Pharmacists should not have to sell the product if they don’t want to. I know liberty isn’t in vogue these days, but it’s a pretty nice thing. If you’re local pharmacist won’t sell it go to Walgreens. If the pharmacist at Walgreens won’t sell it go back when they aren’t working, if that person won’t sell it call corporate and complain.
Forcing someone to violate their morals is repulsive.
Hah, thanks for thinking about me, but I don’t really have a rabid dog in this fight. 
IMHO, if a pharmacist wants to refuse something on moral grounds then they are more than welcome to, provided there are other people who can provide healthcare services to that person in their stead. The state also licenses doctors, but nobody forces them to perform abortions if it’s against their ethical framework. In this case, the state licenses pharmacists, but they are still free to object on moral grounds if they disagree with it. Just because someone has a license from the state doesn’t mean that they are exempt from facing ethical issues at work, it’s ridiculous to suggest it. The state cannot force you to perform an act within your professional life that violates the ethics that rule your personal life just because the state administers the NAPLEX.
The situation changes DRASTICALLY when you’re talking about situations where there is only one pharmacy in town, or when pharmacists are tearing up prescriptions, or harassing people. Simply refusing to fill it on moral grounds is not a major issue, people in professional (yes, even medical) capacities do it frequently, it’s the assholes who seem to think it’s their responsibility to shame and humiliate women searching for Plan B that are making all the news about it.
In that case, you are not only exercising your objections, you’re inflicting them on an unwilling victim who is unable to get care from another provider. You’re intentionally cutting off their access to medical care, and that’s the part that’s inexcusable. There are really two different debates being merged into one here, 1) Does a pharmacist have the right to refuse on ethical grounds, and 2) do they have the right to deny a patient access to medical care? Number three isn’t really an issue, which is “do pharmacists have the right to harass patients for decisions they’ve made” because I think that one is a thundering no.
And as for the people who are trying to draw the parallel between denying Plan B and denying insulin, that’s the most ridiculous straw man I’ve ever heard. There is not a public debate raging against obesity and whether or not insulin ethically constitutes condoning or performing acts of gluttony. Because insulin isn’t only used for Type 2 diabetes, but Plan B really only has one purpose.
There is a lot of controversy surrounding it, from the time it was originally marketed to the moment it went OTC and still as we all sit and read evidently.
It’s just not the same animal, and everybody knows it.
So that’s where I stand. I don’t have anything inherently against pharmacists making judgment calls, it’s not unheard of for people in nearly any other profession to do, but suddenly when it becomes about a controversial topic they’re just expected to STFU and fill the damn script. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Many people would like for it to, but I think it’s more unreasonable to expect a person with a professional degree and a lot of medical training to be treated as though they are not capable of making a reasoned medical judgment. Don’t get me wrong, I know that many millions of people are not capable of making any sort of reasoned judgment on anything, and some of them decide to become pharmacists, but we’re talking about the exception and not the rule. And harassing a young woman for choosing not to allow conception to happen is not ethical behavior, or the result of reasoned judgment.
Isn’t that a bad comparison, though? In the above case, that’s discrimination. The fire department is refusing to provide the service to one group of people that they provide to everyone else. In this case, the pharmicists in question are refusing to sell the product to anyone.
Now, since other people are throwing around analogies, it’s my turn. 
Lets say you have a store who’s owner refuses to sell cigarettes. He has this policy because he has moral objections to cigarette smoking. Should he be forced by law to sell them?
IT seems to me, it comes down to two, possibly related questions. The first is, does, or should, a person have a legal right to buy, or be sold, medication? The second is, are pharmacists independent businessmen, or are they just adjuncts to doctors…like machines who have a duty to fill all prescriptions they get?
Why do you think that someone should be forced to be complicit in what they see as the murder of an infant?
I think it’s interesting that people see a person who won’t murder an infant as a villain here.
So you with your enlightened liberal status just see a zygote, they see a potential human life.
Actually, the law probably does refer specifically to Plan B as it is still held behind the pharmacy counter, and ID has to be checked for it, and for patients under 18 it still requires a prescription. It hasn’t been available without a prescription “for years”, and couldn’t legally have predated national availability. It could have been supplied by a pharmacist who was operating under a program similar to the one in California, where a patient fills out a questionnaire and is counseled by the pharmacist. However, it was still a prescription item, it was just allowed legally to be prescribed in essence by a pharmacist, usually operating in conjunction with a local doctor or clinic.
It only became truly OTC for ALL states in late 2006.
Like refusing service because the customer does not share their religious beliefs.
At what age can a child refuse medication? Suppose a 13 year old didn’t want to take Ritalin, even though it was prescribed by the family doctor. But, since homosexuality isn’t considered a medical disorder, I’m skeptical that a licensed physician could prescribe it to anyone against that person’s will. Frankly, I think the hypothetical is unrealistic. Bottom line, though, I’d expect the state to revoke the license of a pharmacist who refused to dispense a given medication, provided it was properly prescribed by a licensed physician.
Good friggin’ point. That makes things a whole lot less muddy. My answers would be 1) Yes and 2) No, and if the two conflict, providing access to medical care trumps personal ethics in a restricted field.
mswas, no one’s biting.
that’s not a good comparison, either. Certainly a store owner can select what items to stock. However, a pharmacy exists to provide medicines, not individual items.
Actually, I think the reason there’s a discrepancy is that doctors have been allowed to opt out of providing abortions (and not simply by having a different specialty) out of moral considerations.
No one is forcing anyone to do that. You get another job. Should an abortion clinic be required to maintain a nurse or doctor on staff who suddenly took on the pro-life position and refused to do abortions? That would be absurd.
Good thing that’s not happening, then! Even with a law that means pharmacists must give out all drugs, they are perfectly free to quit, or not become a pharmacist in the first place. If you join the army, you accept the risk you might just be asked to kill people. If you work in a slaughterhouse, there’s a good chance you might just have to kill animals.
It is an entirely voluntary situation. A person who becomes a pharmacist, or stays one if such laws were passed, would be voluntarily allowing their morals to be violated. Which, while i’m sure would cause them trouble, is perfectly fine.
I think an important distinction needs to be made between prescription drugs and over-the-counter drugs. I don’t see that you can require any store to carry a particular over-the-counter drug, but a pharmacy is a licensed agent of the state, and as such can be required by the state to dispense certain drugs as a condition of having that license.
Can anyone tell me whether pharmacies are required by law to stock any particular medications, or all medications, or some but not all?
What if a pharmacist thinks some new Vioxx-like drug is dangerous and shouldn’t be on the market – can they refuse to fill a prescription for it?
Or maybe a pharmacist DOES decide not to sell insulin. Aside from it being stupid and bad for business and possibly dangerous to their customers, is it illegal?
Seriously! It’s like being a bricklayer but having something against mortar. Dude…it’s part of the job!
Do you see a distinction between ethics and personal morals?
IMO, a pharmacist’s personal morals do not apply to anybody but that pharmacist. If they are uncomfortable dispensing any medications, they should discontinue being a pharmacist. Find something else to do. I understand the importance of a pharmacist in the way medications are dispensed; they are invaluable for making sure that we don’t take some drug that has interactions with some other drug that we are taking. But they are not there to decide whether I should be allowed to have a specific medication.
It exists to provide individual medicines, though.
Not really. A pharmacy exists to provide medications in general, not just medication for acne, or weight loss, or thyroids. If they want to specialize to that degree, then we’ll need a whole new set of laws.
The problem here is that, because the pill in question is seen as an “abortion pill” (it’s not, but that’s how the debate has been framed) it brings in a lot of ethical questions that are beside the actual point.
Consider this hypothetical: a licensed doctor experiences a religious epiphany and becomes a Jehovah’s Witness. He still practices as a doctor, though. A patient is brought to him who has lost a significant amount of blood. According to the doctors moral code, blood transfusions are anathema, and so he refuses to give the patient a transfusion. Consequently, the patient dies. Should the doctor be held responsible for the patient’s death? I would say, “Yes.” The doctors freedom of religion stops where it starts to harm other people. Similarly, a pharmacist has no more right to refuse medicine on moral grounds than he does to walk into a crowded theater and shout, “Fire!”
Miller; the problem with that is that i’m sure the pharmacists in question would say they were harming another person by giving the pill.
Well, as you said above, that pharmacist should look for another line of work-- one that didn’t cause him to compromise his morals.