Some drugstores are starting to refuse to sell contraceptives (including condoms). This, understandably, worries a lot of people who think contraceptives should be available to women everywhere. Slate's ever-contrary Will Saletan isn't worried. Trouble is, his is an argument that's been made time and time again and it's still pretty dumb.
First off, he says that pharmacies that don't stock contraceptives aren't a big deal because "Your burden consists of finding another pharmacy." That's fine if you live in a big city, but in rural areas there often aren't a lot of pharmacies and so if your local one refuses to help you you've got a big problem, especially if you don't drive.
Never fear though, Saletan anticipated that objection! "Whole regions where pharmacies won't stock contraceptives? Come on. Only seven have even signed the "pro-life" pledge." Well, I'm glad you're confident Will, but I'm not (a. In places where it takes hours of driving to get to a pharmacy, several pharmacies making this kind of decision (not improbable in conservative areas) will mean that prescription contraception will become essentially unavailable. It's already hard to find emergency contraception in some places. Even pharmacists who don't much care about contraception may decide not to carry it under public pressure since it can't be a large part of their income. In fact, this is essentially what's happened with abortion in many states. Nor is contraception as uncontroversial as he thinks.
By the way, this is the same logic that people used to justify homeowners who didn't want to rent to minorities. That's just terrible, they clucked, but I wouldn't want to live in a world where the government told people who they could rent to. Well, as it turns out, that world is a lot better than the one it replaced.
Saletan says, "Please, don't tell moralists they have to do or sell whatever's legal. If you do, you won't like what happens to the law." And what, exactly, is that? What terrible consequence will ensue? Your guess is as good as mine. As people like Saletan refuse to acknowledge, we force policemen to enforce laws the disagree with, some states forbid discrimination against gay people over the religious objections of their citizens, and we require teachers to teach evolution (unsuccessfully, in many cases, but legally).
We make these kinds of balancing decisions all the time. In this case, I think it's pretty clear which side we should come down on. Forcing pharmacies to sell contraceptives does deprive people of some freedom, but making contraceptives essentially unavailable to many women seems to be a much worse deprivation of freedom to me.
--Sam Boyd
