Birth Control: Deeply Moral or Inconsequential?

You can't have it both ways.

Either birth control is a highly moral issue on which physicians must be allowed to impose their "conscience" or it is a trivial matter with negligible consequences that can be easily dealt with.


"A doctor at a Calgary walk-in clinic is refusing to prescribe birth control due to her personal beliefs."

This caused a ruckus starting on Facebook and a comment was sought from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta (bold mine).

Under the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta’s policy on Moral or Religious Beliefs Affecting Medical Care, doctors can refuse to provide medical services, but must ensure the patient is offered timely access to those services from another practitioner.

Trevor Theman, registrar with the CPSA, said the policy does not require Westglen to have a doctor on hand who can prescribe the pill.

He did not specify what “timely” meant, but said a delay in receiving a birth control prescription is “not likely going to disadvantage a patient in a serious way.”

“There’s a degree of urgency but it’s not like life or death today kind of urgency,” he said, adding most women should be seeing a family doctor about their sexual health needs.

“In an ideal world, women who need birth control or are seeking birth control will have a regular doctor and won’t just be dropping into a walk-in clinic to get a prescription for birth control pills.”

Yabbut, this is not an ideal world

Pam Krause, president and CEO of the Calgary Sexual Health Centre, said she’s aware of doctors who morally object to making abortion referrals, but refusing to prescribe birth control is virtually unheard of in Alberta.
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Personal beliefs should not interfere with a professional responsibilities, she said, adding that the birth control pill is one of the most highly demanded prescriptions.
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In fact, one in five Calgarians ­­— 200,000 people — is without a family doctor and rely on walk-in clinics to serve their medical needs.

So, which is it? Big fucking hairy deal? Or minor matter that non-irresponsible women should sort out on their own?

And that reminded me of the messed-up recall of the birth control pill AlySena in April 2013.

“Although this recall is currently a Type 2 recall and does not require pharmacy to contact patients, due to the potential seriousness of the recall, and in an abundance of caution, care and concern for our customers, London Drugs has chosen to be proactive in advising our customers and patients of the recall,” the blog post read, linking off to the urgent notice.

Class 1 situations require “reasonable probability” that the use of the drug will cause serious health consequences or death. Class 2 could lead to “temporary adverse health consequences,” Health Canada explains on its website.

The maker, Apotex, seemed to consider the issue serious. Health Canada not so much.

The lot was identified as LF01899A and distributor Apotex issued a voluntary recall to wholesalers and retailers on April 3. The affected packages were removed from store shelves on April 5, when most pharmacies received the recall.

But patients were not required to be contacted until April 8, when Health Canada upgraded the recall to Type I, the most serious level.

Health Canada says this type of recall is reserved for “a situation in which there is a reasonable probability that the use of, or exposure to, a product will cause serious adverse health consequences or death.”

Again, an unintended pregnancy seems to strike some in the medical community as a mere "temporary adverse health consequence." Much like the fetus fetishists who insist pregnancy is hardly any bother at all. And women who reject it are selfish bitches.

Gawd, we women and our reproductive systems require a lot of policing, don't we?

Here's a radical idea: Why don't we leave such decisions entirely up to the person most affected? And leave the damned panty-sniffing gatekeepers -- whether MDs, pharmacists, or Health Canada -- out of it.

Let us know if a product is safe and effective, then shut the fuck up.

Reminder: In Ontario, a similar kerfuffle over the "morality" of birth control prescriptions drove the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario to seek public input. Go have your say. The process is open until August 5.