Wal-Mart ordered to carry 'morning-after' pill

Original article I read about it was at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11391926/.

Excerpt from the article:

I've got to believe in this case it is probably a good thing. It's medicine, and if your going to run a pharmacy, you should probably have medicine. The only reason there is a controversy is that Christians feel its abortion. If this was toliet paper, sure I'd say butt out. But this is drugs, and as long as the Government chooses to accept the morning after pill as a approved drug it should be required in all pharmacies.

Pharmacies will go out business or pass even higher costs along to customers if they are forced to carry every drug that the FDA has approved. Next time you have to pay $5 more for co-pay, this will be a contributing factor.

What happens to smaller pharmacies that can't afford such a large selection? Are they to be forced to carry the same formulary that Wal-mart does? We'll be driving private enterprize out of business.

If not, at what amount of pharmacy sales do we mandate they carry all these drugs? And then who will regulate and monitor it? Who will absorb that cost?

Why stop at this drug? There's many more drugs that have moral choices. She we require them all? Or only the drugs that have a strong political lobby?
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I think your looking at this in too large general sense. We are talking about a drug that is not being carried because of one paticular group of people's personal moral convictions. It's not that there is a lack of demand for the drug, or that stocking it will increase costs. I would imagine a great amount of profit would be made for this drug, as there are many woman who would not want to get pregnant.

I don't think the argument here is should the government enforce the selling of certain drugs, but should the morning after pill be sold?

I think it should, and based on that any company who wishes to violate my freedom to take this pill, or restrict my access to it, should in my opinion be forced by law to get over there little moral convictions and provide people access to the medicine they need.

If it's not a high demand drug, and thats the reason you don't stock it, thats one thing. On the other hand this is not the case with this drug.

But that's exactly what bothers me. This mandate is being made for one drug just because it's a political hot button and has a powerful lobby for it.

Had it been a antibiotic or something, the court would not have even addressed, nor would any political group cared.

This is a case of a political group acting like a bunch of goose-stepping nazis imposing their will and wasting my tax dollars in court costs.

Wal-mart did the same thing. The difference: Wal-mart is a business and didn't need tie up a court to do it. If customers don't like the selection, they should go elsewhere.
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So I must ask, since I've come out and stated I'm in support of the morning after pill.

What are your moral convictions?

Do you thing the morning after pill should be legal?

My personal thoughts are that until Walmart is ran by a woman, who has gotten pregnant by someone on a one night stand & refuses to pay child support, Walmart has no right to refuse this drug.

I believe that better planning and responsibility is a better method of birth control then after the fact.

Now that being said, I know that is not always reality. Stuff happens. As a reasonable person, you have to accept that. Hell, I've been part of the situation.

If you want to take a religious approach, my OPINION is that even though the Bible has words printed saying "Be fruitful and multiply", that the intent was not to suggest any birth control method is wrong but more to suggest to have kids out of love. But that's another subject.

Should it be legal and it be an option? Yes. But I don't believe it's even a question of legality. I'm an odd fellow and don't believe pro-life or pro-choice should be a legal issue either. But it's the world we live in.

To go full circle, I don't care what the drug is or what it's for. My biggest gripe is that a retail business should not be forced to carry a product they don't think will sell or be good for business.

I did some more research and found the Wal-Mart doesn't want to offer it because it doesn't sell and they're having to toss expired inventory. Knowing how Wally World treats costs and it's vendors, I can certainly believe that. Could they be hiding behind some moral choice? Sure.

But to be told "you will carry this product", that just rubs me the wrong way.

Finally, one more time to beat the dead horse, what the drug/service is doesn't matter to me.

Now the conspiracy voice in my head thinks perhaps Wally World plotted this whole thing to intentionally get women to come in a test the water...to see if they carry that pill. "Yes Ms Smith, we did comply with the order, and oh by the way, we have some nice lotion on sale as well."
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If you want to open a good can worms as a side argument, should the mom be the only one to have a full LEGAL say in the decision? Except in extreme situations, both man and woman were willing participants.

Do the dads have any rights at all? If we want more men to be responsible, would including them more in the decision not foster that?

Just because there are some that inject and run, you can't punish all men. We can't make a stereo-typical labeling for all men, can we? Careful on responding if you're part of a group that gets wrongly labeled and generalized.
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