Pharmacist Sue over Morning After Pill

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LKD,
they are storage clerks from a functional point of view. When I go there with a prescription they go fetch my drug, take my money and then have to hand out, and that's it. Maybe they inform me, too.

Of course they are highly qualified. But that only comes into play if I ask them for advice, or order something exotic, which I usually don't.

 

How many hundreds of thousands of people live in that city you're in, LKD?

Aldeth already took issue with this sentiment, but I'm going one further - try thinking about a maritime community in British Columbia or the Maritimes, with a population of maybe two or three thousand, with two restaurants, one supermarket, a single gas station, two G.P.s and a single dentist (and no hospital), two schools (one for primary/elementary & the other is junior & senior high) and only one pharmacist, and is located on an *island* with a bi-daily ferry ride required just to get to the road that you can drive another hour to the next small town?

For this reason I hope that the court case sides with the government to prevent a situation of one person dictating behaviour of many coming to pass; it's not about the pharmacist's civil rights, it's about the CUSTOMERS'. These two pharmacists are always free to find OTHER work that doesn't involve the Washington State Board of Pharmacy licensing and REGULATING what they do...

From the original article:

 

je,
good point about small towns. That's what I meant with ensuring supply.

 

It's not the pharmacists' call. If their employer chooses to sell the merchandise, it's their responsibility to provide it to the customer in exchange for cash rendered. Personally, I think that Ralph's Thriftway has good cause to fire these two.

BTA hit it: if they want to moralize to others, they need to find a different line of work.

 

Fallacy, Aldeth. Not everything which is classed as a drug serves a medicinal purpose. Contraception is not medicinal. The morning after pill may be classified as a drug perhaps, but not as a medicine. Much less so chemical abortifacients. Pharmacists are there to help people buy selling medicines, not to open up a shop with a wide selection of chemicals people may want to use.

It's different when they preach - which could be what you describe as moralising to others, Rally - and when they refuse to involve personally in what offence against life someone else has chosen to carry out.

It seems to me that some of you don't get the point about not wanting to cooperate in something you deem wrong or even evil. I wonder if you would say that 200 years ago it was the duty of a cop to return fugitive slaves to the owners.

 

That's true - I'm with you so far.

Now you lost me. Pharmacists are not there to exclusively sell medicine. I could argue that they are there simply to sell drugs (after all, another name for a pharmacy is a drug store), but really, that's not their job either. Their job is to fill prescriptions written by doctors. If you want to say that the doctor-written prescription is a drug, medicine, chemical, whatever, you are only making a semantic point.

Birth control pills are only available by prescription, and have been that way for about 40 years now. So it's impossible to say that pharmacies only sell medicine if you refuse to classifiy contraception as medicine. By corrolary, pharmacists need to have knowledge of a wide range of drugs and side effects and use their knowledge to inform people taking the drugs. Given the time frame involved here, I think there are very few practicing pharmacists who started before the pill was released.

Given what has passed as "medicine" prior to the 20th century, you could argue that a pharmacy has never sold exclusively medicine and has always specialized in drugs.

 

To get what BTA is hinting at, just imagine them reading out of The Holy Bible that pain medication is godless and evil because pain is God's punishment on humans and thus is not to be interfered with. Then, to add fun, imagine this kook to be the only pharmacist in reach/ still open. You're ****ed.

Will you be dependent in what medication you can get in a pharmacy by whatever religious convictions your pharmacist happens to hold? I certainly don't.

 

If a pharmacist is the only pharmacist in the area, that's not his fault! If you could prove he'd run others out of town for the purpose of maintaining a monopoly, then I could go along with this, but otherwise he still has the right to say that he does not provide this service. We don't force a Muslim restaurant owner to serve pork ribs.

Now, I know that last example is a little out there, but bear with me. If he doesn't sell those ribs, perhaps he'll go out of business -- his own fault for not giving the customer what he wants. However, by not serving those ribs he is by no means preaching or moralizing about the evils of pork. He is not stopping people from going elsewhere.

I can see the issue with a small town, though girls have been travelling a fair distance for years to get various forms of birth control. What I'm arguing is that there must be a way for the pharmacists to be able to follow their consciences AND get reasonable access to the pills for the girls who need them. Both groups have rights that should be addressed.

 

Hmmm...compromise...hang on - I thought I'd seen; yeah:

Weeeellll; it's a bit of a compromise - the two dispensers will have to share hours with a new third 'on-call' fellow pharmacist who doesn't object to Plan B, though...the employer may not be happy about taking on more staff, and as Rally said, may consider replacing one of the 'conscientious objectors' with a new employee ...wait-

So technically there are THREE plaintiffs, not two - the pharmcists AND their employer, as well. So now I'm more interested in how the state Pharmacy Board looks upon Stormans, Inc. - sounds like if they're part of the suit they'd refuse to hire anyone who wouldn't object to dispensing the product...

 

Same for judges in Nazi trials administering death penalty?

Same post-coital contraception as abortion - it's not a medical procedure. If someone wants to end lives, he shouldn't expect help from those who want to save lives.

 

Actually, no. As I'm sure you are aware, a judge's job by definition is to DECIDE cases, to determine guilt and innocence. Whereas a police officer or "law enforcement official" is just to enforce existing law, not choose how that law is carried out.

But nonetheless, such a judge would still have the right to refuse to hear a certain contentious case, step down from the bench, and likely end up being one cell away from the subsequently convicted defendant on 'death row'. But that's still an option to them.

 

LKD,
in your view a restaurant and a pharmacy are apparently one and the same, a normal business enterprise. I disagree. They are not.

Utterly and completely irrelevant. Pork is no medicine. The morning-after pill is. And just because of that there are special rules imposed on pharmacists, and not on restaurant owners. If a pharmacists doesn't like the rules, well, too bad.

If you expand the example to other drugs, for whatever reason, you have a situation where supply is basically arbitrary. Think about my painkiller example. Of course the market might settle this one day, but I presume you wouldn't want to be the one to wait when in need of an unavailable medication your kooky pharmacist is piously denying you for the sake of his conscience. Can you predict what he comes up with next? Would you bet on it? Btw, are you able to drive your car to go to some other pharmacy? Do you have a car?

Laws have a purpose. The idea behind regulating pharmacists is to prevent such gambles. The goal is a reliable and predictable supply. It is neither safe, nor reliable or sensible to leave something like that to the market and basically the whim of individual pharmacists, so rules are imposed on pharmacists - quite simply because this is to be avoided.

 

I understand that they are different enterprises, but the underlying principle in my mind is the same -- it is immoral to force someone to engage in an activity that they feel is against their conscience. You can call these people "kooky" or whatever other insult you want, but the fact remains that they have the same right to freedom of conscience as you do.

And far from being "too bad" for the pharmacists, they ALSO have the right to speak up and defend their beliefs. That's why it's called a democracy -- even those whose views are contrary to the current status quo. And still no one has proved that by some pharmacists not carrying a product it totally denies the consumer access to the product.

We don't force every single doctor to perform abortions. In fact, I bet there ate OB/GYNs who do not perform them but the fact that they do not does not mean the patient cannot go elsewhere. The same applies to these pharmacists. As I stated before, it is not about judging the lives of their patients, it is about following their religion to the best of their abilities, which is something that many governments have been willing to find reasonable compromises on for ages.

 

The judge is actually bound by criminal laws and by laws of evidence. If sufficient proof is presented that Mr Jones performed an act criminalised by criminal laws and penalised with death penalty as the sole option, the judge cannot legally acquit the person or give any other penalty than death.

You don't seem to believe it's actually a fine situation. So, we've done the question of, "what is a judge under a wicked regime to do." Now let's deal with the question of, "what is a pro-life pharmacist going to do in a liberal society." Sell his business because he doesn't want to cooperate in what he sees as homicide or close?

Do you also believe that a doctor should perform abortions because that's the law, and no matter he swore not to abort a foetus, ever, when becoming a doctor?

@Rags:

The morning-after pill is not a medicine. It is a drug, but it cures no illness, nor does it remove any patological condition. Therefore, it is no medicine.

As for the rules, "Gesetz ist Gesetz, Befehl is Befehl?" Read Radbruch, anyone?

My impression is that the relativist liberals are the first to say unjust laws can't be obeyed absolutely when it's their own conscience which is being violated. Now, if it's someone else's conscience, especially if that person is not a relativist liberal, then the matter is different. Relativist liberals generally believe that it's perfectly fine for a doctor to perform abortions when they are outlawed, but it's wrong for a doctor not to perform abortions when they are legal. This is a blatant case of double standards. Same with contraceptives. It would be fine for a pharmacist to say illegal contraceptives, but it isn't fine to refuse to sell legal ones.

Besides, if it's a free country, why can't a pharmacist run a pharmacy with or without select drugs? From the point of view of a customer wanting a post-coital pill, such a pharmacy is the same as no pharmacy at all. From the point of view of someone wanting anything from cough medication to hormonal treatment, the difference between that pharmacy and no pharmacy is up to one life. Why, therefore, ought there not to be any pharmacies without morning after pills? Why should a pharmacy either sell them or not exist? Can't accept the benefit of a pharmacy not serving that kind of product?

[ August 03, 2007, 21:52: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

We seem to be dealing in absolutes here, extending the idea that if a particular individual does not want to be involved in something, then by extension he seeks to deny that opporunity to all others. That makes no sense to me. I choose not to drink alcohol or even to serve it. When I worked at the restaurant, I asked my co-workers to take the alcohol to the table of those who asked for it. I made it up to said co-workers by running their food or drinks. It does not logically follow that I am part of a secret right wing cabal hell-bent on denying alcohol to every other soul on the planet.

 

Chev,
the morning after pill is not an abortion pill. It does not have an effect on already inseminated egg cells. They continue to live. This is not abortion. Try stay sober.

 

Rags, there are three things to say to that:

1. I use abortion as a platform of comparison.

2. For many people, actually, post-coital contraception doesn't differ that much from abortion.

3. Morning after pills actually can have abortifacient effect. They are just not normally used in that capacity. However, the same drug which is used to prevent conception may well harm a conceived foetus.

@LKD: Drinking alcohol is not the same as meddling with conception. You can make concessions in the minutiae, but bigger matters are different. The extension you make doesn't work like that. But since you probably see the morning after pill on the same level with a cough medicine, you can't really get, "what the heck the problem is with that." But try for a while to think that it might actually be an offence against life. Let's suppose you believe it is - and you work in a pharmacy. So what do you do?

 

1. Nice that you use it as a platform for comparison. Then you should have already seen that it doesn't match and dropped it. That's what you learn when you compare apples and oranges, that they are not alike.

2. Lawyers are supposed to be objective, and what 'some people say' or 'many people think' is of little concern if it doesn't involve specifically the issue at hand. If these people have diffuse and vague and half-informed ideas that doesn't help.

3. These side effects are why it requires a doctor to prescribe it. He is to examine the patient to avoid just that. The pharmacist is just the executioner (think 'vis absoluta'). Oooh, how have I wrecked my case with this pun!

here for some fun

 

1. Nope, Rags, analogy is a valid method of explanation.

2. What precisely are you talking about?

3. Nope, we aren't talking about side-effects such as screwing up the mother's health. The doctor can decide if that's worth it. But no doctor can decide it's all right to exterminate a foetus. Additionally, you seem oblivious to the fact that the use of post-coital contraception before conception happens is quite limited in time. Before the woman reaches a doctor and he examines her, by that time, real actual conception may take place, changing the procedure from morning after pill to real abortion.

And the pharmacist is not just the executioner and is not under vis absoluta. Unless you go by unthinking bayonets theory. But it hardly works in any court.

And thanks for the beer, but it's Friday.