The pharmacist does not know how the person got AIDS or whether the person is homosexual, does not know how the person got lung cancer, and does not know how the person got a liver disease.
Valid points, I agree, but that doesn’t matter to certain folks (though, I think that if the person coming to get the AIDS medication is a 7 foot tall drag queen, thinking that the person was gay, would not be an unreasonable assumption, and while that doesn’t mean that they contracted HIV from homosexual activity, how many people are going to say, “I wonder if he got it from a blood transfusion?”). Remember Jesse Helms saying that AIDS was caused by sodomy and that if people quit having anal sex, AIDS would vanish? Helms may have finally smelled the coffee, but that doesn’t mean everyone out there has. When Diana Reeve died of lung cancer, the automatic assumption was that she was a smoker (she wasn’t). I’m willing to admit that liver disease can be caused by things other than drinking, but I’ve no idea of what they could be (presumably hepatitis is the prime candidate).
And the pharmacist doesn’t know why the person is getting a morning after pill. Maybe they have a history of ectopic pregnancy and becoming pregnant would be dangerous. Maybe it’s none of their damn business.
And when the law changes on them, such as having obtained their degree in a country and place where abortion was illegal, and then it’s legalized?
When I took my weekend-shift job, I knew it was a weekend-shift job. It had said so directly in the ad I answered. I knew I’d be working saturdays, sundays and regular vacation periods. So I made necessary arrangements, both permanent ones for things like keeping the Shabbath (the priest thought that moving it to Thursday was a great idea) and temporary ones whenever I had a social obligation on a weekend.
When those cashiers took their jobs, they knew it involved handling vaccuum-packaged pork.
The Hallal butcher in my home town’s slaughterhouse does not handle pork, his helpers aren’t Muslim. The position was created specifically because the cops realized that the spate of lamb thefts at the end of Ramadan was probably linked to the growing Muslim population. There had been two openings coming up in the slaughterhouse anyway; after consulting with the Muslims to see what would be required to make the building itself acceptable (very little) and whether a single butcher would be enough (rather than, say, an all-Muslim production line, which would have been much more complicated), one of those openings was earmarked as Hallal. When the Muslims explained that those among them who’d been trained as butchers had no certificates, City Hall said they’d just be examined by a local butcher, for the purely technical aspects. The religious aspects would have to be judged by the Muslims, of course. If a Muslim got hired for a position that was not specifically earmarked “no pork”, he’d be asked beforehand “is this a problem?” If he then went and got religion that would be his problem. He’s agreed to do that task, therefore he has to do it.
ETA: Tuckerfan, yes, hepatitis can cause cirrhosis (sp?). Did so on a friend of my family’s; thirsty years later his widow still runs into people who, after finding out he died at 40, ask “oh my God, so young, how come?” “well, he had real bad cirrhosis and…” “oh! oh that’s so awful, an alcoholic!” She’s about as warlike as a bath sponge, but that gets her into Artemis mode real fast.
5-4-Fighting, Walloon, allow me:
It’s actually not an issue of providing medical care, it’s an issue of conditions of employment, which I think a lot of people don’t understand about physicians.
Most private physicians are either self-employed or members of a group (partnership). Thus, they are free to set the terms of their practice. If a solo practicing gynecologist does not perform elective abortions for whatever reason, it’s his prerogative. If a group of like-minded gynecologists set up a practice in which individual partners can decide whether or not they will perform elective abortions, it’s also their prerogative.
However, in the case of a physician who’s an employee (say, of a health system), he or she isn’t free to dictate the conditions of his/her practice if it conflicts with the employer’s terms. It’s not uncommon, for instance, for new physicians to be hired as employees by an existing partnership (prior to making partner themselves); in such a situation, they’re not in a position to be refusing to perform procedures that that particular practice routinely offers (assuming they wish to remain employed). A nurse practitioner hired by a physician group is in the same situation.
Most pharmacists (if I understand their situation correctly) are employees, and thus should abide by their employer’s requirements—if the employer offers the medication, it’s not the pharmacist’s job to refuse to dispense it*. If a pro-life pharmacist opens his own pharmacy that refuses to stock morning-after pills, that’s his prerogative too.
*Aside from catching ordering screwups like wildly-incorrect dosages, obviously.
Why would an atheist refuse to sell a bible? Would she also refuse to sell a Stephen King novel?
The issue I address was not an employment issue. It was whether a licensed professional should have his license revoked if he refused to perform a service contrary to his deeply held moral beliefs.
One of my former students in college wrote the following in an essay just a few years ago: “People with AIDS deserve to suffer and die because they didn’t have sex with a virgin.”
Sadly, the ignorance is still rampant–and dangerously so.
OK, so let’s further expand on my prior post.
A solo private physician can set the terms of her own practice. Her function is to provide medical care in the capacity that she has chosen, delineated (but not defined) by her specialty. For instance, family medicine used to cover uncomplicated childbirth, but few family doctors deliver babies these days. Choosing whether or not to offer a certain procedure is not considered professional misconduct by the Licensing Board.
A pharmacist is usually an employee, and thus does not set the terms of his own employment. His function is to fill the prescriptions submitted to him by physicians, to warn patients and physicians alike about drug interactions, and to catch dosage errors and the like. I don’t know for a fact, but I’d be surprised if a pattern of wilful disregard of a legitimate physician order was not considered professional misconduct by the licensing board.
Basically, the difference between the cabbies (functionally self employed, rent their cabs and the dispatch services) and the Target cashiers.
If I were surrounded by religious nut cases refusing to ring up various items I think I might refuse to ring up the bible just on general principles.
I can only imagine the chaos reigning in such a store. 
What if the pharmacist does set the terms of his employment? I know a couple of pharmacists who own the drug stores they work in.
In which case they don’t have to stock Plan B if they don’t want to.
The whole idea is just adding the next room in politically correct madhouse that this country is rapidly becoming. I personally don’t give a fat rats’ ass what you, as a service worker think, feel or believe. Those facts impact me not a whit, nor should my thoughts, feelings or beliefs impact you. We exchange services or goods for money, and if you don’t want to sell Schmuck-o Kosher Bacon because you’re a pork-o-phobe, then I’ll go wherever does when I’m in need of some bacon, eggs and morning-after pills after the all-night orgy, I’ll go to whom ever sells them, and you can shove your store and your beliefs up your ass.
Fact is, I’m here to make a purchase from your store, catch a ride in your cab, or get medicine from your pharmacy, and you’re there to take my money. That’s where the nature of our association begins and ends. If I want to take my ostrich in the patchouli-funked, former cop car you call a cab, and you refuse, ok, I get it. But refusing service dogs? Who the fuck? You don’t like how we do things here fuckass, you ain’t gonna make it. Maybe you should’ve stayed whererver it was you were and kept on doing whatever it was you did before you came here or came to your ‘beliefs’.
Speaking completely for myself, I don’t want you in the market. You have every right to be here of course, and I’d defend that right with every fiber of my being, but if you’re letting whatever your religious convictions are get in the way of doing legal, honest business, then you deserve everything you don’t get, and I’ll have a little smile on my heart when you have to shut your bodega down, or turn in that cab, or shutter your pharmacy because you were too damned stupid to participate fully in the market.
And frankly, pharmacists and cab drivers especially provide an essential, necessary service, are already state regulated, and I would support any laws that kept them from discriminating against customers because of THEIR religious beliefs.
Think about it, what if I was a aryan cabbie? Imagine then the outrage won’t you, when I refused to pick up a black man based on my ‘beliefs’…
This goofiness is the same kind of thing, only based on religion and supposed moral superiority instead of race, and it’s actually even a little MORE stupid, if that’s possible.
Pazu, my original post was a little in haste and, in trying to lay out a general framework for how licensing might play a part in all of this, I did not think through to or delineate regarding specializing doctors. I think you did a superb job expanding on scenarios, here and below, where decisions based on personal belief might come into play and be accomodated. Thanks.
Walloon, I’m doing further research into how FDA approval of the morning after pill and formularies apply to the choice of whether an owner of a pharmacy has a right to refuse to stock the pill. Someone may already have a ready answer to this and, if so, please feel free to supply it. In the meantime, I’ll say I have a feeling it’s relevant though.
Sorry to follow up on my own post, but a little digging suggests that my earlier response to Walloon may not be accurate:
This editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that in Massachusetts, at least, the state Board of Pharmacy Regulation requires that pharmacies “stock all ‘commonly prescribed medications’ necessary to ‘meet the needs of the community.’”
Now, assuming other state boards have similar regulations (a big assumption, I’m sure), we’re looking at some pretty vague language about what’s legally required. But it may actually not be as simple as “If you own your own pharmacy, you can stock it with whatever you like.”
It would be terrific if any SDMB pharmacists could add their perspective here!
I just had an image of what would happen if someone put their bacon on the belt and it accidentally got into the groceries of the militant Muslim standing next to them. Not pretty.
Well, OK, I’ll concede your point if you mean it looks like the prescription might be forged, or the customer is trying to get OxyContin and the pharmacist can’t verify the script with doctor, who strangely doesn’t seem to exist on any physician directory anywhere. But that’s different from refusing to sell birth control pills, or whatever, because your pastor or your boss said you had to.
Right, you don’t see the last as a valid reason. But that’s subjective.