THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

In MIchigan today there is an uppity religious pharmacist who believed his invisible sky demon determined who he should dispense medications to and not his employer. In Michigan there is also an uppity unemployed pharmacist.

A Michigan woman said she was denied a medication for her miscarriage by a pharmacist at a supermarket who refused to fill the prescription because of his religious beliefs, then declined to help her obtain the drug elsewhere.

The pharmacist was no longer employed at the supermarket chain, Meijer, a company spokeswoman said Thursday.

The woman, Rachel Peterson, 35, of Ionia, Mich., became pregnant earlier this year, but an ultrasound at the end of June revealed that the fetus no longer had a heartbeat. She and her husband headed to a family member’s home in northern Michigan, more than three hours away, to decompress.

Her doctor prescribed her misoprostol, a drug that would make the miscarriage process happen faster and could help her avoid an invasive surgical procedure.

“It was conveyed to me by my doctor that if things hadn’t progressed in the next couple of days, that I was instructed to start the medication,” Ms. Peterson said. The days came and went, and still nothing.

On July 1, she and her husband were about to leave to pick up the medication at the Meijer pharmacy in Petoskey, Mich., when she said she received a call from the pharmacist, who “stated that as a good Catholic male he could not in good conscience fill this medication.”

Ms. Peterson, who works in a hospital as a cardiovascular sonographer, said she was “baffled.” She has lived in Michigan her entire life, she said, and had never been denied a prescribed medication.

She explained to the pharmacist, whom she identified as Richard Kalkman, that her fetus was no longer viable and that she needed the medication to complete the miscarriage safely.

But “he didn’t believe me,” Ms. Peterson said, and told her that he “couldn’t support an abortion.”

He also refused her requests to speak to another pharmacist or to the manager, she said.

Christina Fecher, a spokeswoman for Meijer, said in a statement that Mr. Kalkman “has not been employed by Meijer since early July 2018.” The statement continued, “While we cannot comment on any pharmacy customer matter, we apologize for any customer experience that does not align with our core values.”

Ms. Fecher said that pharmacists at Meijer who decline to fill a prescription for religious reasons must either arrange for the prescription to be filled by another pharmacist in the store or transfer the prescription to another convenient pharmacy, and any failure to do so “is in violation of our process.”

For any who might object to his firing, consider this. This uppity pill picker refused mediction to complete God's Own Abortion, commonly called a miscarriage. He really should pay more attention to the words of Jesus and not some asshole bishop.