Then why was she arguing with me? I told her that she should frame her position as advocating central planning. I may not know pharmaceuticals, but I know political philosophy. Coercion by The State is the very essence of authoritarianism.
Care to address the coercion argument I offered in Post #167? The pharmacist is generally for coercion when it limits his/her competition.
Also, haven’t you previously argued that once you agree to a contract, enforcement of that contract is no longer coercion? The pharmacist agreed to a contract, now they want to change it because of their “morals”. I agree that they should be allowed out of the contract, but not that they should be allowed to unilaterally modify it. That’s the coercion here. The pharmacist wants to force the state to acknowledge his morals as the supreme authority.
I’ve noticed. 
The availability of the drug somewhere else has nothing to do with this problem. It’s like telling a black man who was refused service at a restaurant to “get over it, there’s another restaurant down the street that will serve you.”
There’s no doubt about that.
He’s not assisting her. Not any more than a vegetarian is assisting a meat-eater by passing the steak sauce.
It is also not his right to concern himself with the woman’s private decisions.
She’s not asking the pharmacist to drop the pill in her mouth.
The pharmacist chose to work in a profession where he would dispense prescribed drugs. This woman wants the pharmacist to dispense her prescribed drug. Everyone has already made the relevant decisions; now it’s time to follow through on them.
The pharmacist doesn’t have to take the pill. If they don’t want to physically give it to the woman, then just drop it on the counter and let her pick it up. Geezum Pete.
The prescribing doctor had a choice. Oh wait, you’re still talking about the superfluous choices of the pharmacist.
No, society should butt the fuck out, is what she’s saying.
“Do your job and dispense this drug” is not making a moral judgment for the pharmacist. Any moral judgments that are being placed on the pharmacist are being placed there by their own mind.
LilShieste
And we’re back at the beginning of the circle again. It ain’t coercion if it’s a freely entered agreement.
Your serve.
Would you agree that a licensed physician is obliged to administer a lethal injection to a duly condemned prisoner, or give up his license to practice?
Regards,
Shodan
And, BTW, part of what they agree to in the licensure laws is that these details may be changed at any time and they are still bound by them (although they can choose not to renew their license, or, once again, to work in another branch of pharmacy). I know that’s rather besides the point, as you have not shown us that a pharmacy act in the past *ever *allowed a moral exemption to dispensary rules, but I thought I’d put it out there just the same.
What does the law in her state say? What are the requirements of the license? Most states that I have heard of DO give a moral exemption to lethal injection for physicians. Since there are (apparently) enough doctors who don’t object, the moral exemptees are not blocking access to medical service (I hesitate to use the word “care” in this context.)
This is quite a good analogy.
Another analogy might be a Gentile who went into a kosher restaurant and ordered bacon. IYSWIM.
Maybe we will have to agree to disagree here. I don’t see how selling someone the means to bring about some end is not assisting her.
Put it this way, then - if the pharmacist’s assistance is not necessary, then the patient doesn’t need him at all, and his refusal to participate doesn’t hurt her. 
Insofar as they remain private - i.e. affecting her alone, and not him - you are entirely correct. Once they affect him, then they are no longer private.
Same question as above - is a licensed physician morally obligated to participate in an execution?
Regards,
Shodan
That brings up the thorny issue of civil disobedience. Suppose no exemption is made by the state, or the issue is not addressed.
It seems, then, that so long as there are enough pharmacists who will dispense Plan B, there is no reason not to give an exemption of the same sort to those who won’t. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Regards,
Shodan
Let’s try this again. Plan B is not killing anything. It isn’t what it does. This analogy does not work.
How about we discuss like we have an idea of what it is.
What a crock of shit. You’re comparing the state’s need for an extremely rare service which is well planned in advance and where the funding is available to bring in outside assistance should “the locals” prove uncooperative to emergency contraception which is both time sensitive and disproportionately needed by those for whom a trip to the drugstore probably represents a fairly significant opportunity cost.
In your head, somehow those two things are equivalent?
Wonder how people would feel if large numbers of soldiers started refusing to go to Iraq because it’s against their “morals”? I mean, after all, the US has lots of soldiers, just get one of the other ones to go. Right?
No, I won’t suppose so, because that brings me into your morals debate and away from my ethics debate. 
Oh, okay. Fine. I said it once already, so I’ll bite again. Morally, I have no problem with a doctor or pharmacist refusing care IF they are not blocking reasonable access to that care from someone else. “Reasonable” taking into account things like money, transportation and availability of that care from another health care provider in a medically and legally appropriate timespan.
Ethically, in IL at least, they cannot refuse care for moral reasons even if the drug is available elsewhere, or even if there’s another pharmacist on duty at the same store who will provide it. The only reason they could refuse to dispense Plan B is if their store is out of stock (per the Governor’s order I linked to earlier), and then they have to actively help the patient get it somewhere else, generally by calling other nearby pharmacies and transferring the prescription. (For less time sensitive things, they can order the drug, or call a doctor to authorize an in-stock substitution.) In reality, of course, I’m sure Jim will take the order if Barbara doesn’t want to do it. That’s just people being people, and I’m glad Jim is willing to go the extra mile and accomodate Barbara’s desires. But legally and ethically, she’s in the wrong.
I agree, except that THAT brings us back around to, “But there AREN’T enough willing pharmacists in some areas, given the time, money, and transportation limitations of the situation and geography.”
My serve? I’m wondering whether you read Jodi’s argument (or my prior responses) before you began defending it for her.
It is she — and not I — who is positing the coercive entity. The State is acting as owner of the pharmaceutical trade. In a noncoercive free market, The State would own nothing, and would not behave as though it owned anything. Authoritarianism introduces coercion. I told her that her argument should be framed as advocating authoritarianism.
She wants to have her cake and eat it too — she wants to pretend that people are making decisions freely even though The State limits their options to exactly one. In other words, if you don’t like the deal offered by The State, you cannot pharmacize. I told her that her argument is tantamount to the love-it-or-leave argument for coercing a man’s consent to be governed at all. The authoritarian argues the same in both cases: (1) for the pharmacist, if you don’t like it, get another job; (2) for the citizen, if you don’t like it, abandon your home.
I hope this brought you up to date. 
Nor may a pharmacist refuse to fill anti-retroviral prescriptions because he feels AIDS is God’s righteous punishment against the sodomites, or ignore black customers because his church teaches that niggers are mud-people descended from Cain. He may not work while staggeringly inebriated, abuse customers with profanity, or fill their bottles with popcorn kernels instead of the medication they were prescribed. He cannot pop one Percocet for every five he distributes, nor allow his cousin Cletus unfettered access to a case of morphine ampoules because his corns are actin’ up. Any one of these acts on the pharmacist’s part would run him a serious risk of losing his job and/or license, even if he really feels, in his heart, that it’s what the Lord has led him to do.
With all that tyrannical coercion going on, it’s a wonder anyone wants to go into pharmacy at all…
A lot of people don’t. They go elsewhere.
The problem with the caricature you’re painting is that it depends on political expediency. All that is required to make it so is an electorate that is sufficiently inclined toward your own greatest fears. It has already been determined that the license may be modified at the will of the authorities. (See several posts above.) Should your fears be realized, your argument binds you to stipulate that all things are fair. A mere change of words on a central committee’s document, and your caricature pharmacist becomes a reality.
I’m morally opposed to the death penalty. If I become a cop, should the state exempt me from arresting people who commit capital offenses? It would be against my morality to assist in the execution of someone.
I’m surprised you’d ask that after all these years. Clearly, the whole purpose of government is to secure rights. Police and military are essential government services. But even they should not be coercive — i.e., initiating force, but rather using only responsive or defensive force, and using only as much as is necessary to secure the rights of its citizens. Therefore if, as an agent of government, you refuse to secure rights by whatever means necessary, including deadly force, then you are in breach.
And again (and again and again), I don’t mind Jodi taking the position that a pharmacist is an agent of the government. In fact, that’s what I’ve been encouraging her to do in order to make her premise nongratuitous.
OK, I guess I missed that part. I’ve been assuming all along that pharmacists are agents of the government, even though I would prefer that they not be.
It seems that these issues with Plan B are often the result of that drug being sold over the counter, but kept within the confines of the pharmacy in certain stores so that it is only sold to adults. In that case, I would say it’s up to the store owner to decide whether to accommodate a pharmacist’s moral objections to dispensing it.
But as an agent of the state, a pharmacist has no more of a right to refuse to dispense certain medications than a public school science teacher has to refuse to teach evolution, if that is part of the required curriculum.
ISWYM. But what if the restaurant had kosher bacon, and refused to serve it?
I’m sure the woman wouldn’t mind being able to go behind the counter and just gather the pills herself.
Any discussion the woman had with her doctor, and friends and family, are indeed still private. The pharmacist is privy to none of this information, so I don’t see why he feels the need to inject himself into the situation.
I think this is a good question. However, I don’t think it completely applies to cases like this. The pharmacist is not administering the pills to the patient, only providing them to her.
So, if I could modify your analogy, it would be something like: Is a licensed physician morally obligated to prepare the materials used in an execution? The physician doesn’t have any control over what is going to be done with those materials, so how can they hold themselves morally responsible for what happens?
What if the pills could serve another purpose? For example, what if they could be used in some kind of cancer treatment? In this case, the pharmacist has no idea which purpose the pills are being used for. So now, the pharmacist could be denying a cancer patient treatment, just because they don’t like one of the uses of the drug. This, IMO, is ludicrous.
LilShieste
You mean like having a volunteer army?
Works for me.
Actually, it seems to me that it works pretty well. In both cases we have something that is legal, but about which people disagree morally. Is it the case that you believe that people can be compelled, as part of their licensing agreement, to cooperate in doing something they feel to be gravely immoral, because it is legal?
He is injecting himself only at the point where the woman asks him to assist her.
Indeed - in an ideal world, Plan B would be OTC. Best of both worlds - those who want to use it are free to do so, those who don’t want to participate are free not to.
Of course, then the same moral dilemma applies to the cashier. In that case, perhaps they could have designated checkout lanes for conscientious objectors.
I think this is a distinction without a difference. The pharmacists don’t want to assist in any way. They want their actions to be the same as if the transaction never happened at all. It would be roughly analogous to the physician who started the IV thru which the lethal drugs were to be injected. Would you agree that a doctor, morally opposed to the death penalty, can be compelled to start the IV, providing the switch to release the lethal drugs were turned by someone else?
This is, in my view, the ideal situation. No one gets to interfere with someone else’s “right to choose”.
This part I disagree with, for reasons stated above.
Regards,
Shodan
Last I heard, working as a pharmacist was voluntary also.