Bold Prescriptions
Russ Baker
April 01, 2005


Most of us have an ethical and/or religious framework which influences
our beliefs about morally complex issues like the right to die or
abortion. But progressives as a rule don't shout these beliefs from
the rooftops.

How can rational people start dominating the debate? By preparing to
publicly articulate and defend a set of basic principles on life,
death, medical care, etc.-on all the key moral issues.

advocates are already working to frame the abortion issue as part of a
broader effort to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and to shift the onus
onto those who oppose abortion under any circumstances, by asking them
to come up with workable alternatives-emphasis on workable .

Bold Prescriptions
Russ Baker
April 01, 2005


Most of us have an ethical and/or religious framework which influences
our beliefs about morally complex issues like the right to die or
abortion. But progressives as a rule don't shout these beliefs from
the rooftops. Traditionally these decisions have been seen as
intensely personal. But religious extremists have changed all that,
and journalist Russ Baker says it's time for progressives to act
publicly-and not leave it to religious extremists to set the agenda.

Have you ever seen tables turn so fast? The same people who for so
many years have decried a decline in personal freedom are rapidly
becoming domestic interventionists of the first order.

The religious far right and its allies are interfering with the
delivery of products and services and the most intimate compacts
between spouses. You know about Terri Schiavo. But are you aware of a
growing trend in which service professionals put their religious
beliefs ahead of their most basic obligations to the public? You don't
have to be a fanatic about civil liberties to feel discomfited about
this latest assault on simple human decencies.

Monday's Washington Post reported on the increasing numbers of
pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control and
morning-after pills, saying that doing so would violate personal
tenets.

Like the Terri Schiavo case, where ardent defenders of the sanctity of
traditional marriage were willing to poke every branch of government
into the private business of husband and wife, the harmful activism of
right-wing pharmacists affords reasonable-minded, middle-of-the-road
or progressive folks a fine opportunity to seize the moral high
ground, and begin moving the national conversation away from cynical,
demagogic politicians and the mobs they foment.

Before batting around tactical approaches to getting the public the
truth about these growing transgressions against liberty, let's look a
little more carefully at the problem.

A pharmacist's central function is to act as an agent of the health
care system, a distribution point between a doctor and a patient.
Pharmacists cannot prescribe medicines, they can only deliver them. As
such, they obviously shouldn't be making decisions on what medicines
members of the public can and cannot access- just as supermarket
employees who are vegetarians may not refuse to ring up meat products.
(If some religious pharmacists cannot reconcile dispensing certain
meds with their consciences, they have the honorable alternative of
taking up another line of work.)

Defenders of this new vigilantism, including a group called
"Pharmacists for Life," claim that patients can always get their needs
filled by another pharmacist. But that isn't always that easy-
sometimes, there is no other pharmacist around (especially in rural
areas), and sometimes, the "Life" pharmacists even hold the phoned-in
prescriptions hostage rather than release them to someone else who
will honor them.

The Post chronicles cases where it took patients so long to find a
pharmacist who would honor the prescription, that the window for, say,
preventing a pregnancy, had already passed. One wonders what kind of
responsibility those "Life" pharmacists would be willing to assume for
the well-being of the child born of an unintended pregnancy. Or how
they feel about their probable role in actually increasing the number
of abortion procedures. Or how they understood the role of the
pharmacist when they joined the profession.

This and the Schiavo case are but a few examples of a rising tide of
societal or individual professional decisions made "for" others- which
includes teachers not wanting to teach evolution or parents not
wanting others' kids to get an unambiguous understanding of a
universally accepted scientific concept. But it really hits home when
life and death are concerned. It probably won't be long before we hear
about police officers, emergency medical technicians, and others
starting to ignore the rules and making their own personal, "moral"
judgments. Then we'll really see the whole issue of rights-and who
should exercise them- explode.

Now would be a fine time to start discussing this, and not leave it to
religious extremists to set the agenda. When Congress got steamrolled
to vote for federal intervention in the Schiavo matter, many of those
supporting the bill seemed conflicted, and later confessed to having
serious doubts about what they were doing. Surely, they too would have
appreciated a little "moral" guidance.

By all indications, the far right had the entire Schiavo thing
stage-managed down to the smallest detail, with broad cooperation
between institutions, talking points agreed upon, and everyone working
in overdrive on overtime. It would help a great deal if the forces of
reason brought a similar energy to preparing for the controversies of
the future.

How can rational people start dominating the debate? By preparing to
publicly articulate and defend a set of basic principles on life,
death, medical care, etc.-on all the key moral issues. Some pro-choice
advocates are already working to frame the abortion issue as part of a
broader effort to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and to shift the onus
onto those who oppose abortion under any circumstances, by asking them
to come up with workable alternatives-emphasis on workable .

Put in a snappier fashion, instead of concentrating on the unborn or
the essentially dead, how about these right-wing moral authorities
show some attention to the living? How can you support meddling in
unrelated strangers' affairs- but oppose broad, helpful intervention
on issues that affect everyone- like health insurance for kids and the
poor?

We'll know we're on the right track when zinger TV ads air that
express our views. Simple ads stressing simply how the new movements
unleashed by the Schiavo affair and "Pharmacists for Life" are
attacking relationships most Americans believe to be intensely
personal-thus threatening the very concept of "Husband & Wife" and
"Patient & Doctor"-could be very effective. Evoking emotion is
certainly appropriate-for example, driving home the devastation a
woman feels when she gets a lecture from her pharmacist and is left to
wander the streets in search a pharmacy that will honor her
prescription.

There's nothing wrong with going a little harder, too. Since, it turns
out, that both Tom DeLay and Robert Schindler, Terri Schiavo's father,
approved of 'unplugging' their parents when doctors said there was no
hope, it's perfectly appropriate to raise this. Cyncism and hypocrisy
are incredibly potent villains. "Both Tom DeLay and Robert Schindler
took doctors' advice and allowed vegetative-state relatives to die
with peace and dignity. Why won't they allow Terri Schiavo and her
husband the same right?

The purpose of such ads will be not just to win a narrowly focused
debate on this or that issue, but also to discredit the entire
right-wing apparatus of distortion and disinformation, and refocus
debate on real life and death concerns.

Social issues aren't just for mobilizing fanatics anymore. They're for
recapturing the moral high ground and bringing it back where it
belongs: with the sane, the reasonable, the decent and the fair.

Russ Baker -a founding fellow of the new Fourth Estate Society-is a
regular contributor to TomPaine.com.