1 Reason the Pro-Choice Message is Gaining Traction

A pharmacy in Chantilly, VA is now "...refusing as a matter of faith to sell contraceptives of any kind, even if a person has a prescription." As the Associated Press explains:

States across the country have been wrestling with the issue of pharmacists who refuse on religious grounds to dispense birth control or morning-after pills, and some have enacted laws requiring drug stores to fill the prescriptions.

In Virginia, though, pharmacists can turn away any prescription for any reason.

The report goes on to note that throughout the United States there are at least seven other pharmacies that are also refusing to carry contraceptives or fulfill any type of prescription having to do with birth control.

Ann at Feministing and Jessica at Jezebel have already done an excellent job of pointing out why this trend is troubling. Yet, particularly since this pharmacy is located so close to my old neighborhood, I couldn't resist mentioning this story here. Besides, it seems to provide an answer to the question posed by Tim Fernholz yesterday at The American Prospect: Why has the pro-choice message gained so much more traction this year than it has in previous election cycles? In the past it seemed to me that the anti-choice retoric used by conservative politicians was just a cynical ploy to excite their base and, while still repugnant, represented no real threat. Roe v. Wade had established the law of the land, I thought, and there wasn't much the fundamentalists could do to erode our rights. Now, though, I feel like cases like these are cropping up frequently enough that I realize there is an increasing threat to women's rights to make our own reproductive choices - and an attack on a woman's right to preventative birth control seems like a particularly sinister and wrong-minded example of the gradual gains being made by the anti-woman crowd.

Simply put, examples like these have made us more aware of the possiblity that we could actually lose the rights over our bodies that we fought for so long to gain.