A right to choose?

Three Massachusetts women are suing Wal-Mart over the company's refusal to sell the "morning-after" pill in its pharmacies.

Now, I go to Wal-Mart quite a bit, and it's not uncommon for me to find that they don't stock a particular product that I need. It may be mildly irritating, but I don't break down in tears and file a lawsuit when it happens. I go somewhere else. That's what most people would do. But, these women and their accomplices are not most people. They stand out from the crowd in their self-centered contempt for those who fail to indulge their every need and desire.

The womens' attorney had the gall to say, "No pharmacy chain can take a political agenda and impose it on the people of Massachusetts." The truth is, of course, that Wal-Mart isn't the one doing the imposing here. It has made a conscious choice - a "business decision" - to stock certain drugs and not to stock others. It does not force anyone to shop at its pharmacies. It doesn't prevent anyone from doing their business elsewhere. The only ones advocating coercion in this dispute are the three women who filed the lawsuit and their friends at Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and Jane Doe, Inc.

This little brouhaha might be funny if it weren't so sad. And if it weren't happening in Massachusetts, where the choice-for-me-but-not-for-thee crowd probably stands a good chance of winning.