Same place you shopped before it opened?
But I'm in the same spot -- a Target opened a short walk away a year or so ago, and I'll hate not shopping there. I'm glad the boycott didn't hit untill after Halloween costumes.
We can't shop at Target anymore? Did they donate to al Qaeda?
Wow. Where would we be without you, Apostropher?
Ugh: Labs' post links to a page that answers your question.
Well, it doesn't answer Ugh's second question. It could be that Target has, besides things already known about them, donated to Al Qaeda. In fact, I don't recall them demanding torture of whomever the President pleases, and such non-demanding is basically an in-kind donation.
No Wal-Mart or Target? Where is a broke college student supposed to shop?
Looks like it's back to Dumpster™ diving for me...
Where is a broke college student supposed to shop?
Well, for the truly broke college student, I don't think Target's Plan B policy has any bearing on whether you can steal from them.
Yes...one might even consider it the ethical thing to do, as a form of active protest against their actions!
Or at least that's how I'll rationalize it.
No Wal-Mart or Target? Where is a broke college student supposed to shop?
Good ol' All-American K Mart. Broke college students these days, I swear, they got no sense of tradition.
Ugh: Labs' post links to a page that answers your question.
Oh, I thought he was linking to the Target that was opening in his area.
And, to paraphrase someone who once commented here on another thread, we have to click the links now?
Don't get me wrong, I think everyone's entitled to his or her own beliefs. But never should those beliefs get in the way of administering potentially life-saving medication.
I find Target's policy sort of repugnant, but I think I'm missing something. How does Plan B save lives?
Well, pregnancy is still a risky thing to go through. Complications and all.
Also, for the pro-lifers who see abortion as taking a life, Plan B prevents abortions, thus saving lives.
Well, pregnancy is still a risky thing to go through. Complications and all.
The pregnancy doesn't have to be carried to term because Target's pharmacist won't fill a perscription for Plan B. The beliefs of the woman seeking the perscription might preclude abortion, but she isn't being forced to carry the pregnancy by a third party. Your second point is valid, assuming one is up for a game of Semantic Twister, but I don't think it's what the author had in mind.
If I'm being overly uncharitable here, let me know. I'm just trying to tell if this is a piece of really overwrought rhetoric or if there's some wrinkle I'm not seeing.
You know, I'm pretty sure you can patronize a Target without ever going to the pharmacy, even to ask where the condoms are. Whatever you think of their policy (and though I disagree with it, it's a damn good way to get a legitimate conversation started about the topic), your dollars are still valid for the 120,000 other items they sell. It doesn't strike me as particularly likely that register clerks are going to be using the line-item veto on your tape receipt any time soon, and I don't even think they would have the right to do that under the same policy.
But the point is to punish target for its pharmacy policy.
Diddy, the point isn't that we're afraid that we won't get our prescriptions filled--the point is that Target has an evil, unjustifiable corporate policy that hurts women and extends the role of the worst kind of Pharisee into our bedrooms, and I think they should be hurt for it.
I was envisioning a scheme where people go to Target, load their carts with goods, and then leave their loaded carts at the door, illustrating how much money Target's malignant pharmacy botch is costing them.
The point isn't that Weiner thinks they should be punished.
I was envisioning a scheme
I propose leaving unwanted babies at the pharmacy counter.
b-wo, it is possible that "I think they should be hurt for it" is outside the scope of "the point is." Ogged is just annoyed that he missed his 10:30 last night because he was licking his wounds.
She is, in a sense, being forced to carry a pregnancy. Plan B is a contraceptive, and IF taken within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse--the sooner the better--it can PREVENT PREGNANCY. If you can't get it, or if you are *delayed* in getting it b/c your pharmacist refuses to fill a valid prescription and you have to spend time finding someone who will, then, yes. The pharmacist is indirectly "causing" the pregnancy.
I think a blanket boycott of Target is a stupid way to solve a problem that is confined to their pharmacy business. They very clearly aren't excluding customers from buying anything else in their store. Would it not be much more effective if people stopped filling prescriptions there? Particularly people without insurance, for whom their prescriptions bring in a lot more profit than the rest of their shopping cart put together?
Wouldn't it be much more effective for a bunch of people to bring their prescriptions to the Target pharmacies, occupy the pharmacists' time getting them filled and billed, and then refuse to pay and walk away from the counter? Doesn't that get the point done more directly? Or are we still assuming that a boycott happens in a vacuum? (Like a bunch of Fox heads aren't going to get wind of this and start buying double of everything at Target just to piss us off)
I think a blanket boycott of Target is a stupid way to solve a problem that is confined to their pharmacy business.
The problem is not confined to their pharmacy business; it's confined to their corporate management. The point is to make Target's bottom line suffer, immediately and tangibly. Their pharmacy business is not a big enough percentage of total revenue to make a noticeable dent.
Diddy, the problem is not confined to their pharmacy business. The decision to let pharmacists refuse to fulfill EC prescriptions surely goes to the top. By your logic, since the problem only concerns EC, the boycott would be even more effective if people still bought other drugs there.
Nobody ever seems to mention this in the context of pharmacists for life, but it seems obviously related.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Unlike most college students nearing graduation, Clarissa Hall isn't worried about finding a job - she's already considering several offers, including some with possible starting salaries of at least $80,000.Hall is benefiting from a nationwide shortage of pharmacists, which has prompted fierce competition between employers for new pharmacy graduates.
...
The shortage of pharmacists, though, is not good for others in the medical field, or their patients, say those who have been watching the shortage worsen over the last decade.
It was fueled by several factors, especially changes in insurance policies and federal regulations of pharmaceuticals, which made drugs available to more people.
Re: 21. ogged is so much quicker and smarter than Weiner. He cuts to the chase with a succinct comment.
By your logic, since the problem only concerns EC, the boycott would be even more effective if people still bought other drugs there.
"You can't deny me EC—I boycott!"
I am the Weiner Beater!
Fine, but won't you at least have the common decency to go into a stall?
She is, in a sense, being forced to carry a pregnancy. Plan B is a contraceptive, and IF taken within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse--the sooner the better--it can PREVENT PREGNANCY.
Yes, and an abortion can quickly end that pregnancy if need be. I get that an early abortion won't shield her from all of the risks and complications of pregnancy, and that it carries a fair bit of risk itself, but she still has the option to end the pregnancy. I guess I still don't see how Hughes can accuse Target of denying "potentially life-saving medication", or how he can say that "the blood will be on Target's hands" if the "unthinkable" happens. How does Plan B save a woman's life?
at least have the common decency
Common is my middle name. I got tired of Unseemly.
38: 37 could only have worked right after 35, meaning that your speed and wit caused me to be too late for the third time this thread. I am a broken man, who will spend the rest of his lonely days crooning over his collection of bunny slippers.
(Tarrou--abortions can be real difficult to get in some locations, and might be considered morally fraught. I think "saving lives" might be a bit hyperbolic, but John is surely right that failure to prescribe EC can mess up a woman's life, and I don't see why you would want to make a huge deal out of it.)
Oh jeez, the blood is not on Target's hands, but they are not treating their women customers as adults and autonomous human beings by refusing to stock an important healthcare product. They are shoving their ideology down our throats.
Warning: Thread hijacking
It is cold and gray here, and they say that snow is on the way. It's a cruel teaser. They say that snow is coming...but it won't hit Boston, choosing instead to go to Northern New England. So, why do they have to freak us out?
All very depressing. I want some sun and warmth. I heard that it was 70 in DC.
Matt—I thought you had a good point, and wanted to come up with a line that would evoke the ridiculousness of refusing to buy only what Target refuses to let you buy; a boycott indistinguishable from just shopping. I failed.
I would be happy to tell you that if you hadn't just ripped my heart out you could come down to sunny warm Lubbock, but in fact it's in the 40s today, though it is sunny--the forecast of "blowing dust" seems not have materialized.
44: No no, you succeeded entirely, it's just that the particular timing of your comment showed me up, since I was trying to create a quick and succinct riposte to bg.
I'm debating with someone right now whether a pregnancy caused when the Plan B window closes amounts to any kind of actionable violation—Rx malpractice or civil rights violation or something. I doubt it, for reasons Tarrou outlines.
40 - I agree that "life-saving" is a little overreaching but "Yes, and an abortion can quickly end that pregnancy if need be." is pretty flippant. There are a lot of communities in this country that have a Target but don't have easy access to an abortion provider. Also, the cost associated with an abortion (considering travel, lost work, the cost of the procedure, an overnight stay in states with a waiting period, etc.) is much higher than the cost of EC, not to mention the psychological difference between preventing and terminating a pregnancy. Perhaps not "life-saving" but "life-altering", definitely.
Mid-70s today and tomorrow in NC, though it's supposed to drop into the 50s after that, with the first (slight) freeze on Thursday night.
It's sunny, warm, and windy here, with little moisture in the air. I just hope there won't be any fires.
The other side of this, of course, is that when the current glut of pharmacy students graduate (there's gotta be a glut, right?) these big companies will immediately throw all these troublesome god-boy pharmacists out on their sanctimonious asses. No company would condone this sort of bad-publicity-causing activities by their small fry employees if they didn't have to, and they won't condone it any longer than they need to. No more than Burger King will continue giving $5,000 signing bonuses in NOLA any longer than they need to.
Weiner, Becks, and bg: I agree completely with all of you. Reading the post on Americablog, I couldn't tell if Hughes was going over the top or if there was some application of Plan B of which I wasn't aware. Again, I'm not at all debating the odiousness of the policy in question.
I am not meant to live in Boston. SAD is bad news, but I can't stand really hot weather either. At least it's not Scotland where it's pitch black at 3 PM.
Iceland in winter sounds intolerable.
Millennia from now, we won't be so worried about the weather.
Is Target required to stock Plan B? In order to meet some sort of professional grade for pharmacies or something?
I'd actually like to experience seasons for once. At least when I was in the Bay Area I'd get lots of fog, but not so much down here. I've been in California too long.
I don't imagine they are required to stock it. I think they want to, because they want to have a reputation as a good pharmacy, and to make money. One should not confuse their deference to their pharmacists with an actual corporate policy not to sell Plan B.
From reading the linked blogpost, I thought Target's policy is not that Plan B won't be stocked, but rather that individual pharmacists will have the option of refusing to fill prescriptions for it (or for any other drug they deemed objectionable) if doing so would go against their personal ethical standards.
I've actually seen the midnight sun before, in Norway. I remember seeing a string of lights on one of the mountainsides sloping down towards the town and thinking that they must use them for night-skiing.
Then it occurred to me that up there night means late November to February.
eb--Even in Sacramento there are seasons. Rain and dry heat.
And I notice them in LA too; I am much too finely calibrated to notice these things. Late summer is too bright, but mid May is perfect.
I think that I would have flunked out of college if I had had to take exams in December. I always slumped into Christmas break, caught up over reading period and by mid-January there was actually some sun, and it wasn't quite as cloudy.
My brain pretty much shuts down in December.
Yeah, I do notice the "seasons", but I've never spent a winter in which there was snow on the ground. (I've seen snow, mind you.) The one semester I spent in DC was quite wet, but with little snow (winter 1998).
I'd actually like to move to the east coast somewhere (possibly DC), but am not sure that it would be the best idea, lacking as I am in contacts over there.
(Having exams after a break would have ruined every winter break for me. I just wouldn't have been able to relax with that hanging over me.)
BG, the weather isn't too bad here right now, but a lot of people don't seem to care for winters here. It's too warm for continuous snow, but too cold for the little snow we get to melt, so we end up with mucky slush until March. It's all entirely too cold for me, but the hardcore winterers don't seem to care for the compromise.
eb--Even in Sacramento there are seasons. Rain and dry heat.
And I notice them in LA too; I am much too finely calibrated to notice these things. Late summer is too bright, but mid May is perfect.
I think that I would have flunked out of college if I had had to take exams in December. I always slumped into Christmas break, caught up over reading period and by mid-January there was actually some sun, and it wasn't quite as cloudy.
My brain pretty much shuts down in December.
"Where will I go for designer toilet plungers?"
Costco?
Tarrou --
You've never known anyone who got kicked out of their parents' house because she got pregnant? Or whose parents/boyfriend/spouse/whatever would have beat the shit out of them had they got pregnant? There are a lot of reasons why getting pregnant can be life-threatening that have nothing to do with reproductive health and there are a lot of reasons why waiting to find out if one is actually pregnant and then getting an abortion is not always an option. However, there is no reason to employ a pharmacist who won't do his or her job.
So yes, if some 19-year-old gets gets pregnant because she couldn't get her emergency contraceptive in time and then her boyfriend breaks her jaw and shoves her down a flight of stairs, some of that blood's on Target's hands.