Dear Santa: A certain state representative needs some coal in his stocking
By Paul Kix and Patrick Williams
Dallas Observer
It's early, but Buzz wants to make a Christmas wish. No, not for world peace; we're not that ambitious. What we want is to be able to watch more than 30 minutes of television without being subjected to a cheesy ad for some pill that will make a man's penis work better. Oh, and while we're on the subject of dicks, St. Nick, maybe you could also arrange to "accidentally" land your sleigh on state Representative Frank Corte Jr. 's head. Twice. Corte, a San Antonio Republican, is the author of an odious bill that would protect the jobs of pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions on moral grounds. But don't worry, boys, none of this has anything to do with your pecker pills. Nope, Corte's bill is aimed solely at women. It would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for "morning after" pills, a form of contraceptive that women can take up to 72 hours after intercourse. It was prompted in part by one wanton li'l hussy in Denton, who foolishly allowed herself to be raped and then had the gall to take a prescription to an Eckerd pharmacy seeking a morning-after pill. The good upstanding men at the pharmacy refused to fill it and were fired. That was followed by a case in March in which a pharmacist at a CVS drugstore in North Richland Hills refused to fill a woman's regular birth control prescription. Rational people were quite upset by these cases, but rationality has little to do with abortion politics or the Texas Legislature, so instead of getting a bill that would require pharmacists to mind their own damn business, we get a bill so loosely worded that it would allow pharmacists to deny prescriptions for all birth control pills. Corte did not return our phone calls. But Charles Hopson did. Hopson's a pharmacist and a Democratic state representative from Jacksonville who says Corte's open to limiting the bill to morning-after pills, considered a form of abortion by some. Hopson does not, however, support legislation that would, say, force a pharmacist who refuses service to tell the woman where she can get her prescription filled. "Each pharmacy could address that issue without having to pass a law about it," Hopson says. "This bill is not about abortion," says Kathryn Allen, senior vice president for Planned Parenthood of North Texas. "This bill is truly about the control of women."
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