I will likely be discussing this on Monday morning on AM1310 News in Ottawa. Yet to be confirmed. They’d like someone from Planned Parenthood and/or the Radical Handmaids on. I would like that too.
“This” is a story about how three Ottawa family docs, one of whom I know personally, do not prescribe the birth control pill. They tell their patients this up front, in a letter. The Ottawa Citizen article linked to above strongly implies this is anti-woman and anti-science. But is it?
Here’s some stuff I’ve written:
About the Pill and other side effects
About the Pill and hypocrisy in Pink Ribbon campaigns
Finally, when we did a “roundtable” about the Pill with the PWPL team, here’s what we got. This included non-religious folks and people of different faiths.
Those are my views, passionately and publicly held, on the Pill. My points that I would like to see addressed are that a) the Pill has negative health repercussions that women are not told b) big Pharma has a vested interest in ensuring we are not told said negative effects and c) there are other, more female friendly ways of doing birth control, again, that we are not told.
I believe there ought to be a lot of common ground with those who are concerned about women’s rights being eroded here. Let the discussion begin.
by 
Dear Andrea — excellent response, in today’s Ottawa Citizen, to the clearly biased article about the 3 doctors. But, it is disheartening to hear and read the ideological responses spouted by the enemies of conscience. I was especially disturbed by Ottawa’s Medical Officer of Health; reading between the lines of his letter, it is clear that his default position is abortion whenever a teenager gets pregnant. And, I suspect that the bottom line in monetary — abort the child and the state can walk away without supporting the mother and child. The good news, however, is that people will learn (possibly to their horror) that some doctors are actually practising medicine according to their conscience.
To force people to do something they believe to be wrong is always an assault on their personal dignity and essential humanity, and it always has negative implications for society. It is a policy fundamentally opposed to civic friendship, which grounds and sustains political community and provides the strongest motive for justice. It is inconsistent with the best traditions and aspirations of liberal democracy, since it instills attitudes more suited to totalitarian regimes than to the demands of responsible freedom. Even the strict approach taken to limiting other fundamental rights and freedoms is not sufficiently refined to be safely applied to limit freedom of conscience in its preservative form. Like the use of potentially deadly force, if the restriction of preservative freedom of conscience can be justified at all, it will only be as a last resort and only in the most exceptional circumstances.
That a young woman had to drive around the block to fill a birth control prescription does not meet this standard.
http://www.consciencelaws.org/background/procedures/birth002.aspx