For those of you who don't know, there was a rape in Denton last Thursday. She reported her sexual assualt to the police and went to the hospital to for medical attention. As a precautionary measure, the doctor prescribed that she take emergency contraception. With prescription in hand, she went to the Eckerds located on the corner of University BLVD and Elm. After handing the prescription to the drive through attendant at Eckers, she sat and waited in her car while the Eckerds pharmacists had an informal meeting where they came up with the "moral" decision that prescribing E.C. would be "ending life." As anyone who knows anything about E.C. will tell you, all E.C. does is prevent a possible fertilized egg from planting itself on the Uterus.

But even still, this is wrong on SOOO many different levels. First, a pharmacist is not a doctor. Their sole purpose is to fill prescriptions that doctors prescribe to their patients. If a pharmacist has a problem with E.C. then they really should not be a pharmacist in the first place.

Secondly, a person has no right to tell another person what they can and cannot do with their body. That's the whole gist of a pro-choice argument. What we are all advocating is to keep the government and religious institutions from imposing laws that say that a person can't decide to do what they want to with their own body. A pharmacist has no right to impose their beliefs on another person. What makes this even more frustrating, but also a tad more reassuring, is that this is not Eckerds policy. This decision to not prescribe E.C. was the decision of one person. So at least, this wasn't some situation where Eckerds as a company was denying E.C. in the broad sense. But on the other hand, this situation really just shows how far some people will go to institute their will on other people.

But a really big issue here is that a woman suffered through a humiliating sexual assault. The last thing she needs is to have a company that she thought she could trust in, humiliate her as well. There is no excuse for rape, the sure as hell isn't an excuse for a company to deny their customers medicine prescribed by a trained doctor, as well as a high level of human decency. This pharmacist went well beyond his bounds and I HOPE (but doubt) that he will be reprimanded with some form of severity. I think he owes this girl, and his community a written and formal apology and I think that he should be either let go from his job for good, but at the very least some kind of prolonged leave of absence.

A group of about 40-50 of my fellow activists and I made sure that we had our voices heard, so we went out to that very Eckerds and held a pretty vocal protest right as everyone was passing by on their way home from work. I didn't think that much would come from us being out there, but I couldn't have been more wrong. I spoke personally to a few people passing by who said that they were going to go into that Eckerds and move their prescriptions to the Walgreens across the street, after they let the management know why they were doing it. That is what I plan on doing as well. Although I don't have prescriptions of any kind, I plan on boycotting that very Eckerds until that pharmacist issues some kind of written and formal apology, and is reprimanded by Eckerds in some way. I was a bit surprised to discover yesterday that the incident and the subsequent protest made national headlines on Cnn.com as well as msn.com. Whoever said protesting isn't an effective way to get a message out?

What I don't really get though, is that a lot of pro-life people admit that they feel that abortion should be legal for rape survivors if need be. But it surprises me that a pharmacist wouldn't even give this person E.C. which is not "abortion." As I said earlier, E.C. prevents a possible fertilized egg from implanting itself inside the mother. It's shocking that a pharmacist didn't know this, and that he would be so far "pro-life" that he wouldn't prescribe a rape survivor emergency contraception.

But to add further insult to injury...

The Denton Record Chronicle had a front page story about the incident and the subsequent protest. The Eckerds on University took it upon themselves to cut out that lead story from every Denton Record Chronicle they had in their stands. This is just horrid in every conceivable way. This is just awful.

This Eckerds will no longer get my business. I plan on e-mailing them and letting them know this. I also plan on telling them that I plan on spreading the word to as many people as I can. If someone can't trust a store to perform their basic tasks when asked, while trying to weasel their way out of any kind of responsibility, then they don't desserve my patronage.

If you want the link to contact them, then you can cut and paste the following:

http://www1.eckerd.com/content.asp?content=help%2Fpostoffice&cookie%5Ftest=1

Just because you weren't out there protesting, doesn't mean that your voice can't be heard. Let Eckerds know that you disapprove of their handling of this situation.

matt out