Oh, I’d probably can him. But I can think of situations where I might not.
Considerthis: Suppose my pharmacy’s principle source of business is old churchgoing biddies buying their various medications for their various age-related ailments. Further suppose our young pharmacist is a real charmer with these old folks; indeed, many of them ask for him by name, and have indicated they appreciate being served by such a nice, God-fearing biblically-astute young man. And suppose I sell very few birth control products from my pharmacy.
In such a situation, I might keep the pharmacist on – it’d be a good business decision given my particular circumstances. I don’t want to lose those old biddies (at least, not before the Lord takes 'em ).
Which is all I’m really saying. The decision to hire or fire this guy isn’t a choice loaded with moral weight. It ain’t personal – it’s just business.
I have to disagree with you, Revtim, about the slap on the wrist, and side with hajario on firing the guy. I’m putting aside my feelings about the moral/ethical issues, and assessing this purely in economic terms.
This self-appointed arbiter of what Eckerd’s will sell not only refused this bit of business; he’s caused untold numbers of other potential patrons to take their business elsewhere. Anyone in retail management can tell you that some percentage of those lost customers will not come back. Eckerd’s has been subjected to horrible negative publicity, when the company itself did no wrong. (Yes, Lynn, I read your post about the chain; you know what I mean here. ;)) According to the company spokeswoman, Eckerd’s policies are clear and this self-righteous tool violated them, to the company’s clear economic detriment. I’d fire him, and I’d be tempted to fire the other two pharmacists too.
I have to wonder how many other rape victims he’s treated similarly, who decided not to go public about it, but who told those near and dear to them. I wonder how many other such victims and their friends and families have chosen never to take their business there again. I suspect the company officials dealing with this mess are also pondering that.
In the hypothesis you posit, Dewey, yes, the economic argument for retaining him would be stronger. Even there, though, assuming the pharmacy is part of a chain, one would have to consider whether the economic good to one store outweighs the harm to others located in areas where the population is inclined to hold media-grabbing demonstrations and take their business to other, easily available providers. If the hypothetical employer company also had another young, charming, biddy-tickling pharmacist on staff, who could Bible-thump with the best of them but was willing to obey company policy, then the rationale for retaining this guy pretty much falls apart.
This is now the third time I have tried to respond to this thread. If it crashes this time, sorry.
If you are saying that God would never, ever ask you to do something very difficult, no, I can’t guarantee that. We pray “lead us not into temptation”, but sometimes the prayer is not granted.
The trouble is that the logic of both pro-choice and pro-life, if followed to the logical conclusions, leads us into temptation. If the decision whether or not abortion is morally acceptable is really as private and individual as it is supposed to be, then the logic of being “pro-choice” as opposed to pro-abortion means that people are free to choose to say No just as they should be free to say Yes. If it is wrong to decide that someone else cannot have an abortion, then it is wrong to force someone else to participate in performing an abortion. If the “choice” only goes one way, it is no choice at all.
And if you posit the pro-life position, and say that a separate and innocent human life begins at conception, then killing that life because of the misdeeds of the father is also wrong. You are entirely correct, it is horrible suffering to bear the child of a rape. Does it then follow that the child must die? Suppose a person is raped and beaten into a coma. The coma persists thru out the nine months of the pregnancy, and then a child is born. Then the mother comes out of the coma. Does the knowledge that she has conceived a child of a rape mean that now, she has the right to kill the child already born and spare herself suffering?
I would agree that people should be allowed to make up their own minds whether or not abortion is ever a valid moral choice. Thus I would not imprison a woman pregnant by a rape and force her to bear a child. Neither would I interfere with the right of others to decide that abortion is always killing an innocent human life, and therefore not acceptable.
Everyone has the right to decide if abortion is right or wrong for them. Everyone. No one has the right to interfere with that decision by someone else. No one.
The difference, my nitpicking friend, is that I am expressing an opinion about this person’s morality. I have not placed myself in a position of responsibility and trust in which I am imposing that moral code on others against their will, nor would I do so.
But this is just more “the Market” will take care of things bullshit. It is all well and good that this woman can take her business elsewhere, but (as this school of though so often does) it ignores the human suffering associated with the sorting out process. I am sorry, but this world view is entirely too clinical and willing to break far too many eggs to make what amounts to a crappy omelet for me to be ok with it.
See, this is really my favorite hijack of the whole pro-life debate. The way that folks that really are intent on retarding the progress of society and denying choice to others then have the balls to act as if the whole issue is about the choice of an individual to do or not do something. Here you have a person in a position of public trust that is trying to impose his will on others, but it really must be all about me trying to oppress the poor pious soul. What a steaming load of crap.
Funny thing - I thought the whole thread was about the choice of the pharmacist not to fulfill this scrip because it was against his moral code. And the usual suspects raving about how he should be cast into the gutter because he dared to blaspheme against the Holy Goddess Abortion-on-Demand.
But what gets said is what often gets said - people should be free to choose, provided they do as they are told.
Which is why use of the term “pro-choice” is so often hypocritical. You don’t want people to be able to choose; you want to enforce your morality (where abortion is perfectly OK) on others.
“Anti-choice” is an epithet dreamed up by the pro-abortionists. Unfortunately, it applies as often to them as to the other side.
This is just more inflammatory bullshit. The way that you fail to understand what you read and deliberately confuse facts with fiction is appalling. First, emergency contraception is not the same thing as abortion, although you seem to be trying to present it as such. Second, I have never uses anti-choice in this thread or in my life and to be honest I cannot recall seeing that term in this thread. In fact, I went for far as to use the term “Pro-Life” when referencing that political (moral?) stance because it is my understanding that this is the preferred term (hint: referring to people as Pro-Abortionists that worship the Holy Goddess Abortion-on-Demand is not the preferred term for your loyal opposition).
So here is the thing, it is true that the pharmacist should have the right to not do his job. However, I am also free to consider him to be an immoral schmuck for doing so. I might also point out that the word that I learned for those that “choose” to impose their morality on others is coercion. Frankly, viewing someone that does this as somehow being a noble being that is only trying to live as he sees fit is vile.
Let’s try this, it 1960 and there’s a black customer who needs a med. It’s against the chain’s policy to serve him, because they’re not “really” human. In fact it’s against the state’s law. The Pharmacist believes different, makes a “moral” decision and gives him the meds, breaking both store policy and state law.
Remember it is LEGAL not to provide the service and there are places for “colored” to go.
Hero or villain? Fired or not?
Is there a difference, between this 1960’s Pharmacist and the one who refused to provide the MAP who believes that he was saving a life?
Well, sure, and we can easily alter the fact pattern however we wish to support either firing or retaining the employee. The point, again, is that this is simply a business decision, and that a decision to retain the employee is not necessarily irrational or evil. It’s just business.
More nitpicking bullshit, detracting from the underlying truth of the issue. The pharmaceutical industry in one which is heavily regulated by the State. While it may be true that individual pharmacies may be owned by private sector people, what they are allowed to sell and how they are allowed to sell it is not under their control (I could not, for example, decide that I morally believe that more people should take LSD and then open a pharmacy to sell it).
When you are talking about people that are in the business of being caretakers for the health of their fellow humans, that is a position of public trust (although it may not be one that is run by the State directly). This man abused that position, and I fail to see why that is so difficult to grasp.
This would generally be correct, but the news story states that 3 pharmacists refused to fill the script. That said, I can’t imagine any pharmacy outside a hospital in which 3 R. Phs. would be on duty; I imagine she asked a couple of techs if they could do it.
He most certainly IS under an obligation to fill the script because a doctor wrote it. He is also, however, empowered to refuse to fill one because of a contraindication in the patient’s record OR because he believes the patient has or will collect the same prescription at multiple locations. (ie. is an addict). This patient fit neither category.
The veracity of his belief. He may very well believe that contraception is murder, but IMO he’s wrong. He may imagine himself as a hero, but I think he’s just a self-righteous asshole.
I agree with you but that doesn’t really answer the question.
The 1960’s pharmacist shouldn’t have taken a job in the racist drug store. If he did take a job there and decided to make a protest, he should be fired even though his cause is correct.
Think about it this way. Suppose a person is running a legal but immoral drug store. It’s immoral, in your opinion, because it won’t sell to minorities in the 1950s South or it sells contraception today. You decide that you won’t work there and support their immoral selling practices. Eventually, if enough people can be convinced that your cause is a just one, the immoral drug store will start to have problems finding licensed pharmacists to work for them. Furthermore, you can spread the word that the store is immoral and try to get people not to shop there anymore. Maybe the store will have to either change their practices or they’ll have to shut down because no one will shop there any more or the can’t staff the place.
As I see it, the pharmacist of 1960 or the pharmacist of today has two choices. He can quit his job or he can grit his teeth and do the one part of his job that is giving him ethical difficulties. What he shouldn’t do is take money from an employer and not do what he is paid to do. You see, that is immoral too.
It isn’t “nitpicky,” it’s an important and valid distinction.
Just because a business is subject to regulation of some kind doesn’t mean the owners of that business hold a position of public trust.
If that were the case, virtually every business owner would be in a position of “public trust.” Restaurants, for example, are subject to extensive health regulations. Publicly-traded corporations are subject to a variety of securities laws. Tobacco companies are forced by the state to place warnings on their products. Hair stylists are subject to licensing and regulation. And so on and so forth.
Actually, I thought of that angle, and here’s why I didn’t make that argument: I can conceive of a situation where it would be moral to disobey your employer. Imagine you are a doctor working for a whites-only hospital; a black man is brought in with life-threatening injuries, and you know he could die if not treated right away. So you go against the policy of the hospital and treat him. Are you wrong for taking that job in the first place? Well, let’s further imagine that your town is fully segregated, and there are no integrated hospitals (I think it’s conceivable that such a situation might have existed). So you have 4 choices: 1) Work for a whites-only hospital, and tacitly support segregation, 2) work for a blacks-only hospital, also tactily supporting segregation, 3) don’t be a doctor at all, or 4) work for the whites-only hospital, but protest the system by treating black patients. I think one could make the case for #4 being the most moral course of action.
I believe it’s conceivable that one might be morally justified in disobeying his employer; but not in this particular instance.
Dewey, It may be that we are coming at this issue from different schools of thought. In essence, I really make no distinction between your definition of a position of public trust (which I gather only applies to folks who are actually employed by the State) and a person with whom society (i.e. “the public”) has entrusted something as important as their health. I get that there is probably a technical distinction, but it sure doesn’t seem like an “important and valid distinction”. At least not to me, as I draw an important distinction between law and morality.
I get that as an attorney, this may not be something that seems important to you but it is a vital difference. I contend that what that pharmacist did was immoral.
Because it is an accurate and explanatory term for those who would deprive others of the right to decide whether abortion is morally acceptable or not. Some anti-choicers are pro-abortion, some anti-choicers are anti-abortion. Both are in favor of forcing others to obey them.
“If someone asks you to help them to abort, you should be forced to assist them” is no different in this context than “If someone asks you to help them to abort, you should be forced to resist them”. In neither case are you offered anything like a choice.
Are you claiming that firing someone from their job if they disagree with you about abortion is not coercion?
You think abortion is fine, the pharmacist disagrees with you. You would like to force the pharmacist to obey your conscience instead of his own.
In what way is this not imposing your morality on others?
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