Sell Pork or Break the Law?

Jon Schaff at South Dakota Politics provides a good analogy in the debate about SB 164, a bill which would force pharmacists to sell contraception despite any moral objections they might have to doing so.

Schaff paints the picture of a bookstore owner being forced to sell a particular book in his store, regardless of whether he wants to or not. I've made similar analogies on this or another blog at some point in the past. Besides, if having immediate access to contraceptives is such a paramount and fundamental right, will liberals next lobby for taxpayer funding of a birth-control-stocked pharmacy in every town with two or more people?

If the bookstore example doesn't quite stimulate your thought processes enough, consider another. How about a Jewish or Muslim grocery store owner being forced to sell pork. After all, don't we all (Christians, anyway) have a right to get pork without encumbrances, hardships, or even moral judgments? Why should this Jew or Muslim be allowed to force his morality on me? Why should the Jewish or Muslim grocer be allowed to make judgments about my pork consumption? Shouldn't we have unfettered access to pork, especially if there is no other grocery store within miles?

You see, this just doesn't pass the smell test...not even close.

Remember, too, that we're not talking about life-saving medical treatment here. We're talking about a drug that actually prevents the human body from doing something perfectly natural and healthy, something God actually designed the human body to do. We're not talking about a drug that will treat or prevent a disease or illness (and if you're one of these ultra-radical libs who views pregnancy as a disease, then maybe you should get a hysterectomy/vasectomy, because even oral contraceptives sometimes fail).

Schaff really gets down to brass tacks, I think, and gets very near the heart of the matter when he says, "SB 164 suggests that sexual freedom without the consequences of pregnancy is so fundamental to human happiness that it compels violating the integrity of the pharmacist's mind." In fact, this morning during this discussion on another post, I opined that "all the angst over pharmacists being forced to sell contraceptives against their conscience really isn’t so much about ACCESS as it is the attempt to escape exposure to MORAL JUDGEMENT."

If one can get contraceptives from a different pharmacist or through the mail (as I do my allergy medication), then why the push to bulldoze over someone's right of conscience? It is rapidly becoming clear to me, in not only this area of public policy, that in the liberal mind, unfettered sexual license is the paramount, Number One Holy Right, with all other contrary rights and considerations rescinded.

What is particularly strange about SB 164 is that it refers to "government entities," and "government intrusions" somehow preventing immediate access to birth control. Pharmacists aren't "government entities."

Government does have certain obligations that private entities do not, but that's not the case here. Has this liberal-tainted world really turned so upside down that the definition of freedom has been redefined to mean denying one person freedom of conscience in order to provide a product to another person...that can be obtained through other sources, anyway?

On a side note, who do you think authored and pushed this bill? I'm not talking about the co-sponsors and maybe not even the sponsor. I suspect someone outside the legislature was behind this. If you agree, who do you think it is?