University of Minnesota Prof Attacks Pro-Life Pharmacist, Gets Students Involved

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Sep 18, 2008   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

University of Minnesota Prof Attacks Pro-Life Pharmacist, Gets Students Involved

by Paul Nowak
LifeNews.com Staff Writer
September 18, 2008

St. Paul, MN (LifeNews.com) — P.Z. Myers, professor of Biology at the University of Minnesota Morris, turned his sights this week to pro-life pharmacist Mike Koelzer of Kay Pharmaceuticals in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who had stopped selling contraceptives in 2002 due to their abortifacient nature.

Myers instructed his readers to take action against the pro-life pharmacist, by emailing him, boycotting the pharmacy, and picketing and protesting his speaking engagements.

"I think Mike Koelzer is a contemptible, sanctimonious ass, and I hope he goes out of business," said Myers on his blog on Monday. "If Mike Koelzer comes to your town to speak in some demented fundagelical [sic] church, feel free to picket and protest, and feel free to attend and grill him with difficult questions."

Koelzer confirmed that he had received over 400 emails in the 36 hours since Myers’ post, but he remarked that the ‘difficult questions’ Myers wanted his readers to grill him with were nowhere to be found.

"I had to read all of the messages," Koelzer told LifeNews.com. "They were quite boring. None of them offered up any real argument, and they were all demanding I give them their choice while denying my own choice."

"It was like they were following the same script, as if it was their own church or club, using the same boring rhetoric, and the same 5 or 6 words or phrases were repeated often such as ‘sanctimonious,’ ‘fairy in the sky,’ ‘bronze age,’ and ‘crackers,’" added Koelzer.

"I was handed a script of what their arguments were," observed Koelzer. "Attacks with no reasoning or posing of an argument, demanding I do everything and anything they want."

The messages also displayed a lack of understanding and outright attempts at deception.

Several messages assumed that Koelzer charged for his speaking engagements and accused him of trying to generate speaking revenue, and others attacked him by lumping his position with unrelated fundamentalist Christian ideals such as creationism.

Many of the messages were sent by people posting as customers, claiming they had been to the store and received ‘lectures,’ or gave names that were not among the customers of Kay Pharmacy.

"My customers who didn’t like the policy left 6 years ago," said Koelzer.

Some messages, however, threatened violence to the store or Koelzer himself, such as, "Burn[ing] the building to the ground."

Koelzer is president and third-generation owner of Kay Pharmacies.

He stopped selling contraceptives at his pharmacy in 2002 after realizing that they functioned by preventing a fertilized embryo from implanting in the mother’s womb. In addition to his pharmacy business, he gives his testimony at public speaking engagements.

Myers achieved notoriety in July after he pierced a consecrated Eucharistic host and a page of the Quar’an with a rusty nail and photographed both in a trash can with a banana peel.

ACTION: Contact Mr. Myers at [email protected].

Related web sites:
Mike Koelzer’s web site – https://www.prolifepharmacy.com
Pharmacists for Life – https://www.pfli.org

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