I’ve been hearing a lot lately about pharmacists refusing to dispense contraceptives because of their moral and/or religious convictions. In the past, I’ve written about this issue- here and here, f’rinstance. If anything, my feelings on this matter have become stronger with the passage of time.
I am angered beyond words that some troll who thinks they know best can refuse to dispense morning-after pills to a rape victim. If you are a pharmacist, you are a health care professional. Your duty, and your professional responsibility, is to dispense medication that has been legally prescribed by a licensed medical doctor. Period. It is not your place, your role, nor your responsibility to make a moral judgement on the value of the medication legally prescribed by a medical doctor. You have NO right to inflict your personal moral and/or religious views on someone who likely neither shares, nor particularly cares about them.
Some states have actually passed legislation recognizing a pharmacist’s “right” to refuse to dispense medication that violates their moral or religious beliefs. In other words, in these states an individual pharmacist has the perfect legal right to allow their narrow belief system to override the professional medical judgement of a medical doctor. To use the example of a rape victim, these laws provide a pharmacist with legal cover for redoubling the shame and humiliation already experienced by a rape victim. As if the victim hasn’t endured enough trauma, she has to be subjected to some narrow-minded religious zealot denying her the right to a legally-prescribed morning-after pill on “moral” grounds?
I’m sorry, ma’am, but providing you with the morning-after pill means that I might be participating in the taking of a life. Quite frankly, that is much more important to me than whether or not you were raped…and by the way, given the way you were dressed, you were probably asking for it.
Memo to any and all pharmacists and pharmacists in training: You have a professional responsibility to uphold. You have a responsibility to your profession and the doctors and patients who count on you to fill legally enforceable prescriptions. You have NO right to pass judgement on the moral worthiness of said prescriptions for ANY reason- NONE. ZIP. ZERO. NADA. PERIOD. END OF STORY. Questions? Sorry, there will be none. This is not a negotiable point. If you cannot meet your professional responsibilities, if you cannot find it within yourself to dispense LEGALLY prescribed medications, if you feel that you have the right to deny medications based on “moral” or “religious” grounds, YOU NEED TO FIND ANOTHER PROFESSION. You need to find a job where your narrow zealotry will not adversely impact patients who need and are entitled to LEGALLY-PRESCRIBED medications.
I have no problem with someone having strong religious or moral convictions. This is, after all, still (nominally) a free country. However, that freedom ends once you hang out your pharmacist’s shingle. Not that you cannot continue to hold strong religious or moral beliefs, of course, but you have NO right to inflict those beliefs on those patients bearing legally-written prescriptions. If you cannot see your way clear to grasp this reality, you need to get out from behind the counter and find another line of work, because you have no business plying your trade as a pharmacist.
There is a time and a place for morality and religion. Dispensing medication that has been legally prescribed by a medical doctor is neither the time nor the place to trot out your zealotry, insensitivity, and intolerance.
That is all….
As a licensed pharmacist it drives me absolutely bananas to read the stories about pharmacists refusing to dispense medication based on their personal beliefs. However, this exact behavior is encouraged in pharmacy schools. When a classmate of mine asked what he should do about dispensing drugs for HIV when he had a personal issue with gays (not to get into the myriad ways one can get HIV) the DEAN of the Pharmacy School told him he should (and this is a direct quote) "hate the sin and love the sinner." I walked out of class that day.
Maybe they'll all move to South Carolina.
If a pharmacist kept refusing to deliver the products that the public wanted, they would just find one who would, and the first one would lose business, and eventually go backrupt. What's the problem?
I've got no problem with pharmacists being allowed to freely exercise their religious beliefs. Why do you? Do you also have the same problem with other professionals in the medical field being allowed to freely practice their religion? After all, doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel are alredy covered by such consciencelegislation in most states.
Maybe you just want them to be good Germans, not questioning what the Zyklpn-B is being used for.
This may sound strange, but I think jacka$$ and the Dean of the Pharmacy School quoted by Iron Lesbian #2 both have a point.
In the case of the Dean, who advised future pharmacists with conscientious objections to "hate the sin and love the sinner " I'd have to take that to mean "dispense the drug and mind your own business." Good advice indeed!
Jacka$$ a$$erts the likely result of applying basic and proven capitalist/libertarian principals -- Pharmacists are free to practice their trade according to their beliefs, but should not be surprised to find that others consider them unemployable for the same reasons.
Left alone, some things can indeed work themselves out, and may not require the assistance of all-consuming, all-regulating government intervention.
I reckon it all depends on how much of an all-fired rush you're in to attain utopia.