{"id":829,"date":"2005-05-04T19:29:12","date_gmt":"2005-05-04T19:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=829"},"modified":"2005-05-04T19:29:12","modified_gmt":"2005-05-04T19:29:12","slug":"the_fairer_sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=829","title":{"rendered":"The Fairer Sex"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two recent news stories have caused me to question how much we really value the equality of women in American. First, some pharmacists are now deciding that they don’t have to fill prescriptions for birth control pills<\/a>. Let’s leave aside the validity of their :cough:medieval:cough: beliefs for the moment. They are refusing to fill a physician’s prescription for a federally approved drug. Pharmacists are professionally obligated to dispense prescriptions, with a couple narrowly defined statutory exceptions here in Minnesota. When a pharmacist refuses to fill a prescription, that pharmacist is interfering with the doctor-patient relationship. Of course, this particular moral stance exclusively affects women. The underlying need for birth control pills may not even be related to reproduction, but the objecting pharmacist need not be bothered with such details. The pharmacist suddenly feels qualified to pass judgment on a complete stranger’s sexual habits and choices.
\nAmericans love to pass judgment on women who are perceived as behaving badly. Look at the case of the woman who decided to skip out on her imminent wedding<\/a>. As far as I know, it’s not a crime for a single woman to get on a bus and cross state lines. I’m sure it was upsetting to the family, but I think it’s ludicrous for the local DA to publicly mull whether he can bring any charges against the woman. After the woman returned, her fiance said that his only concern “was to get Jennifer well.” This quote bothers me because of its implication that she MUST have been crazy to not want to marry the guy. After all, women are impulsive, emotional, and unpredictable. Who knows why they do the things they do, right?
\nFuck.
\nAs someone with a disability, I have a passing familiarity with paternalism and condescension. And these stories smack of both. Unfortunately, the media turned the pharmacist issue into just another sideshow of the culture wars. Their coverage of the “runaway bride” was even more abhorrent for its voyeurism and almost Victorian undertones of disapproval. We may pay lip service to gender equality, but we aren’t even close yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two recent news stories have caused me to question how much we really value the equality of women in American. First, some pharmacists are now deciding that they don’t have to fill prescriptions for birth control pills. Let’s leave aside the validity of their :cough:medieval:cough: beliefs for the moment. They are refusing to fill a […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-dn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}