28 Comments on “Target Takes Aim at Reproductive Rights”   rss feed

1. Belizean on Oct 21st, 2005 at 12:35 am

   I am already boycotting them for (unlike Walmart)

   1) banning the Salvation Army from collecting donations on their property

   and

   2) not selling guns.

   It’s just not a friendly place for gun-toting customers who believe that homosexuality is a sin.

2. Moshe on Oct 21st, 2005 at 12:47 am

   I am always amused by the slippery prose of such letters, it is all very pleasant sounding, uses all the right expressions, and is positively and completely legally non-binding; takes some talent to write this way. One wonders what the policy that “ensures the prescription is filled” really amounts to.

3. PB on Oct 21st, 2005 at 8:45 am

   Mark, I think you are being overly harsh on the employees themselves. People are not machines, so they are not necessarily willing or able to sell every product that Target carries, and we have no particular “right” to demand that they do so. Should a Pacifist saleswoman be rejected because she refuses to sell guns? Should an Amish salesman be rejected because he could only work in the Furniture Department? Each of these people may have other qualities that offset the occasional ideological brush with customers, and so might be worth it to the store. However, it is then Target’s responsibility to ensure that there is always at least one person available to sell any given product, so the complaint *really* identified a failure in Target’s distribution of labor at the Pharmacy. Since this phenomenon has only been fairly recently discovered, it may take some time before the stores adjust (for instance, by putting a question about willingness to sell emergency contraception on the application form), and if you do decide to call the stores, you may also decide to suggest this as a way to improve the situation rather than simply pointing out their incompetence.

4. tweedledopey on Oct 21st, 2005 at 9:39 am

   PB,

   Should a Pacifist saleswoman be rejected because she refuses to sell guns?

   Well… yes, and it’s probably legal too. Why? You can’t discriminate based on race, creed or color but you can discriminate on a bunch of other things. Let’s assume she’s applying for a job with Walmart. First of all, I doubt they would hire her for the gun department. But let’s say that once they did, they realized that she refused to sell any guns. They’d probably move her to the shoe department, or the child worker department. But the point here is that pharmacists get specialized training to fill prescriptions. It’s not as though you can rotate Joe Evangelical out for Cindy the Atheist from the produce aisle. The analogy would be better described if you said: Should a Pacifist saleswoman be rejected because she refuses to sell anything bigger than a pistol? There has to be a qualification there.

5. Becky on Oct 21st, 2005 at 9:45 am

   However, it is then Target’s responsibility to ensure that there is always at least one person available to sell any given product, so the complaint *really* identified a failure in Target’s distribution of labor at the Pharmacy. Since this phenomenon has only been fairly recently discovered, it may take some time before the stores adjust (for instance, by putting a question about willingness to sell emergency contraception on the application form)

   PB, I must disagree with your claim that this phenomenon has only recently been discovered. I would suspect that this is not the first time a woman has been denied a prescription at Target, but rather, the first time a woman has complained. PP has been sending letters to Target for at least the last year, asking for a guarantee to fill prescriptions for birth control, and every response is the same mealy-mouthed, “Target has a policy that ensures a guest’s prescription for emergency contraception is filled, whether at Target or at a different pharmacy.” Especially as Wal-Mart and KMart, Target’s biggest rivals, have been in the news for refusing to fill various prescriptions, Target has had plenty of chances to guarantee that it will fill all of its customers’ prescriptions. And they haven’t, so I have my doubts that the stores will adjust their distribution of pharmacists.

   Based on the conservatism of the Target CEO, I highly doubt that the pharmacist application form will ever include a checkbox about dispensing emergency contraception.

6. Herb on Oct 21st, 2005 at 10:04 am

   Not that I agree with Target, but you have to look at their side of it… If they punish the pharmacist, they anger their fundamentalist Christian customers. If they condone him, they anger liberals. So now they are in jeopardy of losing business all because of this dumb rogue employee. In an effort keep all of their customers, they must issue some weak statement that doesn’t grossly offend either side. Target will now lose some liberal customers, but a stronger action against the pharmacist might lose them more.

   I wish corporations would be more socially responsible, but you can usually expect them to simply protect their business. There should really be a law…

7. Mark on Oct 21st, 2005 at 10:46 am

   I know that’s what’s happening Herb, but essentially that’s my point. Weak statements like this don’t cut it - they do grossly offend me.

   There is a law. It says that emergency contraception is a legal prescription drug. If you want to be a pharmacist, you should be prepared to fill those prescriptions. Otherwise, you are denying customers access to legally allowed medical treatment.

8. Jacques Distler on Oct 21st, 2005 at 11:01 am

   The problem is the absence of an “American College of Pharmacists” (as exists in most other countries). Normally, it would be the role of the ACP to establish standards of conduct. A pharmacist who refused to fill certain prescriptions would lose his ACP certification.

   Companies like Target (which have to face consumers) could say, simply, “We employ only ACP-certified pharmacists.”

   As it stands, there are 50 State Licensing boards, and no national organization to enforce standards of conduct. It’s up to individual retailers to set policy for their pharmacists. That’s madness.

9. Moshe on Oct 21st, 2005 at 11:07 am

   Jacques,

   That is astonishing, because now I worry not so much about standards of conduct, inappropriate as they are, rather I am suddenly concerned about standards of competence…

10. Amy on Oct 21st, 2005 at 1:55 pm

    I guess for me, it’s about being an employee. Yes, you can have your own views, but when you are at work, you are a representative of your employer. If the employer sells certain prescriptions, and you work there as a pharmacist, fill the flippin’ prescription or go work for a pharmacy that has the same public views as your personal ones.

    Same with the pacifist saleswoman and guns - why in the heck would she take a job with a store selling guns in the first place - if not to make a point.

    These pharmacists have a right to an opinion, but it’s not necessarily the opinion of the employer for whom they work, so they in fact, violate MY rights when the refuse to fill a prescription.

11. bittergradstudent on Oct 21st, 2005 at 2:10 pm

    Amy–

    I think it goes beyond that, however–I think that when the employer is a pharmacy, they should be required to fill the prescription. In a city, it’s no huge deal–you can just go to another nearby pharmacy. But in the small town in which I used to live, there was a small local pharmacy, teetering on the brink of extinction, and the large wal-mart pharmacy. If both of these places oppose, EC, you are screwed. Not to mention that local people in the country are really damn poor (for the non-Americans here, the rural midwest is pretty much as badly off as the inner cities are).

    If we insist on having the private sector provide as critical a health-care service as dispensing medication, then they should do whatever a doctor has already told them to do.

12. Arun on Oct 21st, 2005 at 3:07 pm

    If the Target store carries the item in question, but refuses to sell it to a customer, because of an employee objection, then Target is trying to have it both ways. Either Target should not carry the item or it should require its employees to sell it, limited only by the legality of the sale and the creditworthiness of the customer.

13. janet on Oct 21st, 2005 at 4:09 pm

    This is sort of an aside, but it seems odd to me that Target refers to its customers as “guests.” This implies a very different relationship than “customer,” and perhaps therein lies part of the problem.

14. bittergradstudent on Oct 21st, 2005 at 4:14 pm

    by the way, since it isn’t clear in my above post, I make the poor point, b/c poor = not having easy access to transportation to the next town, particularly since bus coverage aint so great.

15. PB on Oct 21st, 2005 at 8:24 pm

    Becky - Relative to the average employee (esp. pharmacist) tenure, this has indeed been discovered recently. In this case, it’s politically difficult to fire salespeople over an issue like this, so one might imagine that it may be some time before the issue fades away even if the CEO had nothing to do with it.

    tweedledopey - I mentioned the Pacifist to argue that, while a store can have good reasons to hire her, it cannot reasonably expect her to sell guns, and it must hire someone else to do so. To complete the analogy, there could be plenty of good reasons why a store might want someone who refuses to sell ECs as a pharmacist, but it is consequently bound to hire another pharmacist willing to sell those products if, indeed, it expects to sell any. My point is that one shouldn’t demand that a particular pharmacist should provide ECs, only that there is someone available who is willing to do so.

16. eyehat on Oct 21st, 2005 at 10:30 pm

    Mark - How do you justify forcing a pharmacy to sell EC? So what if it’s legal to sell EC? Assault rifles are legal, should we force every gun store to sell them? What the pharmacy chooses to sell or not sell is up to the owner. If you disagree with the owner, then you should take your buisness elsewhere.

17. Mark on Oct 21st, 2005 at 11:18 pm

    eyehat - please read carefully before writing. My post doesn’t suggest that the pharmacy be forced to sell EC. Rather, I note that the pharmacy does sell EC, but that one of their so-called employees is refusing to do their job.

    Also, in what sense am I forcing anyone to do anything. I was suggesting that citizens who disagree with the action a business is taking are perfectly within their rights to call that business, complain, and to take away their business if their issues are not addressed in the way they would like. What exactly is wrong with this?

18. janet on Oct 21st, 2005 at 11:20 pm

    EC is the same medication that’s in regular contraceptive pills, just a larger dose. Like regular oral contraceptives, EC prevents ovulation. There is also some speculation that it may in some cases cause a fertilized ova not to implant, but there is no consensus on this among researchers, and in any case it’s not the typical effect of the medication.

    Contraceptive pills are a pharmacy’s bread and butter, and no pharmacy with an interest in sustaining a business would refuse to sell them. Any pharmacy that sells contraceptive pills has no rational reason to refuse to sell EC.

    There is a limited window of time in which EC will be effective, which means that a woman may not have a lot of time to shop around for a pharmacy that will sell it to her. This makes the “take our business elsewhere” argument more than a little disingenuous.

19. Mark on Oct 21st, 2005 at 11:28 pm

    I certainly agree Janet. Maybe I should have been more clear above - I meant take one’s business away for good, so that whenever one needs to, one would immediately go to another pharmacy. Obviously, what you point out is quite correct - that if a woman needs EC and goes to a place that is supposed to provide it and encounters one of these employees unprepared to do their job, it is entirely unacceptable.

    I also agree with some other posters above that there is a real problem when a big store like this is the only game in town and either employs one of these people or doesn’t supply EC at all.

20. eyehat on Oct 21st, 2005 at 11:36 pm

    Mark - I seem to have misunderstood what you were saying. To me, at least, when you stated that “There is a law. It says that emergency contraception is a legal prescription drug. If you want to be a pharmacist, you should be prepared to fill those prescriptions. Otherwise, you are denying customers access to legally allowed medical treatment.” it seemed that you were implying a pharmacy should be legally required to fill EC prescriptions.

    And as for complaining and such, there is nothing wrong with that. Again, from what you’d said I thought you were supporting legal requirements for a pharmacy to fill EC.

21. janet on Oct 21st, 2005 at 11:42 pm

    Mark — I agree with you about the public campaign. I think our posts crossed, so it looked like I was responding to you; actually I was responding to the previous post.

22. Mark on Oct 21st, 2005 at 11:44 pm

    eyehat. It is true that there is a wider issue here, which is that I do think that legal prescription drugs, prescribed by a doctor, should be available to patients. There is clearly a problem with our system in this regard, as discussed by Jacques in (8).

    So I certianily think women have a right to have prescription medication readily obtainable. How this is achieved in our somewhat crazy system is up for discussion, but not what I was getting into here.

23. Moshe on Oct 21st, 2005 at 11:56 pm

    Once again I find myself in disagreement on the very basics. A business like target cannot have it both ways. If they are for-profit-only organization they should get out of public services like health care. If they want to present themselves as community service (which I don’t buy for one minute), they should be prepared to take the good of the community into consideration.

    Either way, applying the usual consumer model of relationship to crucial services like health care has disastrous consequences. Once this model is taken to be the only truth, one is left with mild and ineffective course of action available, such as boycotts etc.

24. serial catowner on Oct 22nd, 2005 at 9:40 am

    The point is that the pharmacy is a monopoly enforced by the state. Refusing to dispense a prescribed drug on the basis of the pharmacist’s opinion of the patient is, or should be, illegal.

    You probably wouldn’t suppport a pharmacist who refused to fill prescriptions for black people. This case is no different.

    Pharmacists are expected to behave professionally at a key link in the process of getting the right drug in the right patient. A doctor can hardly put a treatment plan in place if the next person in the line is going to usurp the doctor’s prescribing role.

    Target’s assertion that their employees can substitute their own opinions for the doctor’s prescription is dangerous. The medical system is not designed to function with that kind of input.

    And, frankly, we pay a lot extra for the supposed benefits of that sytem.

25. Moshe on Oct 22nd, 2005 at 10:41 am

    Our comments crossed, Mark, we are not in disagreement after all it seems. The idea that things will self-regulate by consumers shifting their business, and there is no need for other forms of regulation, this idea seems just absurd to me.

26. Arun on Oct 22nd, 2005 at 11:44 am

    Here’s one more thing to consider - to build a new store, Target needs permission from the local township authorities. (Surely you’ve followed various localities’ resistance to Walmart stores?) So Target has to cater to local politics, even while being a national chain.

27. bittergradstudent on Oct 23rd, 2005 at 9:29 am

    serial catowner has hit the nail on the head in (24). The essential point is that it’s none of the pharmacist’s damn business. I have never heard of any other case where a pharmacist decides that it is their responsibility to withold drugs from anyone. I have especially never heard of a pharmacist refusing to fill a prescription, and then refusing to return the prescription to a patient, as I have in this BC/EC “debate”. In particular, I have never heard of pharmacists refusing to fill -valid- painkiller prescriptions. Painkillers clearly offer a much larger margin for abuse than BC, but for some reason, this is not an issue with anyone.

    If they want to “inform” patients about this implantation issue, then fine, I guess that is partially within thier purvue. Otherweise, they have no business withholding treatment from anyone. They are not doctors, and they are trying to override the direct advice of doctors. And that is why the pacifist argument is disingenuous. No doctor, or similarly qualified individual, has ever told anyone that they need a gun. Not so with BC. And the “take my business elsewhere” argument, as noted above has the problems of time-sensitivity, and is untenable for a relatively large segment of the population (i.e., rural people) anyway.

28. janet on Oct 24th, 2005 at 2:23 pm

    I’m a bit surprised that doctors haven’t been more vocal about this. If I were a physician and something like this happened to a patient of mine, I would boycott the pharmacy and warn my patients away from it.

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