Griffith chemist Trevor Dal Broi and catholic dogma that restricts choice

Trevor Dal Broi's boss and moral compass

Trevor Dal Broi a chemist in Griffith, has stopped stocking condoms and is telling women that are using oral contraceptive pills for birth control to take their scripts elsewhere. He is also banning the sale of emergency contraception morning-after pills from his shop.

Chemists have a social responsibility with the priviledge they hold to be the gateway to legal drugs and the right of women to have control over their bodies, and choice. The morning after pills are available legally without prescription, but Trevor has removed himself as a gateway to accessing these drugs. They are not there to put their judgement on the women that come to them and restrict those womens choice over what they do with their own body.

Unplanned pregnancies and rates of sexually transmitted infections would be so much higher without access to condoms and contraceptives in our communities.

In A Strange Land gives some very relevant information in regard how chemists in Australia are partially government funded via pricing and subsidy rules for medicines, and thus should have a social responsibility to the people they serve. Indeed the businesses are protected as there are strict rules about where new chemists can be located. (Community Pharmacy Agreement PDF – go to p. 22).

25.1. The objectives of the Location Rules are to ensure:
a. all Australians have access to PBS* medicines;
b. a commercially viable and sustainable network of community pharmacies dispensing PBS medicines;
c. improved efficiency through increased competition between pharmacies;
d. improved flexibility to respond to the community need for pharmacy services;
e. increased local access to community pharmacies for persons in rural and remote regions of Australia; and
f. continued development of an effective, efficient and well-distributed community pharmacy network in Australia.

* Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme

In A Strange Land rightly points out that this man is ‘getting in the middle of the relationship between doctor and patient’.

It’s ironic that these are the same people that crow about how their god gives choice, and are the same ones that attempt to take that away from others, specifically women. It’s lack of empathy that comes from the teaching of their scripture as truth and the standard for morals in the catholic patriarchal system. These people honestly think they are doing the right thing taking away others ability to freely choose what they do with their own body.

This man has a position of trust, he has a position that has been given him by the community and in doing so should not be able to abuse that privilege in restricting others choices by pushing his personal religious attitude onto the women that come to him. By all means he doesn’t have to wear a condom, but if he doesn’t want to be a trusted gateway to drugs, he should not be a chemist, and apply for that position of trust in the Australian community.

Shame Trevor Dal Broi, for removing the choice that you claim your ‘higher being’ gave to people, for playing god, for passing your judgment onto these women from your position of power that you claimed from the community and received in good will, injecting your religion upon others.