I wonder if these pharmacists would dispense the contraceptive pill to women but need the Pill for other reasons other than contraception? Many women use the Pill to stop painful or heavy periods - not all of these women are sexually active and others are infertile. What objection can a pharmacist have for refusing such women the Pill? What if the doctor scrawled 'for menstruation problems' on the prescription - would the pharmacist issue it then?

As far as the morning-after-pill goes - I would love to see a raped woman who couldn't get her perscription filled in time sue the pharmacist for child support as he is more responisble for the pregnancy than she is.

Is it really part of a pharmacist's job to know patients' ailments and problems? Scawling the ailment on a prescription seems to me an invitation to the self-appointed 'moral police' to have a field day ... Are they bound by the same code of confidentiality as the medical profession?

Precisely.

And unless a pharmacist is a mind reader they have no way of knowing why a woman is taking the Pill. So why should they refused to give it to the woman at all? She could be taking it for a medical reason that isn't against their morals at all.

I've never heard of a pharmacist even having the gall to do such a thing! Until yesterday, that is. I can only equate this, as a former bookseller and not so vital as those in any field of medicine, to a situation that arose some years ago about a new book called "Final Exit" - it being about assisted suicide techniques ("recipes", if you will) for the terminally ill. Quite a brouhaha ensued. We were told that we had to carry and sell the book (which was fine with me as I'm opposed to censorship or telling people what they can read, watch or think). I didn't have it on display [which was given to us as an option - keep it under the counter and respond to peoples' requests for it]. Despite protests and crank calls few were sold but I never stepped out of my job description and speculated on why anybody wanted it. I suppose it MAY have been used for nefarious reasons by some, or asked for by the curious OR sold to people weighing their desperate options. No matter which it was never my privelege, as a customer service employee, to decide a legal/ethical or moral issue for someone of legitimate age. To have done that would have made me an evangelist. Not a pharmacist, doctor, college professor or even a gunshop owner. I was just a bookseller - NOT a deputy to Big Brother.

I will say that I'd never work in a store that sold guns or even a store that sold graphic pornography but that's a personal choice. I can't imagine being anti-handgun and expecting to use my position as a vendor of them as a platform to air my opinions, for example. It wouldn't make logical sense...at least to me it wouldn't.

Actually I was just making a play on words when I suggested I'd "strike the pharmacist". Trying to keep a bit of levity in a friendly discussion on a very serious topic. I can see how this backfired and am sorry that happened. However, the assertion that

<<you strike anyone, you should be arrested>>

with which I, broadly speaking, agree, brings up another issue. Fortunately for me and those around me my illnesses do not include problems with violence. But I can imagine a scenario whereby someone who did have violent tendencies - someone for whom getting to the doctor to get the prescription and then getting to the pharmacy to get it filled is a minor miracle in itself - was refused their medication and did strike out. Police called, stronger drugs administered as a crisis measure, another mentally ill person thrown into the over-stretched and inappropriate prison system. Ooh, and what if this person was the mother of an unwanted child, the result of a sexual assualt after which she was unable to obtain a morning-after pill? What would happen to the child? Wow, I could work up a really outrageous scenario here (perhaps the child would end up being raised by wolves, or fall prey to an evil witch), but of course that's just silly, things like that just don't happen in modern civilised society.

Your strike the chemist comment was taken by me to mean you would boycott the chemist Ing. Personally I can`t see how it backfired but I guess what`s obvious to one person can confuse another.

I always thought that civilised society was three meals away from anarchy, now I find it could be only one prescription away!

Three meals a day you mean Roos? Gee, I wonder if that's why my life is so chaotic?

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But I can imagine a scenario whereby someone who did have violent tendencies...

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I used to work in a drugstore part time when I was in school, and we were open 364 days of the year...usually.
I remember one Sunday when, because of illness, we were unable to get a pharmacist to work. By law we were not allowed to open our doors, and we posted this with huge signs as soon as we knew we couldn't get anyone. (Our manager phoned every other store in the chain for miles around.)
The manager decided to take advantage of the closed day to do some stock reorganization, and had a small crew of us in working the shelves.
An older gentleman came to pick up his prescription and the manager politely explained that we weren't allowed to open. He started pounding angrily on the door and yelling at us. He screamed that we should have called him (we had no access to information about when people usually renewed their prescriptions - any people prescriptions that had been phoned in and were ready to hand out had been phoned). He carried on for so long and so loud that we were worried he would either have a heart attack or break the window, and the manager was considering calling the police. He would not listen to reason. Even if we had let him in the store (which was illegal), no one was qualified to get him his medication, and probably would have given him the wrong thing if they tried.
I would hate to be the pharmacist who refused to serve this guy on moral grounds, he probably would strike.

Funny, I had forgotten about that incident until reading this thread.

Here's a few things that strike me as wrong with this anti-birth-control stance by a few pharmacists:

Religious argument. These people want to make a moral stand, presumably to assuage their consciences, obey what they see as God's will, and possibly at least a little to impress their friends and family. But they also want to be insulated from all the costs and consequences of assuming a moral stand. There are some lines about this in the Bible; Jesus is on record as respecting the small contribution that cost the giver a lot (a poor widow giving two coins to the poorbox) ten thousand times more than the large contribution that did not really cost the giver anything (the rich man's much larger donation).

It does not show moral courage to take a moral stand without being willing to make any sort of moral sacrifice. It shows cowardice to want to shift the sacrifice to a third party who never consented and who only wants medical attention.

Medical argument. Kuu brought up the excellent point that many people, myself included, use the Pill not for birth control but to solve other medical problems. In my case, the pill has been hugely beneficial in allowing me to be a productive citizen every day. I have a dear friend whose hormones are so irregular that she was prescribed the pill to regulate them -- she was told that she needed to spend a few years on the pill if she ever wanted to have children later. A "moral" pharmacist could cost her her fertility, in a pretty neat reversal of what they thought they were doing. And I agree with bloomsby that the thought of having to justify oneself to a pharmacist, probably in a public shop to boot, is absolutely horrifying. These are private and often embarrassing medical issues!

I am also horrified at the prospect of being selectively denied medical treatment, even for religious reasons. Let's consider a few other scenarios:

- An Orthodox Jewish surgeon is, let's say, fabulous at heart surgery, but his religion forbids him to touch women who are not related to him. If he is the only heart surgeon within miles of a woman with a heart condition, and she is most likely unable to survive a flight to another hospital, should he be allowed to refuse to treat her? Shouldn't he have sought a job where there would be other heart surgeons available?

- Many, many religions consider menstruating women unclean. If I go in for my annual physical, can the nurse refuse to take my blood pressure if I happen to be beginning my period? What if I'm trying to give blood at the Red Cross, but it's the wrong time of month -- should I be turned away?

- What if a nurse is a Jehovah's witness and refuses to help give blood transfusions? I can easily imagine a scenario (say, a sixty-car pileup on the highway) when all hands would be needed.

Legal argument.If you know that your religion prohibits you from performing certain aspects of a job, then you darned well find another job. Your religion is your responsibility. A much less time-critical example is the day of rest. In most U.S. states, the law requires that businesses over a certain size allow people to take off religious holidays (not only the Sabbath but also non-Sabbath days like Christmas or Yom Kippur). If you know that you will not work on Sunday, then you look for a job at one of those large businesses, not at a tiny deli that isn't covered by the law and would need you 7 days a week. If you are a devout Muslim, you don't get a job at a pork processing plant and then demand that they switch to turkey to accommodate you. The onus is on YOU to find a way to balance your work and your religion. You can't expect the rest of the world to go out of its way for you!

In the UK, where the 'compensation culture' is nowadays rampant, police officers have successfully claimed large sums in compensation for having 'suffered stress and trauma' at seeing dead bodies in the course of their work. Similar claims have been made in other professions, often successfully.
Surely people entering these professions should do so in the full knowledge that some unpleasant scenes are likely to be encountered? There's a saying 'if you don't like the heat, get out of the kitchen', and I reckon this should be the guideline for people who won't do their job. It's not the job that's wrong, it's them!

Many thanks for a simply excellent summary of the misgivings that I (and, I think, also many others) have about the report.

There's one point I'd like to develop a little:

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It does not show moral courage to take a moral stand without being willing to make any sort of moral sacrifice. It shows cowardice to want to shift the sacrifice to a third party ...

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I couldn't agree more!

There are, as you say, three parties to this. I mentioned earlier that I don't expect pharmacists to be zombies. However, if a pharmacist feels it necessary to query a prescription, surely the query should go to the person who issued the prescription, the physician. Of course, a pharmacist phoning a doctor with a reprimand for issuing an 'immoral' prescription could expect an earful about clinical judgment and possibly also stories about his or her self-righteousness to start circulating in the local community.


In his zeal to demonstrate a 'moral stand' or whatever, the pharmacist picked on the weakest member of the trio.

What kind of advertisement for Christianity is the cowardice of a bully? There is a difference between religion and religiosity.

Some many years ago I had a rubbish removal business, nice little money earner it was too. There were a number of jobs that I wouldn`t do for the following possible reasons:

A] I simply had no need to do the work.

B] Religious concerns I had.

C] I didn`t like the look of the customer.

D] I didn`t like the look of the work.

E] It`s no-ones business but my own why I refused to do the work.

Some of the jobs I was approached to do had health aspects to them that meant that if I didn`t do the work peoples health would certainly be in danger,I was geared up to be able to do the work and advertised that fact, some of those jobs I refused to do for the above reasons.

I forced no-one to accept my quotes and would have laughed in the face [and did so a few times] of anyone that told me I simply had to do the work because that was my chosen position in the work force. I would have enjoyed my day in court if I was sued for not undertaking to remove rubbish that endangered anyones health.

People that I refused to do work for rang others that would do the work and if no others were available they must have been living in the wrong area.

Does anyone think that I simply should have a legal responsibility to remove health endangering waste because I advertised that I did that type of work?
Does anyone think that I should have been made to do the jobs I refused ? If the answer is yes........well you haven`t heard how loud I can laugh.

Being your own boss means that you don`t have to take orders from anyone,follow government regulations yes, but nothing else.

Refusing to do something when you own your own business and refusing to do something when you work for something else are two entirely different things. If you own the business and you refuse to provide the service you advertised, that's on you. If you go out of business because of it, you have nobody to blame but yourself. When you take a job knowing full well what the requirements are, you are expected to function within those requirements. If you don't, your employer has the right to find somebody else who will. As Sue said, it's not like these pharmacists were taken by surprise here.

Religious convictions are fine, forcing other people to abide by them because you think they're right is not fine. I just read a piece on a rape victim who found only one pharmacy in here area that carried the morning after pill. She was denied the pill due to the pharmacist's religious beliefs. Because of this, she had to wait an extra 24 hours to get it. If this woman ends up pregnant, who is at fault? When she goes in for an abortion, many will cry foul. It's not fair in the least to force someone in this position to put off getting something she needs.

We're not talking about refusing to carry adult materials in your shop if you don't want to, we're talking about refusing medical products to people who need them.

"It's my business and I can do as I like" only goes so far, in my opinion. Otherwise, we could get such things as "It's my bus company, and I'll decide who sits in front" and "It's my lunch counter, and I'll serve whom I like". It's when the civil rights of opposing parties collide that we are likely to have problems.

"Call me dumb, but I don't see the connection..."

Ing it`s possibly against my religious beliefs to handle items that have been in contact with dead bodies. I had been asked to remove beds that people had died in and been left in for a number of days. A health concern for the people wanting my services but possibly not something my possible religious beliefs allowed me to do.

Interesting, Roos. But is it "possibly against your religious beliefs" or is it actually?

It`s a moot point Ing, I`m sure it`s against someones religious beliefs.

Navajo, I believe.

Ah thanks Agony, I was searching the web for ages before your post caused me to realize that I was Navajo.

Okay, I'm blaming a head-cold for my mistake in taking all that at face value. Note to self: get cynicism filter checked.

Especially if you're going to talk to Roos, Ing.