I'll be reading Growing Up with Tamales for story time at Blue Willow Bookshop, in Houston, on Thursday morning, May 15. Tell everyone you know with kids in the Houston area. How do you find and support local indie book stores like Blue Willow? By going to Booksense.
On Saturday, May 17, I'll be in Dallas, reading and signing at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, for the 13th Dallas Children’s Book Fair & Literary Festival.
On June 22, here in Houston, I'm going to do a poetry workshop. It's free and open to the public, y'all, and they're having one every Sunday in June, taught by local poets I love and respect. So come on down.
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Kroger may suck, but Target disappoints.Here's the email I just sent Target:
Dear Target,
Do you realize that your poor decision to value right-wing religious tyranny over women's health choices is being discussed all over the Internet? I am a disappointed longtime Target shopper who won't be shopping at Target again until you guys get your act together and insist that your pharmacists dispense prescribed medication to women without bringing their sexist religious beliefs into the matter.
Here's an essay that sums up my feelings nicely:
http://nyarlathotepsmiscellany.blogspot.com/2005/11/target-sexist-and-lousy-at-p.html
And here's hoping that Target comes to its senses soon.
Gwendolyn Zepeda 3:11 PM #
Comments:
Um, WORD. The pharmacist's job is to dispense medicine, not advice based on their own beliefs. If that's the case, they shouldn't dispense Viagra to men without a wedding band on their finger--cause Catholics believe you shouldn't have sex before marriage.Give me a break.
# posted by
Datty : 10:55 PM
datty--Ditto!
I feel the same way!
Janice~
# posted by
Janice : 1:29 AM
The fact that we even have to argue for this is ridiculous.
# posted by
Stephanie : 9:55 AM
Dear Target,
I just found out about your choice to allow pharmacists "the right" to exercise his or her religious beliefs at the cost of my health. If I were to go to Target with a prescription for Plan B, I would be more than angry if I had to turn around and drive to "another pharmacy". So, I have decided not to shop at Target until you tell me that I will always be able to get Plan B at Target.
Just yesterday, I received a $30 gift card to Target. I do not want to spend my $30 there. Can I come in and cash it out?
Thank you,
Letty
# posted by
Letty : 10:08 AM
Okay...today seems to be my day to chime in with replies. I am not fully up on the Target/Plan B issue, but I hve done some reading of various posts and gather that once again , Corporate America has decided that women have no rights over their reproduction options much less their bodies. While this may not apply to me personally, if I can find the story I intend to post it in our Firms commom Kitchen Area. Yes indeed, right in time for the Holidays. I can't really use the words I'd like right now to describe Target...Balderdash is the mildest.
I plan on getting their attention in the most direct way possible...through their bottom line/profit margin.
Buh Bye Tar jay
# posted by
Boschka : 12:45 PM
I'm reading AMERICAblog's take on this issue:
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/11/target-digs-itself-deeper-hole-in.html
and its 232 comments, and this one made me laugh out loud:
"My religion allows me to take things off the shelf at Target and not pay for them."
# posted by
Gwen : 1:10 PM
I spent 10 minutes writing a much longer, composed response--but, I've decided that "Target is stupid" sums it up best.
Sure, they have a right not to sell whatever they want; and, I have a right not to shop there.
Of course, Target could decide to take the high road, pay to always have an extra pharamcist on staff who will dipense anything that is legal that Target dispenses and make the whole thing speedy and transparent to the consumer. It would be expensive, yes, but more expensive than losing so much business, who knows?
Also, Target needs to fire their public-relations staff. Remember the fiasco you pointed out last year ( http://tolerance.org/news/article_hate.jsp?id=603 ) that Target finally corrected?
# posted by
Yvonne : 3:27 PM
Dear Target,
Although you certainly have the right to stand behind pharmacists who do not want to dispense emergency contraception, consumers like me have a right to stop shopping at Target and to encourage our friends and family to do likewise.
It would have seemed smarter to add a policy that would keep an extra pharamacist (who would dispense this legal medicine) on staff at all times and make the switch off (from the other pharmacist) transparent to the customer.
This would have allowed you to stand behind your pharmacist and stand with your customers at the same time.
# posted by
Yvonne : 3:39 PM
The thing is, Target's gone beyond deciding not to sell Plan B or protecting pharmacists' rights to practice their own religions. If you read Nyarly's blog entry linked above (or, if you check my email inbox) you'll see that Target is excusing themselves by explaining that they're invoking the Civil Rights Act's protection of religious freedom... ONLY in regards to Plan B.
So... If a Jew working for Target doesn't want to sell pork, Target doesn't care. If a Baptist working for Target doesn't want to sell liquor, Target doesn't care. If a Catholic pharmacist working for Target doesn't want to dispense Viagra to an unmarried man, presumably, Target has no stance on that, either.
But if a "Christian" pharmacist decides not to dispense Plan B (a post-sex method of birth control that *does not work* if the woman is already pregnant), then Target is going to invoke the Civil Rights Act to protect his political/religious stance.
Why is that? And how is that *not* discriminatory?
To me, this isn't a case of Target exercising its capitalist right not to sell something. This is Target supporting sexism.
# posted by
Gwen : 3:53 PM
Sexism, no doubt, plays a huge role in Target's decision.
They could have had a public relations win by initiating a policy that ensures that they always staff non-objecting (euphanism for non-psycho) pharmacists to transparently dispense Plan B or contraceptives to its customers when objecting pharmacists fail to dispense the drug. (And, I'm not talking about telling the customer to come back later, or that the prescription will be sent to their home, or to go to another store to fill it--These are equally unacceptable options.) If Target (and CVS for that matter) feels so strongly about 'protecting the rights' of their pharmacists, they could also commit time and money to 'protecting the needs' of their customer base. That they refuse to do so, implies that they simply do not care about losing this largely-female customer base (and are very likely sexist, as well.)
I should also say that I think Target also wants to protect itself from weird pharmacists' lawsuits. An employee can sue under the Civil Rights Act, but a customer does not have the same time of protection (with this law.) If this law does offer customers protection, I suggest that we get together and start some sort of legal action.
Again, Target is stupid to say that they will only apply this decision to Plan B drugs. Target isn't the legislature or the courts. People can still sue if they feel their religious rights are being denied. (Also, I think that probably more than just Christian pharmacists are refusing to sell Plan B. Christianity is just one of many religions that feel this way.)
I thought long and hard about Target only applying this to Plan B in the post I didn't post--but, I found myself saying that other pharamcists should refuse to sell condoms, and that checkers should refuse to sell beer (especially during Monday Night Football), and that other workers should refuse to stock and sell Playboy magazines...but then, I stopped for a moment and decided I didn't want this to happen either. I didn't want Target to let its staff prevent me from buying anything that I wanted from the store. Applying the Civil Rights Act to everything would merely hurt us more.
I read the linked blogs and was just as disgusted with CVS. How does making the patient wait for another store to deliver the medicine or sending the prescription to the patient's home seem right? It still has the potential to humilate a woman who has to wait or be sent away because she is doing something that someone thinks is immoral.
Finally, Target obviously wants a part of the Plan B profit-pie, cause they don't have to sell all legal drugs (my Walgreens doesn't sell my Thyroid medicine.) The could just choose not to sell Plan be at all. Obviously Target wants it both ways, they want to have their cake and eat it, too.
It's up to us legally and consumer-wise to stop them.
# posted by
Yvonne : 4:38 PM
Target is not alone...
CVS, Eckerd's, and Walgreens all have the same policy. Wal-Mart won't even carry plan-B. I don't know about Rite-aid (there aren't any in Houston) and the grocery store pharmacies (but, we're already not shopping at Kroger)...
You should boycott them all, just to be fair...
# posted by
R.T. Lemur : 5:45 PM
I knew someone was going to bring that up, and I had a pretty good feeling it'd be you, RT.
The problem is that the American Association of Pharmacists (or whatever their exact name is) has that policy.
My *personal* problem with it is that I never had the same loyalty to those stores' brands. Honestly? I feel betrayed. Target represents itself as something cooler than Wal-Mart (who is at least being upfront about their political choices). And it turns out that it's not any cooler at all.
It'd be like loyal Whole Foods shoppers finding out that Whole Foods now sells Easy Mac. Or loyal Neiman Marcus shoppers finding out they now sell pasties and crotchless panties. Or, you know... loyal Sally's Beauty Supply shoppers finding out that Sally's supports its racist employees when they refuse to sell chemical hair straighteners to African-American customers.
I can take the other corporations being right-wing monkeys. But it hurt to find out that Target, of all places, whose virtues I was extolling just a few posts ago, simply doesn't care for my kind.
And you know what they say about scorned women...
# posted by
Gwen : 6:26 PM
Geez, have I really become that predictable?
I have a friend who always does something REALLY zanny when someone manages to predict his actions, just to set the world to rights.
I his honor, I now say, "Oooga Booga Booga!!!" Bet you never predicted that reply...
That is all...
# posted by
R.T. Lemur : 9:03 PM
Well crap. Can't shop at walmart because they are pure evil and stomp all over women, can't shop at Target because they think women suck too. Lovely.
# posted by
Kimberly : 12:14 PM
I live in MPLS and weirdly enough was involved with Target's in-house counsel at two recent events. (As part of a Dean's Round Table at the UMN law school and a week later, at a Pro-Choice Resources fundraiser-- where the Target Lawyer held a board position.)
We talked a bit about the policy, which she admitted was very frustrating for her personally and she clarified it a bit. Target HAS to get the prescription filled-- whether its by calling another pharmacy to do it or getting a pharmicist they already employee to do it. The pharmacists do not have the option of just sending the women away.
While it's terrible that the woman may not get get served at Target that day, the in-house counsel did bring up the point that Target is mostly in more urban areas, and since they have an obligation to get the scrip filled, usually there is another pharmacy that will do it pretty close to the original Target store. (This is not the case with Wal-Marts, in contrast.)
In my opinion, they still are "cooler" than Wal-Mart, because, at the very least, they will get the scrip filled AND they carry the pills. Wal-mart doesnt even do that.
# posted by
mcpuke : 1:29 AM
I though maybe perhaps one could consider that 51% of the children these women haters are protesting the destruction of are women.
There are others in the recovery field that interact with women suffering from very serious emotional pain either form their choice to terminate or because she didn't think she had a choice. These days I talk with more women who were convinced to terminate pregnancies that really wanted because their spouse/boyfriend did not want a child or another child.
Even our Military fighters have right of conscience in their work. Their execution of their office is perhaps the most important for our national wellbeing. Perhaps it is a mark of us being a nation of conscience.
There are some of us that think giving pharmacists the right of choice based on moral conviction is integral to the logic that gives women the right to choose an abortion.
Do we want a country where a doctor must do every surgery she is asked to do (like mandatory steralization)? Every soldier what she is told (like shooting non-combatant prisoners)?
to say Yes is to fall into what philosophers call the reformer's fallacy- a public philosophy that amounts to the state or majority being by definition right.
I beleive Target should have the right to fire these pharmacists, but I don't beleive they should. I suspect any woman who wants a particualr drug can get one. If not then I wonder if the problem is the religious "right", or the religious "from right to somewhere on the middle left who all agree". So long as it is the former, drugs will be widely available.
nicola gibson
# posted by
nic gibson : 7:21 AM
Post a Comment
