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Health

Rite Aid Pharmacy Refuses To Sell Emergency Contraception To New Jersey Man

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on May 31, 2012 at 6:45 pm

The ACLU is demanding that Rite Aid stop allegedly discriminating against men when selling emergency contraception after the pharmacy refused to sell Plan B to a New Jersey man.

Even though FDA guidelines approved over-the-counter sales of Plan B to anyone 17 or older, Andrew Andrade said staff at the Jersey City Rite Aid would not sell it to him because Andrade is a man:

“I was thinking if this guy doesn’t sell me this pill then I’m going to have a bigger problem than I already have,” said Andrade.

Andrade says he desperately needed emergency contraception and his girlfriend couldn’t pick it up because she was at work. [...]

“I was a little upset. I said let me speak to the manager. Maybe the manager knows a little bit more about this. They introduced me to the pharmacy manager and he said I cannot sell the pill to you because I was a male,” he said.

Andrade eventually bought the morning-after pill at another pharmacy down the street, and he alerted the ACLU of New Jersey about Rite Aid’s refusal. The state ACLU sent a letter to Rite Aid’s corporate headquarters asking it to “instruct its employees on the law, provide the ACLU with a copy of its guidelines, and apologize to Andrade.”

Rite Aid spokeswoman Ashley Flower said the company’s policy is to provide emergency contraception to any man or woman who asks for it as long as they have a valid ID showing they’re at least 17.

But this is not the first time a pharmacy has refused to sell emergency contraception to a man. A CVS in Texas refused to sell to a man in January and suggested he was a rapist for needing it. Pharmacists at Walgreens have also refused to sell to men, most recently in Georgia and Alabama. And after pharmacists had failed to fill birth control prescriptions and requests the morning-after pill, Walmart instituted a storewide policy requiring pharmacies to provide these medications.

Related Posts

NEWS FLASH

New Jersey Assembly Committee Advances Marijuana Decriminalization Bill | On Monday, the New Jersey Assembly Judiciary Committee unanimously voted to send a bill that would decriminalize the possession of up to a half ounce of marijuana to the full chamber. The bill now goes before the full Assembly, where there are currently 18 co-sponsors of the bill. If the new law is implemented, first-time violators will be charged with civil offenses with punishments of up to $500 rather than jail time. Governor Chris Christie, who has publicly stated his preference for mandatory treatment programs rather than incarceration for non-violent drug offenders, has yet to take a position on decriminalization efforts.

NEWS FLASH

POLL: Marriage Equality Support Remains Strong In New Jersey | A new Quinnipieac poll finds that 53 percent of New Jersey voters would support a marriage equality law with 52 percent opposed. Though support dipped when respondents were giving the additional choice of civil unions — which New Jersey already has — 48 percent still supported marriage equality compared to a combined 47 percent who support civil unions or nothing. A strong majority of 67 percent still welcomes the opportunity to vote on same-sex marriage at the ballot, but support for Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) veto of marriage equality legislation declined from 48 percent to 44 percent since March. Reactions to President Obama’s support for marriage equality were split, with Republicans and older voters becoming less likely to vote for him and Democrats and younger voters becoming more likely to vote for him.

Economy

Gov. Christie Vastly Exaggerated Costs To Justify Scuttling Important Infrastructure Project

By Pat Garofalo on Apr 10, 2012 at 10:45 am

In late 2010, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) scuttled a proposed tunnel beneath the Hudson River, saying that the desperately needed infrastructure project would be too expensive for New Jersey. “It’s a dollars and cents issue,” Christie said at the time, claiming that New Jersey would have to pay a disproportionate amount of the project’s costs.

However, a new report from the Government Accountability Office shows that Christie vastly exaggerated how much of the project would be paid for by New Jersey:

The report by the Government Accountability Office, to be released this week, found that while Mr. Christie said that state transportation officials had revised cost estimates for the tunnel to at least $11 billion and potentially more than $14 billion, the range of estimates had in fact remained unchanged in the two years before he announced in 2010 that he was shutting down the project. And state transportation officials, the report says, had said the cost would be no more than $10 billion.

Mr. Christie also misstated New Jersey’s share of the costs: he said the state would pay 70 percent of the project; the report found that New Jersey was paying 14.4 percent. And while the governor said that an agreement with the federal government would require the state to pay all cost overruns, the report found that there was no final agreement, and that the federal government had made several offers to share those costs.

After canceling the project, Christie steered money earmarked for the tunnel into the Garden State’s transportation trust fund, rather than fixing the fund’s obviously broken revenue stream (which might have included raising the gasoline tax). “[The tunnel] was critical to the future of New Jersey’s economy and it took years to plan, but Gov. Christie wiped it out with a campaign of public deception,” said Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) in a statement. “The future of New Jersey’s commuters was sacrificed for the short term political needs of the Governor.”

At the moment, both Amtrak and New Jersey transit trains share a pair of 100 year old tracks under the Hudson River, which are operating at capacity. Demand for mass transit between New York and New Jersey is expected to increase by nearly 40 percent by 2030. But instead of financing this important project, Christie used it for his political advantage, and then turned around to throw money at a boondoggle of a mall project.

Economy

Gov. Christie Hands Out Record Amount Of Corporate Tax Giveaways, Gets Few Jobs In Return

By Pat Garofalo on Apr 5, 2012 at 5:40 pm

Back in November, we noted that New Jersey was foolishly set to give the food company Goya $80 million to create just nine (nine!) jobs. But according to the New York Times, this is just par for the course for New Jersey Gov/ Chris Christie (R), who has already approved a record number of corporate tax subsidies:

Since taking office in 2010, Gov. Chris Christie has approved a record $1.57 billion in state tax breaks for dozens of New Jersey’s largest companies after they pledged to add jobs…The critics pointed out that even when the promised jobs have not materialized, the Christie administration has merely reduced, not withdrawn, the subsidies. And they say that the administration is mortgaging the state’s future by forgiving so much tax revenue for the next 10 to 15 years.

One program Christie has run doled out $900 million in tax credits. The companies receiving that largesse “have promised to add 2,364 jobs, or $387,537 in tax credits per job, over the next decade.” In one instance, Campbell Soup was given $42 million to create jobs in Camden. When the company proceeded to cut 100 jobs, Christie merely slapped it on the wrist, reducing its tax credit to $34 million, with the stipulation that the company add five jobs per year over a decade after it regains its previous employment total. For those keeping score, that’s $34 million for 50 jobs.

As the Economic Policy Institute and the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center found, “a growing body of research suggests that state and local tax cuts and incentives cannot create jobs in a cost-effective manner.” Citizens for Tax Justice calls corporate tax incentives and business exemptions “deeply flawed as policy.”

NEWS FLASH

Dharun Ravi Convicted Of Hate Crime For Spying On Tyler Clementi | A New Jersey jury has convicted ex-Rutgers student Dharun Ravi of a hate crime for spying on his gay roommate Tyler Clementi, who later committed suicide. Ravi was also found guilty of invasion of privacy and witness tampering, though he was acquitted of charges against Clementi’s date. He faces charges of up to ten years in prison and possible deportation to India. Steven Goldstein of Garden State Equality said “this verdict sends the important message that a ‘kids will be kids’ defense is no excuse to bully another student.”

NEWS FLASH

New Jersey Funds Anti-Bullying Legislation With $1 Million In Grants | New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) announced yesterday that the state will provide $1 million in grants to help implement the new anti-bullying law passed last year. The law, a response to the suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, is the most comprehensive anti-bullying provision in any state, but was deemed unconstitutional in January because the state had not provided funding for its implementation. These new grants seek to rectify that concern, and in addition, Christie said he will form a seven-member task force to review the law and assist in its implementation. Watch his announcement:

NEWS FLASH

Marriage Equality Could Pump $119M Into NJ Economy | A new study from the Williams Institute finds that New Jersey could generate as much as $119 million in just the first three years of marriage equality, including as much as $8 million in pure tax revenue. By vetoing the legislation, Gov. Chris Christie (R) deprived his entire state of that economic benefit, but the legislature has until the end of 2013 to overturn that veto.

LGBT

Chris Christie: Marriage Equality Is Not About ‘Gay Rights’

By Igor Volsky on Mar 2, 2012 at 8:41 am

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) told a student at a Fort Lee high school this morning that “gay marriage” is not about extending rights to gay and lesbian Americans and insisted that it would “change the way we’ve governed our society”:

Q: His, chris christie, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Recently you passed an anti-bullying law, which I really am appreciative for, because bullying should not be allowed in the state of New Jersey, so i really thank you for that. However, one of the main reasons why kids even do get bullied in school is whether or not they’re homosexual. And recently there has been a bill to allow gay rights in the state of New Jersey. Can you tell me what was your decision to veto the bill, because I heard that you had vetoed the bill.

CHRISTIE: I did veto a bill on gay marriage, not on gay rights. And gay rights are protected and protected aggressively in New Jersey. But listen, this is something I feel strongly about. I think marriage is between one man and one woman, but I also know that people have very different opinions about that in our state. So what I’ve said to folks after vetoing the bill, let’s put it on the ballot. If a majority of people in New Jersey want to have same-sex marriage, then vote for it and I’ll be governed by it. But I don’t think that’s a decision that should be made by 121 people in Trenton alone. It’s a major change in the way we’ve governed our society.

Watch it:

Since Christie vetoed the measure, support for marriage equality has increased in the state. Fifty-seven percent of residents siad they would approve of a same-sex marriage law, but 67 percent supported Christie’s idea to decide the issue through a referendum.

Security

Christie Slams NYPD’s Muslim Surveillance In Jersey: ‘I Don’t Know If It Was Born Out Of Arrogance Or Paranoia’

By Ali Gharib on Mar 1, 2012 at 1:45 pm

New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie escalated a cross-Hudson war of words with New York City last night, complaining on a radio show about allegations that the New York Police Department (NYPD) went outside its jurisdiction to spy on Muslims in Newark, Rutgers University, and possibly other locations. He said he didn’t know if the NYPD’s actions were “born out of arrogance or paranoia.”

The Associated Press has issued a series of reports on NYPD’s secret surveillance of Muslims in New York and outside the state. In response, a coalition of New Jersey Muslim groups wrote to Christie to ask for a full investigation of the allegations. The New Jersey attorney general began an investigation and, at a previous town hall meeting, deferred judgement on civil liberties issues to the outcome of the inquiry.

But spending eight minutes of his Wednesday “Ask the Governor” radio show on the matter, Christie escalated his complaints about the NYPD’s conduct on the basis of jurisdictional issues. “My concern is this kind of obsession that the NYPD seems to have that they’re the masters of the universe,” he said, noting that he did not recall being informed of the spying at the time, when he was a federal prosecutor in the state. He went on to speculate about what caused the lapse in coordination:

CHRISTIE: I don’t know if it was born out of ignorance or paranoia.

HOST: But you think lives could have been at risk, because they refuse to share or be forthcoming.

CHRISTIE: They always can be. In terms of law enforcement lives when you got people stumbling over each other who are surveilling the same people. Also, because we know… that the basis of criticism after 9/11 was the refusal of rival law enforcement agencies to share information with each other.

Watch a clip of the Christie interview:

Christie also had harsh words for NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who, like New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, has refused to apologize for the surveillance or its scope outside New York. The host of “Ask the Governor” noted that Kelly had not apologized, prompting Christie to reply: “Of course! Because he’s Ray Kelly! What are you going to do? He’s all knowing, all seeing.” Kelly came under fire last month for appearing in a film by an Islamophobic group called the Clarion Fund, and, after dissembling about his role, apologized.

Yesterday, the U.S. Attorney Eric Holder said the Justice Department was reviewing the NYPD surveillance to determine if there were civil rights violations.

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