Time For Jesus-Loving, Lady-Hating Pharmacists To Take Center Stage Again

ta-da!!

It's been a minute since we checked in on the good people over at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. You might remember them from their previous hits like Hobby Lobby and their more recent tracks like "We Little Sisters of the Poor Are Too Little And Too Poor To Sign This ACA Accommodation Form So We Sued The Government Instead." We love those songs! That's why we are so thrilled to see that the piece they've been working on for several years, "We Are Pharmacists Who Love Jesus And Hate Dispensing Medication," finally hit the big time with theirpetition to the Supreme Court this week.

You gotta admire the Becket folks for kicking it old school like this. We'd pretty much forgotten all about Jesus-humping pharmacists who don't want to help the ladies kill babies because they've been totally overshadowed by cake bakers who won't bake for the gays, pizza makers who won't pizza for the gays, florists who won't make lovely and delicate flower arrangements that are just so perfect for the gays, and, of course, the Michigan auto mechanic who won't fix your gay car, homo. C'mon, gays! Let someone else have a turn.

You already know how this tune goes, right? Some pharmacists who are something like the eleventh generation of Bible-bangers to own this particular pharmacy -- Margo Thelen, Rhonda Mesler, and the Stormans family of beautiful Washington state -- are shocked, shocked, they tell you, to find out that it is a mission critical part of their job to dispense medication.

See, back in 2007, Washington passed a law that told these fine Christian folk, and every other pharmacist in the state, that they couldn't just say NOPE to any ladies who needed emergency contraception known as Plan B. Pharmacists could refuse for other reasons such as "that will take too goddamn long" or "sorry, fresh out of baby-killing drugs today but we will have some more tomorrow," but not "because Jesus said." However, the Washington law still allows for you to exercise your deeply and sincerely held irrational fear of lady bits and refuse to dispense Plan B as long as some non-idiotic other pharmacist works with you and will fill the prescription. Haha but Stormans does not employ any of those sorts of heathens, so they just sent people down the road a bit to other pharmacies, which was kinda sorta completely against the law. So then Obama personally marched to their home in jackboots, clapped them in leg irons, and sent them to Leavenworth.

Oh wait. None of that last part happened. Instead, the Stormans dragged the state through a 12-day trial, where they won, and then the state dragged them up to the Ninth Circuit, where that court told our fine Christian heroes to go pound sand because of how the Ninth Circuit is entirely filled with liberal judges who literally drink the blood of aborted babies as a toast to Satan every morning before hearing cases.

Now the Becket fund is begging SCOTUS to take the case. We are especially fond of this part of the petition to the Supreme Court, where they whine about what a burden all this kerfuffle has been upon their poor poor plaintiffs.

Abortion-rights groups also organized a boycott and picketing of Ralph’s. Picketers stood on both sides of the store entrance, yelling at customers and urging them to boycott the store. The Governor’s office joined in the boycott, canceling an account with Ralph’s that had been in place for sixteen years.

Gosh, a boycott and a canceled account! That is literally the exact same thing as murdering abortion providers and shooting up Planned Parenthood. Both sides do it, amirite??

Guess what? The Supremes are probably going to take this case. Not just because this particular Supreme Court will pretty much do anything it can to decrease the rights of women when it comes to autonomy over their own bodies, though that part is of course true, but because, as the Becket lawyers point out , the decision in the Ninth Circuit sets up a circuit split. See, other circuit courts have already held that if you allow for secular exemptions to rules -- such as the "we are plumb out of Plan B" excuse -- but you don't allow for religious exceptions to rules, then you are a bad state and you should feel bad. Whenever appellate circuit courts conflict like this, it's prime time for SCOTUS to step in and resolve the conflict. Add in the fact that you have a Court where conservative Catholics who hate women are wildly over-represented, and we're probably going to spend the next year writing about these stupid fucking pharmacists. Hooray.

[ Becket Fund / Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ]