Souter has good timing

Thank God that Souter decided to retire now instead of last year, a decision which will doubtlessly save me the time and effort I would have devoted to bitching about a third Bush appointee. Time and effort which would likely rival how much energy I'd expend firing off letters to my senators. Although, to be fair, NARAL and Planned Parenthood often provide these template letters that are a total snap to use. Fill in the blanks and hit send. I had to write my own letters about the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Employee Free Choice Act, though. Guess what my position is on those.

I can only speculate about what the Senate Republicans might do to jack up Obama's SCOTUS nominee. Logically, he'll pick a woman and there's a strong chance she'll be a woman of color. Those two things alone are frequently enough to send a fair number of white male Republicans into convulsions, but in combination, I expect we're in for a bumpy confirmation process.

Remember Harriet Miers? From day one I thought she was a fake nominee who would flunk the test and then Bush was off the hook with appointing a woman, thus he could present his real nominee. I was right. Enter Samuel Alito, a white male conservative. But he was Italian, and that's kind of like being a woman or an ethnic minority, right? Right? Bush was able to keep inflicting paternalistic douchebags on America and pretend he was being cool about it. Everyone wins.

Presumably we won't have to endure this kind of horseshit now because an Obama nominee won't be some pompous blowhard who secretly hates women. Which I appreciate, because I sense that we're reaching a really critical phase in the neverending argument over whether women should have bodily autonomy (that is my phrasing, most religious conservatives will summarize with some vague and stupid statement about the value of human life). It's always a thorny discussion of science and fairness versus the superstitious patriarchy, but now that women are evidently (a) not smart enough to understand what abortion means, (b) not really smart enough to understand much of anything while pregnant and (c) not smart enough to decide when and how they wish to become pregnant; it's really become quite a concern.

The Missouri legislature just passed a law, HB 226, which lets pharmacists fill prescriptions according to their individual consciences. For those of you who haven't given much thought to laws like this, they pretty much absolve the pharmacist of any responsibility toward a patient seeking medication with written directions from a licensed physician, with whom they have discussed their condition and agreed upon a treatment plan. All of this is unimportant if the pharmacist has a moral objection to the medication they have to take, but let's be honest and just admit that this really means that pharmacists don't have to fill birth control prescriptions or sell someone Plan B if they don't feel like it or because their pastor told them it caused abortion. This is idiotic because for the most part, pastors don't moonlight as licensed medical practitioners. I wouldn't let a minister treat me for a heart condition. Well, he's probably got about the same amount of gynecology training, so that's out too.

Now, I'm an atheist and don't give a rat's ass how evangelical Christians think I should live my life, ergo their objections to my use of hormonal birth control doesn't mean a goddamn thing to me. I take birth control pills for a few reasons, and none of them are any of my pharmacist's business. But more to the point, if a pharmacist is going to use their occupation as a platform for grandstanding about how women shouldn't take FDA-approved medications under a doctor's care, then perhaps he or she should reconsider their career choice.