Reply #53: How about it? A pharmacist refusing to dispense Viagra isn't going

[BlueIris]

to cause the kind of potential health crisis that a woman who cannot get emergency contraception to attempt to prevent pregnancy may face. It's offensive and horrifying to me that pharmacies can be allowed to refuse to stock or dispense any medication depending upon the personal feelings and opinions of the pharmacy's owner, insurance carrier, or any employee, but people need to stop "reminding" folks how horrible it is that women are being denied access to tools to prevent pregnancy by pointing out that men are always able to get drugs to treat erectile dysfunction. One situation is significantly more fucked up than the other. Not slamming men, Viagra users, or those who enjoy the sex Viagra facilitates, but even if we were seeing cases in which men had pharmacists refuse them their Viagra, no man will have his short term mental and physical health severely compromised, nor with he die if his Viagra prescription is withheld. The consequences for a woman who is unable to prevent an unintended pregancy, depending on her health profile and many other individual factors can be dire, and CAN include death. The people who might refuse to fill an Rx for an ED drug may be warped by the same prejudices and ignorance that those attempting to deny emergency contraception also suffer with, but equating these scenarios minimizes the atrocity that the blatantly misogynist motives of pharmacists who feel justified in exposing a woman to the health crisis that is an unintended pregnancy. It's not acceptable to minimize the severity of that second problem. Also? It makes it easier for people to confuse the necessity that contraception is for women, especially emergency contraception, with the relative luxury Viagra is for men, and for ignorant assholes to continue to think that denying EC is the same thing as condoning sex, while happily forgetting the number of women who need it because they were raped.

I get that people may be trying to make a point about the Patriarchial nature of our anti-female society when they post comments like this, but...you don't need to. We don't need any reminders here that women being denied access to EC and other birth control is misogynist.