Why do you act so much like an imbecile, America? Why?

Ok, so I just read this article about birth control and I'm rather... we'll say annoyed.

I'm really bothered that so many people can say that this issue is about the rights and freedoms of women, without realizing that it is also about the freedoms of all of the people involved in the process of prescribing/ filling a prescription for that birth control. It's ridiculous.

First of all, if a pharmacist believes that a prescription is in error or dangerous to the patient, they should be able to refuse to fill it. If they receive a prescription for something that they know will harm someone, they should be able to refuse to fill it. There is all of this talk of this bill restricting the freedoms of women by taking away their freedom of choice about what they do with their bodies, what about the freedom of the nurse, doctor or pharmacist to choose what to do with THEIR bodies (i.e. to hand you a pill/prescription or not). Shouldn't they have rights too?

Also, when did medicine become about what the patient WANTS? Medicine is about treating things that have gone wrong, preventing things that would go wrong otherwise, and providing palliative care when there is no other treatment available or when the only treatments also cause pain. Medicine should not be about people walking into the doctor's office saying "I want this drug." and the doctor just handing over a prescription for it. Medicine is about what patients NEED. Not their wants. It centers around the doctor knowing more than you do about the way that the body functions and its needs. It requires the doctor to make a judgment about what is best for you. Sure, they can give you options and allow you to make the final choice. There are all kinds of things (NOT just birth control) that doctors and pharmacists choose to not recommend or prescribe to their patients. I have had several doctors who informed me that there were other options than the ones they were willing to prescribe. They told me the things they do prescribe and then the ones they don't- and the reasons why they don't prescribe them. Sometimes it's because they haven't seen the drug work enough, they've seen it have negative reactions, they don't believe it works to the best interest of the patient, there are too many possible complications or simply that they don't agree with it morally. I have no problem with this. I respect it when my doctors inform me of the various options, the pros and cons of each, and their objections/support of various options. I want to know when someone smarter or more educated than I has a moral objection (or any objection, for that matter) to something they are going to tell me to introduce into my system. I would find it offensive and restrictive of my (any my doctors') freedoms if they weren't allowed to do so.

It just makes me so mad when people fight so hard for things that they haven't really examined or given a fair chance to. I hate it when people don't take their presuppositions to their logical conclusions.