www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Pharmicists refusing to give out the Pill

Francis, a pharmacist does not prescribe, just supplies. If it is against the moral code of the pharmacist (something I support), then, they ought not to stock those contraceptive pills.

The simple response would be to look at the prescription, and HAND IT BACK, saying that they do not carry it, but the person can go elsewhere. Keeping it, and refusing to give a referral to a pharmacist who stocks it, IS, in fact, making a moral judgment on the person presenting that prescription, which it is no one's right to make. Even if 96% (someone's number, above) take the Pill for contraceptive purposes, the remaining 4% should not be either forced into suffering for even one day, or being forced to publicly state their medical condition to a judgmental individual whose business it is not.

Gaudior, who does not support birth control, invasions of privacy, or allowing someone to impose their morality on others

Dear Friends:

Almost all, if not all, countries have enacted or have existing, "conscience laws" to protect the uninhibited practice of health care professionals based on moral grounds.

In the U.S., I think 46 of the States have such guarantees for protection granted in favor of doctors, nurses, and allied medical professionals.

However, except in the States of Mississippi, South Dakota, and Arkansas as indicated by the article cited by Tammy, the term "health care professional" does not include pharmacists and these health care professionals are, therefore, subject to suits and to employment uncertainties.

Recently, 10 States tried to extend such protection to pharmacists, as a consequence of the "raging" battle between pro-life and pro-choice groups concerning the propriety and legality, on the part of pro-life pharmacists, of not filling or refilling prescriptions for birth control pills and/or abortifacient drugs.

I think all 10 States have thus far failed to enact such inclusionary laws. However, with the "clear mandate" Pres. Bush got for his 2nd term and the gain the conservatives (read "Republicans) in a majority of the States, the battle ground again is ripe for such protection to be extended to pharmacists.

It boils down really to our concept of morality.

Amado

Who thinks pro-life pharmacists should continue to have the choice!

Dear Gaudior, et al:

This, of course, brings up another important point. The day and age of the "corner drug store" is pretty much over. It's all Walgreens and CVS and the mega stores such as Wal-Mart and K-mart.

The individual pharmacist has no control over what their behemoth employers will carry.

If a customer comes to their local 24-hour Walgreens in the middle of the night with only one pharmacist on duty who refuses to fill a prescription - that pharmacist better have their resume handy.

What I'm saying is that unless the states outlaw firing someone for their refusal to serve a customer (a slippery slope if I ever heard one), then the huge drug-store chains will simply fire those who won't dispense the stuff.

As for giving a pharmacist a moral "out," there's another slippery slope. Where do you draw the line?

What about prescribed medicines following an abortion or contraseptive surgery?

Do we really want our private lives invaded by activist pharmacists any more than activist judges?

I'm sorry, but a pharmacist should not be allowed to question a physician's orders unless there is a danger of adverse drug interactions or other physical effects.

They should not be allowed to be on-the-spot spritual advisors.

Yours,

hal

Dear Hal, Esq:

So, are the issues joined Counsellor?

Amado

Dear Amado, Esq.:

In a way they are, and in a way they are not. :p

Very truly yours,

Hal

There's an important point here.
And it's connected to the discussions we've had over morality in voting.

The issue is not should I vote for or work for or associate with sinners. One can make choices here but this is not the pivotal moral imperative.

The moral imperative ivolves the idea of cooperation. To prescribe medicines following one of the procedures is not, ISTM, cooperation - formal, material, proximate, or remote. The idea of not filling prescriptions in these cases is not related to avoiding cooperation in sin, ISTM. It would just be a personal choice not to "cooperate" with a sinner.

Dear DJS:

So is part of the distinction that you are drawing the question of whether one is cooperating with a sin that has already been committed as opposed to one that might be committed in the future?

Please enlighted me further on this issue.

Yours,

hal

Indeed. And for that matter is potential material cooperation a sin, or does it only become the sin occurs. If the sin never occurs, is there cooperation.

Who knows about this?

Here's a better one. Suppose that some has materially cooperated in a horrific sin not yet committed. They die. What happens at the immediate judgment? Wait to see if the sin occurs? Limbo?

Augustine said something like:
The meaning of time was always perfectly obvious to me until I sat down and thought about it.

The point, really, is not whether or not it's "monstrous," as Gaudior asserts, for a pharmacist not to provide birth control to women whose reasons for taking the pill are unknown.

Instead, the point is that a pharmacist can deny prescribing or handing out any kind of medicine which goes against his conscience. Perhaps giving out the pill because a woman has extreme cramps or menstrual irregularities is still against his conscience. As such, he are not required to prescribe or to give it out, and he shouldn't be lambasted for it.

Perhaps these people prefer to play it on the "safe side," by not handing out the pill simply because of the possibility that it could be used for contraceptive purposes- - -even if a woman says she's using it for cramps.

Gaudior, you say you don't believe in imposing one's morality on another, but by being forced to participate in the distribution of contraceptives, these pharmacists are being victimized exactly through this: the morality of others is being forced on them and they are being forced to be accomplices.

I know that if I were a pharmacist and a woman came to me with simply her word (and no written proof) that she wasn't taking the pill for contraceptive reasons but needed it anyway, I would deny her. Better that she have cramps than take the chance that she is prohibiting life in her womb.

Logos Teen

Teen,

It is appalling for the pharmacist to refuse to give her back a prescription so she can take it elsewhere. Plain and simple. The prescription cannot be kept by the pharmacist because he (or she) chooses to do so. A medical doctor has determined that his patient needs that prescription. If one pharmacist chooses not to fill the prescription, due to a point of conscience, that is fine.

Keeping the prescription, thus forcing the woman to go back to her doctor, at the very least a waste of time and energy, and, possibly a waste of money as well, if another visit is required, is simply wrong. The pharmacist's job is not morality policeman. Period. He can choose not to provide the drug, but, as in any other case where a pharmacy does not have an item a patient needs, the prescription must go back to the patient.

Gaudior, who says it is a slippery slope to fringe religions who say no pain medications for those in accidents, no antibiotics for those with earaches, or strep who kill the bacteria God inflicted on them, no (well, you take my point).

The pharmacist can follow his conscience until his conscience tells him to steal a prescription belonging to a patient. Then, he is wrong.

Slippery slope indeed; let's say that euthanasia becomes legal, as it has in some places in Europe and some American states. Let us further suppose that there is a drug that is commonly prescribed for suicide, which also, in rare cases can be prescribed for other conditions. What then? Should the pharmacist still prescribe this drug, when 96% of the time it is a death pill? Especially if there are other drugs that can be prescribed for the other conditions?
-Daniel

Let me jump into this. I am an obgyn who does not prescribe contraception or do sterilizations - one of maybe 50 or 60 in the US. Existing conscience laws in the US protect doctors and nurses from participating in abortions, but are spotty otherwise. Medical students, other personnel do not have adequate legal protections, especially when one is dealing with contraception. It is difficult for non-prescribing obgyn's and family physicians to find training programs in the US, although there are a few (www.omsoul.com [omsoul.com]).

But we are much better off in the US than in Europe (with the possible exception of Italy). In Sweden and other countries with socialized medicine there have been no physicians who do not do abortions for several decades. In Catholic hospitals in Europe, IVF and sterilizations are done. It is difficult for conscientious Catholic obgyn physicians to get jobs IN CATHOLIC HOSPITALS because colleagues want cross-coverage for these procedures when they are away.

I totally support pharmacists and pharmacies who want to make ethical choices about what they dispense. Health professionals are not robots. If you demand that your health providers do whatever you want and don't support conscience laws, then you deserve a medical system in which you are passively euthanized through lack of treatment (already happening more than you think - see Wesley Smith, Culture of Death) because all the conscientious physicians have been fired.

I don't, however, understand confiscating a prescription. Perhaps it was phoned in and not easily transferable.

Magdaleni

Francis, Garrett, and Daniel,

You all need a dose of reality if you don't see the scenario you so eagerly support as an absolute affrontery to personal freedom and privacy, as well as a violation of professional ethics. And, I strongly suggest that if anyone ever requires you to prove either that you are male, rather than female, or that you know next to nothing about the female reproductive system and gynecologic disorders, you just point them to your stupid and chauvenistic statements here, which will provide ample proof to them of either:

When the day comes that the scope of pharmaceutical practice includes the diagnosis of disease and the prescription of medication to treat the diagnosed illness, pharmacists can refuse to write prescriptions for medications to treat conditions which they determine to be morally offensive to themselves.

Meanwhile, except in those rare instances where third-party payors insurers require that the prescription indicate the condition for which a particular medication is prescribed (usually limited to Medicaid and usually limited, even then, to certain high cost, non-generic, or readily abused medications), it is the business and the moral responsibility of a pharmacist to dispense medication as prescribed by a physician or other provider whose scope of practice includes the right to prescribe. If the pharmacist chooses not to do so, he or she has the obligation to return the prescription to the patient. I reject Magdaleni's idea of a phoned-in script, for the simple reason that, if such was the case, the pharmacist could have easily informed the physician's office that he/she would not fill the prescription, so that they could phone it to another pharmacy.

This notion of pharmacists imposing their morality and theological belief on persons whose lives and medical history are an unknown to them is absolute nonsense, a reprehensible misuse of a professional skill that is intended to be of service to the public, and ought to cost them not only their job, but their professional license.

Will we also tolerate a refusal to dispense medication intended to treat HIV or AIDS because the fact that someone has either condition suggests that they engage in a lifestyle that the pharmacist finds morally reprehensible? It is indeed the next step - only thing is, it's sort of a passive version of the euthanasia that Daniel is concerned about - oh gee, how will we reconcile the pharmacist's conscience with that ?

I pray that every woman who was refused and had her prescription taken sues and wins against the pharmacists involved, receiving both monetary and punitive damages, and that the pharmacists involved are permanently barred from practice of their profession.

Many years,

Neil, who has no intention of discussing this idiocy any further

Dear Neil, who has no intention of discussing this any further,

Can there be Catholic pharmacists, or should Catholics totally avoid all health professions? Have you heard of the Ethical Directives for Health Care Professionals? We are discussing issues intimate to one's salvation. Passing out pills that have abortifacient action of necessity lead one to the confessional for conscientious Catholics. There will definitely always be Catholics who come to the conclusion that they do not want to dispense or prescribe these things. Should Catholics avoid the health professions or lose their licenses because some consumer somewhere might want something immediately and doesn't want to go elsewhere?

Of course, since such pharmaceuticals are the norm in our Culture of Death, it is better if the consumers of such substances are forewarned before even cominng in.

By the way, many prescriptions are simply left on an answering machine in a pharmacy with no direct interaction between physician and pharmacist.

Magdaleni