100,000 to $500,000, according to the SEC filing.
Wal-Mart turned over the results of its internal investigation to the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Western District of Arkansas in Fayetteville. A spokesman with the U.S. Attorney's Office said he had no comment on the investigation.
http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2005/03/29/business/01coughlinfollow.txt

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s former vice chairman may have used undocumented expense payments to pay for anti-union activities, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/08/news/fortune500/walmart.reut/

WASHINGTON, April 8 /U.S. Newswire/ -— Today’s Wall Street Journal revealed that former Wal-Mart Board Member and Vice Chairman Thomas M. Coughlin, the number two person at the company, alleges that he operated an illegal anti-union slush fund as part of a company program to suppress the democratic freedom of workers to make a choice for a union voice at work.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) calls on the company to publicize all documents connected with the U.S. attorney’s criminal probe of the Coughlin case.
Wal-Mart has already been found guilty of illegally spying, bribing with promotions, firing and intimidating workers. According to the Wall Street Journal, these revelations, if true, mean that Wal-Mart’s anti-worker, anti-union program “would represent a criminal offense under the federal Taft-Hartly Act,” -— a federal felony to pay employees to persuade coworkers to abandon support for union representation.
The Journal also reported that Coughlin "is expected to use the ‘union project’ as part of his defense to the charges about mismanagement of funds."
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=45564

[tsuki]

7. They won't fill your prescriptions because they object on moral

grounds, but they will find you a pharmacist who will fill your prescription over their moral objections. Is this 'moral-er?'

If they think it is a "sin," why would they find you a "sinner" so you two could go "sin?"

[Patiod]

8. yes they do carry emergency contraception

They may not carry the "official" 2-pill emergency contraception, but they DO carry emergency contraception

It's called regular birth control pills. In most cases, you take 4 the first day after, and 4 the second day after for the identical effect as the more convenient but less-available 2-pill method. .