NYT reported As a fourth-generation pharmacist whose drugstore still sits on the courthouse square of his conservative small town downstate, State Senator Frank Watson knew exactly what side to take when Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich ordered pharmacies to fill prescriptions for women wanting the new "morning after" pill, even if it meant putting aside their employees' personal views. "The governor is trying to make a decision that must be left to the pharmacy," said Senator Watson, whose family business, Watson's Drug Store in Greenville, Ill., does not stock the pill. "It's an infringement on a business decision and also on the pharmacist's right of conscience."
Senator Watson, the Republican leader of the Senate, and Governor Blagojevich, a Democrat, are the latest combatants in a growing battle over emergency contraception. In at least 23 states, legislators and other elected officials have passed laws or are considering measures in a debate that has attracted many of the same advocates and prompted much of the same intensity as the fight over abortion. In some states, legislators are pushing laws that would explicitly grant pharmacists the right to refuse to dispense drugs related to contraception or abortion on moral grounds.
We need federal legislation making sure all pharmacists have that right.Others want to require pharmacies to fill any legal prescription for birth control, much like Governor Blagojevich's emergency rule in Illinois, which requires pharmacies that stock the morning-after pill to dispense it without delay. And in some states, there are proposals or newly enacted laws to make the morning-after pill more accessible, by requiring hospitals to offer it to rape victims or allowing certain pharmacists to sell it without a prescription.
TheAnchoress blogged Pharmicists are coming under fire for refusing to fill prescriptions for the “morning after” pill. It is a matter of conscience. While ordinary birth control pills prevent ovulation, the morning after pill prevents implantation of a created embryo and may therefore be considered - literally - an easy abortion.
Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich has ordered that pharmicists must fill the orders regardless of their personal feelings.
This is going to be an issue to watch; it’s going to be big. Once again, we see this insistance that Death trumps all, that what the Culture of Death wants overrides any and all concerns about liberty, freedom of expression and personal conscience.
I agree completelyThis governor would not for a moment insist that a Kosher or Muslim butcher provide pork to anyone who asks. He would not demand that the owner of a vegan restaurant serve up a big old steak because someone wants it. He would not tell a newspaper what it had to print. But he’ll tell a pharmicist what he has to stock and supply.
That is a very good point. I have highlighted it hoping everyone reads it.
The pharmacist should have the right to follow his personal moral standards, just a doctor should not be forced to perform an abortion if he finds it morally wrong.
Chris Mooney blogged I am getting really sick of these stories about self-important pharmacists denying prescriptions for Plan B, especially when they do so based on the allegedly pro-life argument that the drug interferes with implantation of a fertilized egg, and therefore represents a form of abortion.
It is a form of abortionIronically, many of the same people who oppose Plan B on pro-life grounds also believe in divine creation, rather than evolution. But guess what? A lot of things interfere with the implantation of a fertilized egg, not just "artificial" forms of contraception. And if you believe that God designed human bodies, it clearly follows that God designed them to "abort" a vast number of fertilized eggs that fail to implant for "natural" reasons--to say nothing about "naturally" caused miscarriages following implantation.
If God chooses to abort certain eggs, and / or if the system He designed chooses to do it, then that is fine with me. But a pharmacist should not be forced to fill a prescription to do it, if God chooses to let the egg implant.Using the pro-life and anti-evolutionist framework, I don't see how you can possibly reach any other conclusion, which suggests to me that these conservative Christians really ought to stop moralizing.
It is clear you don't understand the pro-life argument
Riggsveda @Corrente blogged First of all, the morning after pill is not abortion.
Yes it is.Second, pharmacists have a duty to patients that, when the patient's welfare is at stake, overrides their personal beliefs.
In the Code of Ethics you referenced is the statement The primary obligation of a pharmacist is to individual patients. However, the obligations of a pharmacist may at times extend beyond the individual to the community and society. In these situations, the pharmacist recognizes the responsibilities that accompany these obligations and acts accordingly., and that is what the pharmacist is doing when he lets his ethics decide what prescriptions to fill, and which ones not to fill.And as the Times notes, this is a two-edged sword, since today's refusal to supply contraception can easily become tomorrow's refusal to provide any number of other crucial medications. All it needs is one queasy pharmacist with objections to homosexuality to refuse to provide HIV drugs.
HIV drugs don't cause homosexuality, and there are hetrosexuals are HIV Positive.I don't know what the overall national reaction is going to be when this whole mess is finally out of the closet, but the Oh-So-Delicate-Sensibilities crowd is ready. They've been on it since day one.... But for the best guffaw, there's this:
"The Massachusetts law would also require hospitals to inform rape victims about the pill, something Catholic hospitals, in particular, object to. Colorado's governor, Bill Owens, a Republican and a Catholic, vetoed such a bill this month, saying in his explanation, "it is one of the central tenets of a free society that individuals and institutions should not be coerced by government to engage in activities that violate their moral or religious beliefs."So explain to me why we send people with conscientious objections to Iraq, please?
That is easy. We have a volunteer armed forces. If a person is a true conscientious objector he should not have joined the armed forces.
2 comments:
Bottom line is you have to look at what happens when the government forces someone to do something. Lets take the moral, ethical, and religious argument away from this. The government in some places is forcing these pharmacists to provide the morning after pill. That means the government is putting a gun to a pharmacists head and says you better do this or else. Whenever the government forces anyone to do something they are doing so from the end of a gun because in the end the right to use force is the only thing that the government has that can impose its will. These pharmacists should be able to stock and sell whatever they want it is a private business.
I completely agree. And doctors should be free to decide whether or not they want to perform abortions. It is bad enough that abortions are legal; no one should be required to participate in any way in performing abortions against their will, and no tax dollars should be spent to enable them, since many taxpayers find abortions morally wrong.
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