“Hey, Maria, you should try driving to Yakima sometime.”
This is a woman’s world
Don’t forget anniversary of our state’s passage of equal-rights legislation
Editor, The Times:
This month marks the 35th anniversary of the passage of our Washington state Equal Rights Amendment. I just donated to the Museum of History & Industry the mannequin I renamed “The Woman Can” and which sat in the ERA headquarters in Seattle all during the ERA campaign. She represents the years of struggle women have been through - first just to get the vote, and then years in trying to gain equal rights under our U.S. Constitution.
When lack of support blocked passage of the ERA, 20 states passed their own form of an ERA. Just think, there are still 30 states that do not have an ERA. Glad that I live in Washington state.
- Georgie Bright Kunkel, SeattleNo help with the children
In response to “Judge: Druggists may withhold ‘morning-after’ pill” [Times page one, Nov. 9], I have to wonder just how much power pharmacists are entitled to.
If pharmacists are given the option to decline to fill one drug based on personal, ethical beliefs, where does it stop? Can they then choose not to fill, say, the birth-control pill for an unmarried woman? Or for a teenage girl because they feel ethically she is too young to be sexually active?
Pharmacists are being shortsighted in believing there are not reasons why a woman might need the “morning-after” pill.
The job of a pharmacist is to receive prescriptions and fill them, not to pass ethical judgment on their customers.
- Dana Miller, EverettDisrespect is bad karma
While I neither agree nor disagree with the right of an individual to use the “morning-after” pill, I do have questions about repercussions and equal-rights questions that it will inevitably open.
How can the judge rule anyone has the right to question or not obey a doctor’s order simply on belief? And which medication is next to fall to this logic? Will the judge mandate my prescription coverage be accepted at another pharmacy that does not currently accept it because of the objections of my own pharmacist?
What is the precedent in my aerospace company for an employee who decides they’ll build aircraft parts but not for military aircraft, even though they are common parts, because he/she is against war? Will I have the right to tell that person that if they cannot support my ability to make money, I don’t need them, based solely on this belief?
It would seem that if a pharmacist has objections to any facet of the pharmaceutical industry, they might be in the wrong profession.
Judge, don’t tell me I can’t see the Ten Commandments at City Hall or pray in schools and then turn around and make me live it at the retail counter.
- Guy Sykes, AuburnAnother man for choice
The headline, “Judge: Druggists may withhold ‘morning-after’ pill,” implies the druggist can choose to whom they want to provide the pill and to “withhold” it from those who don’t fit their qualifications.
What really is happening here is that a druggist in not required to have this pill on hand, to provide it to anyone. Not every druggist, or store, for that matter, carries everything under the sun.
And if I have a personal grudge against a store that doesn’t carry what I want, then I don’t need to shop there at all.
What this headline should have stated is: “Druggists are not required to provide the ‘morning-after’ pill.” Whether it’s against his religion or not, he has the authority to stock his shelves with items of his choice.
If I don’t find what I want at one store, I’m free to shop at another.
- Margaret Starling, LynnwoodWe don’t do directions
Regarding the letter from Janet Suppes [”Put on your big-girl pantsuit,” Northwest Voices, Nov. 6]: I agree with her that presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton was challenged in the last Democratic debate because she is the front-runner and not because she’s a woman.
However, I strongly disagree that all us Democratic women will “buy the cynical campaign that everyone is ‘piling on’ and she deserves your sympathy and your vote.”
All the Democratic women I know are smart and thoughtful women and will be voting for the candidate they feel is most qualified, whatever his/her gender.
Democratic women don’t blindly follow Hillary Clinton (or anyone else), any more than Republican women blindly follow George W. Bush.
- Jean Brunson, MukilteoTa-ta, sisterhood
Regarding “Politics before sisterhood” [page one, Nov. 12], about how our three congresswomen haven’t endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton in the presidential race: I’m surprised The Times is not also running an article about any male representatives or other officials and their support along or against gender lines.
Where’s the “Politics before brotherhood” angle every time a male candidate is running for president?
Or are women supposed to turn off their brains around other women and support them merely because of their gender?
- Erik Knechtel, SeattleYou should go, girl
Sen. Maria Cantwell is conflicted about supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton at this time, because Clinton is not the only Democrat presidential candidate who assisted her in reducing her campaign debt. “My God, he (Bill Richardson) drove to Yakima” for an event.
Apparently, in Maria’s world, “driving to Yakima” is a personal sacrifice second only to donating a kidney to a stranger.
Hey, Maria, you should try driving to Yakima sometime. It is a short drive to a beautiful area of our state. In case you are confused about where Yakima is, Mapquest Washington, D.C. and take a little loop off I-90, just before you reach your final destination.
Sen. Patty Murray’s stated reason for not supporting Hillary is just as compelling. Her new job in the Senate is “counting votes.” Obviously, she is fulfilling an extremely important internship in the Democratic Party - she is in training to supervise the Democrat vote-counting in the next Washington state gubernatorial election.
- Milly Kay Baldwin, Sammamish