Really?
Can you name two other cases?
Well, there are worse things you could be spending money on, I suppose.
How do you figure? What about a doctor that refuses to prescribe birth control pills? In both cases, it is the doctor expressing his religious beliefs through his refusal to do something.
You make it sound like most people are being prescribed birth control pills for therapeutic or life preserving reasons.
I just want to get this straight, if something is a matter of conscience or preference, I can fire you if it interferes with your job?
OK so you don’t have a problem with people acting on their religious convictions, your problem is that it is not advertised well enough because you think that if people had to advertise that they didn’t sell birth control pills (or sell morning after pills or perform abortions), then it would drive them out of business? Are you kidding? In some parts of the country (the parts where this sort of crap is most likely to happen), this would probably boost sales.
BTW, I don’t get the whole muslim taxi with a no dogs policy = evil KKK reference.
While I agree that doctors deserve a bit more professional deference than pharmacists, its not like pharmacists are merely glorified cashiers. What is the difference between a doctor that refuses to prescribe birth control pills to a pharmacist that refuses to fill such a prescription? Should we force doctors to prescribe birth control pills on demand as long as there are no contraindications?
Will you please stop this crap. It doesn’t make you look any better. I have specifically said earlier I respect pharmacists, and I consider it to be a worthy profession. Like other professions, especially those that can result in people’s death, it is subject to regulation.
I am not, and have never, called them “glorified cashiers.” So please stop the insulting implications that I have.
Once again, doctors and pharmacists are different, and this is no knock on pharmacists. Professions should not have the same regulations, as the situations they face differ. I explained earlier why I felt that the hypo you are putting about doctors was not relevant. Changing it hasn’t made it any more relevant.
Probably - but the Church Amendments and the 1996 Public Health Service Act prohibit the federal government from discriminating against medical providers who receive public funds on the grounds that they refuse to offer abortion services.
I expect the same principle could be expanded to include providers who don’t receive federal funds. I don’t know if it could be expanded to include birth control, though I doubt it.
I can’t claim to have been on the fence prior to this thread, but I hadn’t given it much thought. I mean OF COURSE we wouldn’t force pharmacy owners to carry prescriptions (or any product) that they did not want to sell, for whatever reason.
Apparently that’s not as obvious to others as it is to me, and I found the opposition, frankly, pretty chilling – not just in terms of religious freedom but in terms of basic economic freedom to not sell what you don’t want to sell.
So Bricker, if you find “organization that’s devoted to protecting a pharmacist’s right to choose what products to stock and sell” please post it here or PM me; I’d like to support them too.
I did.
I’m interested to see if there is an organization seeking financial support that has the same view on this. Aren’t the campaigns generally (resulting in some of the laws you cited earlier) to permit individual employees the right of “conscience” when required by their employer to supply birth control?
I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t any organizations out there campaigning to maintain the status quo.
Not I. At some point a pharmacist employed by Walgreens can refuse to dispense a drug based on their religion. If medicine advances to the point where you can safely have a first trimester abortion at home by taking a pill and wearing heavy flow maxi-pads, I don’t think you could force a pharmacist to dispense the drug or lose their job. Birth control pills are different but in my experience, noone is really worried about access to birth control pills, they are concerned about the implications this has on other things (like morning after pills and abortions).
I agree with the above. When you go to your local Walgreens and see a dozen people behind the phyarmacy counter, do you know how many of them are pharmacists? Usually one. There is one pharmacist back there that has to sign off (literally) on every drug that gets dispensed. Refusing to return a prescription is clearly more than what freedom of religion allows for something like birth control pills (pharmacists are allowed to refuse returning prescriptions that they suspect are forged or are for controlled substances).
Pharmacists generally have great (unexercised) discretion to refuse filling a prescription if they believe might cause an adverse reaction or if they believe there is some osrt of abuse going on. Refusing to fill prescriptions for religious reasons is different but the idea that pharmacists are something like glorified cashiers is incorrect.
I really don’t understand what your point is here, but in any case, you can safely have a first-trimester abortion at home, using Mifeprestone/RU-486 (up to 60 days’ gestation, depending on the country you’re in).
You just can’t do it in the US, because Mifeprestone is only available directly from physicians.
Well, yes, but I was hoping for something a bit more substantive.
OK so should we force obstetricians who know how to perform abortions ( and in fact does perform medically necessary abortions from time to time) to perform elective abortions?
I have made both of these points already in this thread, and as far as I’m aware you are the only person using the phrase “glorified cashiers” or anything like it. 
Is surgery in any way analogous to dispensing a prescription drug? Hell, dispensing birth control is, if anything, easier than dispensing anything else, since it comes in prepackaged containers and doesn’t have to be counted.
The substance was, it’s not up to the pharmacist to make that kind of judgement call; it’s not their business, and it’s not their right. If you want to be in the business of making personal judgement calls to decide not to give people casual prescriptions for contraceptives, become a doctor. By the time it reaches the pharmacist, the information on why the prescription was written is not available, leaving them in the position of doing one of the following:
- deny them all.
- deny none of them.
- deny them at random.
I think we can all agree that 3 is stupid, and 2 has them denying non-frivolous prescriptions. Presuming that the pharmacist does not intend to maliciously deny necessary and justified prescriptions, the only course is to put them all through.
That’s my point exactly. It’s not as though the prescription says, “Ortho Tri-Cyclen, but not for contraceptive use.”
Or, presuming that the pharmacist feels morally obligated to not facilitate the contraception or early abortion of a fetus, the only course is to deny them all.
I do agree that #3 is stupid though.
So you’d be okay with a pharmacist denying a therapeutic prescription on the grounds that it would also work as a contraceptive?