The Yeetle Box - "A Wal-Mart pharmacist refused to sell me Plan B and laughed in my face."

I received this letter from a frustrated and forlorned member of NARAL. Read on, brothers and
sisters.

You won't believe what happened to me when I went with my boyfriend to Wal-Mart to buy Plan B - the "morning-after" pill -after our condom broke. We weren't even having sex! The condom broke when my boyfriend, Roy, took it out of the package! I insisted we get the morning after pill. I told Roy, "Better safe than sorry."

The pharmacist laughed in our faces and told us, "We have it on hand, but there's no one here who can dispense it." Then he put his hands up to his ears and, in a taunting manner, said, "Nyah, nyah, nyah..."

My name is Tashina Byrd, and this happened to me at my local Wal-Mart in Springfield, Ohio. (Ohio happens to be a swing state, you know!)

It can be embarrassing to share a private, personal experience like this, but I don't want other women to be subjected to the humiliation and anger I felt when the pharmacist laughed at me. That's why I'm asking for your help today. I recently sent a letter to Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr., urging him to change company policy to guarantee that pharmacies fill requests for Plan B without delay, just like they do for any other over-the-counter medicine. You know, like Tylenol and Vick's Vapor Rub. They give you those things.

Sometimes I think people value coughs and colds more than they do my personal actions.

In the end, I was lucky. I found another pharmacy that stocked Plan B and was willing to sell it to me. (Phew! I really dodged a bullet.) But I lost Roy!

But what would happen to a woman who lives in a rural area - where Wal-Mart is often
the only pharmacy - where the nearest drugstore could be 60 miles away or more? What if the second pharmacy refused, too? What if, heaven forbid, that woman had two broken legs, webbed feet, no driver's license, no phone or electricity or heat, AND she had just been gang-raped by aliens from Pluto?

Access to emergency contraception shouldn't require multiple pharmacy visits.


Sincerely,
Tashina Byrd

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Tashina, I hear you. Here's my letter.

Dear Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr.,

With great sorrow I write this letter on behalf of all the Tashina Byrd's out there.

You should require your pharmacists to dispense the morning after pill upon demand and without hesitation or questions. If you think about it, it's perfectly within your values as a company profits from the misfortunes of others. You make your products and goods in third world countries and hire the most desparate workers at low wages in order to maintain market share.

You're a bad man, Mr. CEO H. Lee Scott, Jr. Give the Tashina's what they want. They are, after all, your employees and your customers.

Sincerely,

The YeetleMaster