9th Circuit CA says Christian pharmacists must dispense abortion-causing pill

Earlier today, I posted about how to respond to the pro-abortion argument that states that abortion is OK because babies are parasites and women should not be obligated to carry them for 9 months.

Pharmacies forced to dispense the morning-after pill

I noticed this (left-wing) LA Times article on Hot Air.

Excerpt:

Pharmacists are obliged to dispense the Plan B pill, even if they are personally opposed to the “morning after” contraceptive on religious grounds, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

In a case that could affect policy across the western U.S., a supermarket pharmacy owner in Olympia, Wash., failed in a bid to block 2007 regulations that required all Washington pharmacies to stock and dispense the pills.

Family-owned Ralph’s Thriftway and two pharmacists employed elsewhere sued Washington state officials over the requirement. The plaintiffs asserted that their Christian beliefs prevented them from dispensing the pills, which can prevent implantation of a recently fertilized egg. They said that the new regulations would force them to choose between keeping their jobs and heeding their religious objections to a medication they regard as a form of abortion.

Notice the important distinction made by Ed Morrissey here:

There have been two different issues in the legal fight over Plan B.  In one group, pharmacists not working for themselves — for instance, at chain pharmacies — objected to dispensing the pill and wanted job protection despite their refusal.  Those cases hardly stand up to scrutiny.  The owner of the pharmacy has the right to decide on his own inventory and what to sell, and the employees of that pharmacy either should follow that policy or find a job somewhere else if it offends them.  It falls into the same category as a cashier who refuses to handle meat at the checkout counter because he’s a vegetarian.

However, this is something else.  The owners of the pharmacy do not want to stock the pills for their own reasons.  Even apart from religious grounds, that still seems to be their decision in the marketplace.  If they don’t want to sell aspirin, or Ginsu knives, or inflatable life vests for swimming pools, that should be their decision, too.  If their customers object to their policies, they will find other pharmacies to patronize. The government has a public interest in telling retailers what they cannot sell for safety reasons (like dynamite, as an example), but should not force business owners to sell something they do not want to sell.

Let’s have the facts: The “morning after” pill kills an unborn human person.

(UPDATE: that link is for RU-486! My mistake, but Plan B can also cause an abortion in some cases by preventing implantation, see the comments below)

And this is another reminder why it was crazy for “Christians” to vote for Obama to steal the money from their rich neighbors. When you vote for left-wing socialists because you covet other people’s money, do not be surprised when the socialist comes after your Christian beliefs soon after. There are a lot of people in church on Sunday morning who need to be reading about economics and capitalism on Sunday night.

Is illegal immigration helping to drive California bankrupt?

Story from the extremely left-wing LA Times. (H/T  commenter ECM)

Excerpt:

The largest costs to California’s budget from its illegal residents are in three areas:

* Education: The state has no official count of how many students are in the country illegally because school districts do not ask. But the state legislative analyst estimated, based on data from the Pew Hispanic Center, that the state’s 6.3 million public school students include about 300,000 illegal residents. At an annual cost of about $7,626 each, the total comes to nearly $2.3 billion.

* Prisons: In fiscal year 2009-10, California expects to spend about $834 million to incarcerate 19,000 illegal immigrants in the state’s prisons. In Los Angeles County, illegal immigrants add between $370 million and $550 million annually to criminal justice costs, including prosecution, defense, probation and jails, according to Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

* Healthcare: The expected state tab for healthcare in fiscal 2009-10 is $703 million for as many as 780,000 illegal immigrants. Of that, $486 million goes to emergency services. But low-income illegal residents are also eligible for some nonemergency health services, including prenatal and postpartum care, abortions, breast and cervical cancer treatment and certain types of long-term care, such as stays in nursing homes. Most of the nonemergency care for illegal immigrants was authorized by the Legislature in the 1980s.

The story was linked by Fausta’s blog and Fausta noted this:

In addition, the article states that 48,000 children in families headed by illegal immigrants receive a monthly average of $472.

Compassion sounds so wonderful until you have to pay for it during a recession. I am in favor of increased legal immigration and work permits. Anyone who can find a job, learn English and American civics, obey the law, and pay for their own education and health care for 5 years should get a green card. But there should be no pathway to a green card ever for anyone who entered the country illegally at any time.

The worst pro-abortion argument ever!

From Neil Simpson.

The challenge:

Some pro-legalized abortions take the view that technically speaking the unborn are parasites and that they are fair game for destruction because they are dependent on the mother and consume some of her resources.  As weird as that argument is I actually like when they present it.  I think that middle grounders will immediately realize what a horribly wrong attempt it is to de-humanize the unborn.

The response:

By that line of reasoning, a woman would be totally justified in killing her baby a day before its due date.

That absurdity aside, their analysis fails (at least legally, if not morally). While you are never responsible for keeping someone else alive, you are responsible for doing so if you created the situation in which they are dependent upon you. The classic example is a person who is drowning in the ocean. You, as a boater with a life preserver, are under no obligation to help them out of the water. If, however, you were the one who chucked her overboard, then watched her drown, you can bet that a jury would convict your immoral butt for murder, not for ruining her clothes by getting her wet.

Likewise, you are under no obligation to give a dying person a kidney to save his life, but, if you ripped his kidneys out of his body, you would be charged with murder if he died from those injuries. If the only way to avoid his death is to give him your kidneys, you can bet that your options are to fork over an organ or be charged with murder.

I find it scary that people think of little babies as parasites in the first place!