Who’s going to be more un-happy, a rape victim with an unwanted pregnancy or a pharmacist with hurt feelings?
A doctor is different from a pharmacist. A pharmacist is more akin to a common carrier - has to serve whoever shows up at the door. However, as someone upthread pointed out, a surgeon is a specialist. No one walks up to a surgeon and says, “give me an abortion.” They go to an abortion clinic to do that. And I don’t think the abortion clinic would stay in business too long if it hired doctors who refused to do abortions!
Again, the fact that pharmacists are licensed by the state makes all the difference. This puts them in the role of having to follow the rules.
Church and State have everything to do with it, and no cites are necessary. It has nothing to do with the pharmacy not being federally owned. It has to do with the pharmacist receiving his license from the state. However, this goes right back to the question of can Walmart not carry a drug it doesn’t want to. I don’t know.
It’s late, and gee ma, I wanna go home! The turkey is a-callin’!
Thankfully, most laws and government decisions aren’t made on such tenuous and subjective criteria as “Who’s going to be more un-happy.”
Cite?
Cite that it makes a difference, and the rules force them to do what you’re claiming.
And you were doing so well, too. This is the Great Debates forum on the Straight Dope Message Board. If you make assertions of fact such as the above in this forum on this board, you should be prepared to back them up with FACTUAL evidence. That is the way this forum works.
I think legally and morally, the pharmacist can not and should not be forced to dispense something he disagrees with. I also think that pharmacists should retain the ability to refuse to dispense medications, as I’m sure they’ve saved lives in the past, through spotting interactions, etc.
However, if you choose not to carry out a portion of your job, due to your beliefs, you should find another job. Pursue lab work, or non-dispensing/non-customer service work, or consider a new career. It just seems stupid to want a job, but refuse certain aspects of it.
I also hope it’s perfectly legal to fire a pharmacist for not carrying out all duties of his/her job. The pharmacist shouldn’t be forced to dispense the medication, but the employer shouldn’t be forced to continue to employee someone not willing to carry out all duties. And I hope there is enough public opinion against this pharmacy, that it becomes standard for employers to insist dispensing all products is a condition of employment (excepting medical interactions, of course), and this never happens again, since those who aren’t comfortable dispensing these medications seek alternate employment.
Actually, I think your example did fit. But everyone seems to be getting it wrong.
The original example:
Jewish cashier refuses (on religious grounds) to ring up a gentile customer’s purchase of bacon.
Catholic pharmacist refuses (on religios grounds) to dispense legal birth control drug.
Seems reasonably close to me.
I don’t know about birth control pills, but yes, Wal-Mart sells condoms.
Generally to Everyone:
What if the woman wasn’t Catholic? Or even Christian? Why refuse her the medicine?
Is Loyd’s a chain? Or a sole proprietorship?
In any case, if the pharmacy stocks the drug the lady wanted, what Earthly economic incentive would they have for refusing to sell it to a legitimate customer? If they’re against abortions or any form of birth control why stock a morning after pill in the first place?
Is there something going on here with British medical laws/public health policies WRT pharmacies that we Yanks are missing?
Except it’s not. As Fear Itself pointed out on the first page, Jewish people don’t care what Gentiles eat. Catholicsism, as far as I’m aware, teaches that birth control is morally wrong for everyone. See the difference?
Who said there was an economic incentive? It’s a moral issue, not an economic one. Lots of women have an economic incentive to move to Nevada and become prostitutes, but they don’t, to use one extreme example.
Fine, then just change the Gentile customer to a Reform Jew and try the analogy again!
So far this has just been a discussion about an English pharmacy.
There is an Eckerd Pharmacy on Mill Avenue in Brooklyn with the following sign (well, at least this sign was up in late September):
“The pharmacist on duty will not dispense the Morning After Pill. We are required to state this before you present any prescriptions”.
I was quite concerned about this, and called 1-800-ECKERD. Since they’ve been sold, customer service has been practically non-existant. After being fwd quite a few times, I was told that although it is Eckerd policy to dispense all legal medications, it is also within a pharmacist’s rights to refuse any prescription because of “moral concerns”.
The other Eckerd near me does not have this sign.
First, your were comparing a pharmacist to a soldier, and now you’re stating on how “different” a doctor and pharmacist is. Your logic is shaky at best.
BTW-My wife had a tubal pregnancy removed by a surgeon at a hospital, not a clinic. The doctor agreed to do the surgery, but we did not force him to do so.
Just like a doctor. They are merely licensed to use their skills legally, not enslaved.
No points awarded for citelessness. You do not know what you are talking about, and can’t even back it up. As an owner of a private business that contracts with a state government, I know what constitutes “Separation of Church and State”, discrimination, and my right to refuse service to anyone. Twelve years without legal action in any of these 3 categories.
Walmart doesn’t have to have for sale every legal drug known to mankind. It sells whatever it wants to sell thats legal to sell. What the hell is so hard about understanding that? You want to make them sell porno mags too?
My take:
If he does want to sell it, that’s his call, and its fine.
If management wants to fire him for not selling what they want to stock and sell, that should be their call. If they don’t, that’s fine too.
If the people who liscence pharmacists want to revoke liscences of people who believe that the pill causes abortions, or won’t give it, that’s fine.
More complex issues:
-
The pill is not only used for birth control, but also any number of hormonal therapy needs.
-
Currently, pro-life groups all over the US are trying to pass conscience laws that prevent people from being fired if the reason they won’t do their job. Instead of snarking about choice without actually stating much of a position, I’d like to know if Shodan has a position on this move to severely limit business choices.
-
Some have argued that its a moral imperative to have access to the pill, and if the only pharmacy in town refuses to dispense it: that it is somehow a moral obligation for them to do so because anything less is too heavy a burden. But if giving women access to the pill is a moral obligation, then it cannot fall only on the pharmacist. It has to fall on everyone. So the question becomes: if you think a particular women must have easier access to the pill, what have YOU done to make it happen? And why should the pharmacist share any heavier share of the burden of not providing it than you do?
Let me provide you with a cite, jgroub. Just look at the second FAQ for an answer. This is a California governmental website, but last time I checked, California was still in the U.S.
Emergency Contraceptive Info that is relative to this thread for the sake of knowledge.
People, this is not all that uncommon, to refuse to fill a scrip.
I just had a long talk with my old man about this. He is the director of the impatient pharmacies for a large local hospital. He hires and fires the pharmacists there and he currently oversees about 35 employees.
The summary of the conversation;
He chooses not to stock birth control in his pharmacy, including RU486. In the other outpatient pharmacy they are allowed to stock both but no single pharmacists are required to dispense these drugs if they have a moral objection to it. He makes sure that there is always a pharmacist on duty that will, however. He can’t make a pharmacist dispense a drug. He is also aware that someone may have a moral objection to certain practices and brings it up in the initial job interview.
So, anyone claiming that there is any cut-and-dried solution is just wrong. In the end it is up to the person in charge of the pharmacy to either hire the right people and/or stock the right drugs. If a pharmacy wants to elude such a situation they will simply avoid the drug. If they want to sell the drug then they need to hire accordingly.
In industries that provide essential goods and services, it’s fairly normal for the state to heavily regulate what they can and can’t do, as, even though these companies might be privately owned, the general public has a strong interest in what they do. I would presume that the pharmacutical industry falls under this category. We could, instead of forcing the pharmacutical industry to do things that will insure their goods a services are available, start a parrallel state run string of drug stores which provides these services, but really no one wants this as it increases the size of gov’t, is really inefficent and gives the private pharmacies a state subsidized competitior, etc.
So the obvious answer is to just make sure that the existing drugstores don’t erratically refuse to provide thier services or do other things which may make it difficult for people to get medications. It’s better for the drug stores, better for the public and far less of a pain in the butt for the consumer.
Uncommon Sense, are their any other class of drugs for which these problems exist. Again, I can’t imagine that the only pharmacy in town could decide to not give someone insulin one day.
A pharmacist is generally in the business to save lives and help others. Insulin is not something that is generally considered a morally conflicting drug. To refuse to fill a scrip for insulin if the issue was not discussed previously with the operator of the pharmacy would likely lead to some ugly consequences for the pharmacist.
Like I said, they are in the business to help. Failing to fill an insulin scrip would fall out of that catagory. Failing to fill an RU486 scrip would not, in most cirumstances.
He also said that he has heard of pharmacists making judgement calls for apparently legal refills of narcotics. If the pharmacist feels that the patient is an abuser he/she may seek a second opinion or a doctor consult before filling the scrip.
No, I am afraid the analogy still doesn’t work. We have a volunteer army, just as pharmacists volunteer to fulfill their role. It still doesn’t excuse them from exercising their moral judgement.
No doubt a soldier has to carry out a valid order. The question is, what orders are valid? Killing Jews in WWII was legal, certainly, and German society and the Nazi military believed that it was also moral. But that did not excuse any individual from the duty, or remove from him the right, to exercise his judgement and refuse to obey immoral orders. And the decision not to follow such orders was affirmed in the Nuremberg trials.
Same thing here. The pharmacist does not get the excuse that the wishes of others overrules his “right to choose”. He is still morally responsible for his choices.
I suppose it would depend largely on the wording of the law. I can see something analogous to “conscientious objector” status in matters like this. Such an available status does not seem to have severely limited the choices of people to join the military.
It could also be analogized to not being able to fire Orthodox Jews who refuse to work on the Sabbath. I believe there can be “reasonable accomodations” made to allow people to obey their consciences. And I used to work for a system of hospitals, one of which was run by Roman Catholic nuns and refused to perform abortions or sterilizations. We managed to work around it so that nobody was forced to do something they thought was wrong. And nobody got fired for it. We couldn’t, the nuns owned the place. 
Regards,
Shodan
I really hate to burst your bubble, but…
Yeah, and then get sued for religious discrimination.
What I want to know is, why would a strict Catholic even want to work as a pharmacist, knowing they’re going to have to dispense birth control at some point during their lives? That’s like an anti-abortion person getting a job as an abortionist, or an Orthodox Jew working as a bacon taste-tester. If you can’t do the whole job, for whatever reason, it’s stupid to train for it in the first place. There’s a million jobs out there that don’t require handling birth control. Pharmacist is basically the only one that does require it.
I think that if they’re going to refuse to hand out certain meds, the law should state that there always has to be a second pharmacist on hand during their shift, and the pharmacist in question should have to wear a big sign on their chest stating they don’t deal with birth control, and that they should ask the other pharmacist about it. Seems fair to me–anti-birth control guy gets to work and women aren’t inconvenienced. Of course, I don’t think many pharmacies would be willing to hire two pharmacists to fill what’s basically the same position.