Tell Us Your Thoughts: Should Pharmacists Be Allowed to Refuse Dispensing Birth Control Pills on Moral Grounds
by www.SixWise.com
The United States of America. You can shout out your thoughts
freely to anyone who will listen, write a letter to the government
expressing your opinions about fast food, the school system,
health care -- just about anything -- but you may not be able
to get your birth control pill from your corner drugstore.
Not if the pharmacist there has moral or religious objections
to it.
Pharmacists in at least 12 states, including California,
Washington, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Texas,
New Hampshire, Ohio and North Carolina, have refused to fill
prescriptions for birth control pills or emergency contraception
like the Plan B or "morning-after" pill, in some
cases causing women to miss pills or the time-sensitive window
in which the Plan B pill is most effective.
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Tiny pills at the heart of a
major controversy.
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Says Steven H. Aden of the Christian Legal Society's Center
for Law and Religious Freedom in Annandale, which defends
the pharmacists:
"This is a very big issue that's just beginning to
surface. More and more pharmacists are becoming aware of
their right to conscientiously refuse to pass objectionable
medications across the counter. We are on the very front
edge of a wave that's going to break not too far down the
line."
"Just Fill the Prescription"
When a pharmacist near Fort Worth, Texas refused to fill
a birth control prescription because she didn't believe in
it, the customer, 33-year-old Lacey, was not able to get her
pills until the next day, and missed taking one.
"I was shocked," said Lacey. "Their job is
not to regulate what people take or do. It's just to fill
the prescription that was ordered by my physician."
Still, some pharmacists feel it's their right not to give
out drugs that go against their moral beliefs, regardless
of whether or not the patient has a prescription.
"There are pharmacists who will only give birth control
pills to a woman if she's married. There are pharmacists who
mistakenly believe contraception is a form of abortion and
refuse to prescribe it to anyone," said Adam Sonfield
of the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, which follows
reproductive issues. "There are even cases of pharmacists
holding prescriptions hostage, where they won't even transfer
it to another pharmacy when time is of the essence."
Along with refusing to fill prescriptions (and even give
them back to the patient to take elsewhere, in some cases),
some women have also received lectures from the pharmacists.
"I shouldn't, as a mom, if I'm driving into my drive-through
pharmacy, have to get into a moral debate with my pharmacist
on the way to picking up my kids over whether I should have
my birth control pills prescription filled," said Rep.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.
Right now, legislation varies from state to state, with some
states giving pharmacists the right to refuse, and others
requiring them to fill all prescriptions.
Illinois, for instance, was the first state in the nation
to issue an emergency ruling requiring all the state's pharmacists
to fill "morning-after" pill prescriptions, without
delay, regardless of personal beliefs. The ruling came after
a Jewel-Osco pharmacist in Chicago's Loop refused to fill
two prescriptions for a "morning-after" pill.
"What's next?" asked Nancy Keenan, president of
NARAL-Pro Choice America, "They're not going to give
HIV and AIDS medication? Not going to give cholesterol medications
because they think you should exercise a little bit more?"
Pharmacists Have Rights, Too
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"We don't have a profession
of robots," says Susan
Winckler of the American
Pharmacists Association.
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"I refuse to dispense a drug with a significant mechanism
to stop human life," says Karen Brauer, who was fired
in 1996 after refusing to refill a birth control prescription
at a Kmart near Cincinnati, Ohio.
Brauer is also the president of the 1,500-member Pharmacists
for Life International. "Our group was founded with the
idea of returning pharmacy to a healing-only profession. What's
been going on is the use of medication to stop human life.
That violates the ideal of the Hippocratic oath that medical
practitioners should do no harm," she says.
The 50,000-member American Pharmacists Association maintains
a policy that a pharmacist can refuse to fill a prescription
for moral reasons, but they must have an alternative available
for the patient to get the pills. Says Susan C. Winckler,
the association's vice president for policy and communications:
"We don't have a profession of robots. We have a profession
of humans. We have to acknowledge that individual pharmacists
have individual beliefs. What we suggest is that they identify
those situations ahead of time and have an alternative system
set up so the patient has access to their therapy."
A Bill to Make Everyone Happy?
To curb this controversy that's disrupting increasing numbers
of pharmacies and patients, Congress is now considering a
bill, as of September 2005, that would allow pharmacists to
refuse to fill a prescription if another person at the same
location could fill it.
The bill places the burden of filling the prescription on
the store, rather than on the patient as is now sometimes
the case.
If the bill is passed, pharmacies that violate the ruling
could be fined up to $5,000 a day and face civil lawsuits
from patients.
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Please
Let Us Know What YOU Think
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Sources
Fox
News August 4, 2005
Washington
Post: Pharmacists' Rights at Front of New Debate
USA
Today: Druggists Refuse to Give Out Pill
The
Journal Editorial Report
Daily
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