Pharmacist refuses to fill prescription for abortion pill on moral grounds

[Shirley_Ujest]

This has the potential to become a real fire storm.
I vote for a move to the pit as a preemptive strike.

And my only thought on this tangle was: why wasn’t she given the RX at the hospital or crisis center instead of dealing with the embarrassment involved of getting it filled elsewhere.

[Coldfire]

@don't ask

I’m with SnoopyFan on this - tell the prospective employer what you find morally reprehensible and let them decide whether to employ you or not. Do other Dopers seriously believe the “as an employee you have no right to moral judgements” line? Morality and legality aren’t the same thing. Personally i don’t agree with the pharmacist’s stand but if it’s his moral believe the fact that it is a lawful prescription is meaningless. The right of free speech means you can tell jokes against any segment of society - it doesn’t mean other people have to tolerate it.

I’m sorry, but that’s a text book example of putting the cart before the horse.

The right logic here, of course, is for the employee-to-be to not fucking apply at all if he feels the company at hand sells products or services he or she deems immoral. That’s why you encounter so few fundamentalist Christians working in abortion clinics.

All right, off to the Pit, where this belongs.

[Typo_Negative]

@don't ask

Personally i don’t agree with the pharmacist’s stand but if it’s his moral believe the fact that it is a lawful prescription is meaningless. The right of free speech means you can tell jokes against any segment of society - it doesn’t mean other people have to tolerate it.

I think the Doper’s position is that he should excercise his right to free speech on his own dime, not his employer’s. I’m sure this pharmacy has lost some business over this.

[don_t_ask]

@Coldfire

I’m sorry, but that’s a text book example of putting the cart before the horse.

The right logic here, of course, is for the employee-to-be to not fucking apply at all if he feels the company at hand sells products or services he or she deems immoral. That’s why you encounter so few fundamentalist Christians working in abortion clinics.

All right, off to the Pit, where this belongs.

Which cart before which horse?

The pharmacist may have applied for the job before the industry was selling these products. I don’t know…do you?

[GingerOfTheNorth]

For those of you asking why she didn’t get the pills at a hospital: I work in a hospital pharmacy, and I don’t think I have ever encountered birth control pills on-site. The meds used as emergency bc are exactly what was mentioned above - plain old birth-control pills. Most hospitals keep on hand only what they will use while a patient is admitted, and that doesn’t normally include a month-long cycle of contraception.

Pharmacists are scientists, in the purest sense. I therefore can’t imagine saying ‘Nope, you can’t have this’ due to my beliefs. It would be my JOB to dispense the drug, and I would do it based solely on that.

Honestly, some people have nothing better to do than impose their morality on other people, especially where it isn’t wanted.

[gobear]

What Snoopyfan and her ilk fail to understand is that if the pharmacist doesn’t approve of taking anti-fertilization pills, then he ought not to take them, but, and do pay attention, he does not have the right to make moral choices for others. His job is to dispense medicines, not to act as an arbiter of pharmaceutical ethics. When he refused to fill the prescription, he was presuming to choose for the woman, and he has zero right to do so.

[Coldfire]

@don't ask

The pharmacist may have applied for the job before the industry was selling these products. I don’t know…do you?

I’m not sure. I have to admit that I completely took the availability of the morning-after pill for granted. Since when has this been legally on sale in the US?

I’m assuming a large chain like this didn’t just start carrying a fully legal drug yesterday, so if the answer to my question above is “1965”, then I think we can conclude that the employee is in the wrong here. But you’re right - I’m not entirely sure.

[Shodan]

@GingeroftheNorth

Honestly, some people have nothing better to do than impose their morality on other people, especially where it isn’t wanted.

Exactly.

No one should be allowed to force their moral decisions about abortion on another person. Not your pharmacist, not your employer, not anyone. This is an entirely private decision, and no one should be coerced into doing something they find repugnant, or prevented from doing something if others find it repugnant.

Right? Isn’t that the principle?

Isn’t it?

Regards,
Shodan

[Coldfire]

Wow.

From here:
In the United States, the American Medical Association issued a non-binding recommendation in 2000 that morning-after pills be available over the counter without prescription in the U.S. On December 16, 2003, an advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration recommended that the pill be made available over the counter. [1]

The American retailer Wal-Mart announced in May 1999 that it would not sell morning-after pills in its 2,400 pharmacies; it fills prescriptions for regular birth control pills to be used as emergency contraceptives but does not stock Preven nor Plan B. Many smaller pharmacies in the United States have also followed suit.

Does the Vatican own 80% of Walmart or something?

I had no idea this was an issue of controversy in the US. At least not to this day, and to this extent.

[tdn]

@gobear

What Snoopyfan and her ilk fail to understand is that if the pharmacist doesn’t approve of taking anti-fertilization pills, then he ought not to take them, but, and do pay attention, he does not have the right to make moral choices for others. His job is to dispense medicines, not to act as an arbiter of pharmaceutical ethics. When he refused to fill the prescription, he was presuming to choose for the woman, and he has zero right to do so.

Right enough, but one thing that everyone on this thread has yet to realize – What the fuck kind of moral choice is it to want to force a rape victim to give birth to the child of her rapist? It’s almost as if this fucknut is punishing her for her loose and slutty lifestyle. This is blaming the victim at its worst. For those of you that think the pharmacist was making a moral choice at all (and so far that seems to be everyone in this thread), what the fuck sort of morals are you advocating here? In what possible world is the pharm’s opinion even a moral option?

[Ferret_Herder]

Note that what you quoted was a decision to provide the drug over the counter without a doctor’s prescription, Coldie, and that in the OP, the woman in question had a prescription in hand to purchase the drug.

Nope, the Vatican doesn’t own WalMart; there are plenty of heavily conservative non-Catholic Christian denominations in the US to take up the slack. Sam Walton emphasized the “family-friendly” emphasis of his corporation, though I find that highly debatable.

Yes, we’re even more screwed up here about sex than you think. Some insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control pills.

[wolf_meister]

I wonder what the pharmacist would think if he had to sell cigarettes to someone. Would he feel the same moral outrage and refuse the customer ?

[LouisB]

Welcome to North Central Texas, dead center of the Baptist Belt, where moralists abound and have always felt free to impose their morality on others.

However, the moment I read about this incident, I wondered if there wasn’t more to the story—I suspect that there must be. Maybe the woman was black, and this was a way to “put her in her place.” Maybe she was a young Caucasian female with multi-colored hair, tatoos and/or some body piercings, in which case she couldn’t possibly have been raped since “everyone” knows such girls are push-overs. Besides, if she was raped, she was asking for it and deserves whatever consequences there might be. Maybe she was Latin, in which case she must have been an illegal alien who was sucking up welfare, etc., etc.
In short, while the pharmacist might have been moralizing, I think something about the customer offended him and he excercised his petty power over her because of that.
I grew up in that part of Texas and whenever I feel homesick, I force myself to remember the attitudes that caused me to leave the damn place forever and ever, world without end, amen.

[Annie-Xmas]

Makes you wonder what the pharmacist would do if an openly gay guy came in with a Viagra prescription?

[carrot]

@Shodan

Exactly.

No one should be allowed to force their moral decisions about abortion on another person. Not your pharmacist, not your employer, not anyone. This is an entirely private decision, and no one should be coerced into doing something they find repugnant, or prevented from doing something if others find it repugnant.

Oh, thank you so much for missing the point.

The employee accepted the position at Eckerd’s. If Eckerd’s does something he finds “repugnant”, he is free to seek employment elsewhere.

Did you bother reading the thread first?

[Carol_the_Impaler]

lavenderviolet said:

… the Morning After Pill (AKA emergency contraception) is a high dose of plain old birth control pills. It works by 3 possible methods: 1) delaying ovulation, 2) preventing fertilization, or 3) potentially preventing a zygote from implanting in the womb

So I assume that this pharmacist also will not dispense regular old BC’s, either? :rolleyes:

Or condoms, either, being that the purpose is also to prevent ovulation?

Or is it that he’s okay with the delaying ovulation part, the preventing fertilization part, but not with thepotentially preventing a zygote from implanting in the womb part? Because that’s what millions of women potentially do everyday depending on which BC they use. So I would expect that his high moral standards would also prevent him from dispensing those, no?

Further, he’s not morally okay with dispensing the Morning After pill, but he’s morally in the clear and alright with his god when he partakes of the profits - via his paycheck - of a company that sells them?

Betcha he has a big problem with others’ situational ethics, but not his own.

Oh, and Shodan, the implication you make only leads to the inevitable conclusion that said pharmacist should have resigned if he feels that strongly about it. Otherwise he’s not only a ass, but a hypocrite.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

@don't ask

Which cart before which horse?

The pharmacist may have applied for the job before the industry was selling these products. I don’t know…do you?

Birth control pills have been legal in the United States since the 60s. The morning after pill is just a megadose of birth control pills, as has been stated earlier. There are plenty of pharmacies which do not stock this medication, for whatever reason. If the pharmacist has such a great objection to the MAP, then he should probably work in a pharmacy which doesn’t stock it, such as WalMart. Or perhaps he should get a job researching more effective ways of birth control. In any case, once he has accepted a job with a pharmacy that stocks a medication, he has a duty to fill any legal prescription for that medication that is presented to him. It is the DOCTOR’S job to decide which medication is appropriate for a patient, NOT the pharmacist’s!

[Mtgman]

@carrot

The employee accepted the position at Eckerd’s. If Eckerd’s does something he finds “repugnant”, he is free to seek employment elsewhere.

So if a soldier is asked to follow an order he finds “repugnant” is he supposed to obey it or not? I know they’re supposed to disobey illegal orders, and the request to provide a legal substance to the woman under the appropriate framework wasn’t quite the same as a soldier being asked to follow an illegal order, but since legal things can be wrong and wrong things can be legal, I’m not sure I can come down absolutely on either side of this one. Certainly he had no right to tell the woman she couldn’t have the medication. He is a pharmacist, not a doctor. I don’t think that is what was happening though. I think he was just refusing to be party to it based on his own moral code. I don’t recall hearing him rip the prescription from her hand and destroy it or telling her she had to have the baby. I feel he should be able to withdraw his own participation. All the impact it has on the customer is she has to find a different pharmacist to fill the order.

Kind of like a lawyer or judge recusing themselves from a particular case they feel they can’t treat fairly. Doesn’t mean they have to stop being a lawyer/judge, or even leave their current practice. Just means you have to find someone else in that particular case. Taking a job shouldn’t mean giving up autonomy. There are alternatives. He’s probably not even the only pharmacist in the store, let alone the area.

In other news, Denton is now a suburb of Dallas? Since when is a 45-minute to an hour drive(38 miles) from downtown Dallas to “downtown” Denton an acceptable distance for a “suburb”? Are suburbs 40 miles from the urban area these days? That’s further from Dallas than Ft Worth is(32 miles). A commute from Denton to Dallas would take an hour and a half or more during rush hour. God help you if there was an accident on the major freeway between Dallas and Denton because you’d be in traffic two hours minimum.

Enjoy,
Steven

[Bippy_the_Beardless]

If you have moral issues which can effect your job, you make damn sure you find an employer that shares your concerns and if your employer changes you find another job. I will not work on computers or hardware associated with weapon systems, I have worked in companies where some of their work was weapon based and I made sure they new these concerns before I started working with them. The pharmasist was unprofessional in that he/she had not raised the issue with her employer and in that she raised the issue with a customer. He/She should be sacked from the job for this unprofessionalism. Hopefully another pharmacy which doesn’t sell such products would be willing to hire the person.

[mouthbreather]

Thank you to MsRobyn and lavenderviolet. This is not anymore of an “abortion pill” than orthotricyclen or any other commonly used birth control pill is.

Fuck you to Reuters for not knowing the difference.
People really need to understand this concept before they start making decisions based on their supposed “morals”. Does this pharmacist hand out birth control prescriptions? If so, he’s being a fucking hypocrite.