Slipping Down That Slope
Remember last year, when the issue of pharmacists refusing to fill birth control prescriptions on moral grounds was sweeping the blogosphere? Remember how some of us thought allowing that exception was a slippery slope, because eventually it wouldn't be limited just to birth control, Plan B, and morning-after pills?
But you're assuming this gets limited to things like birth control pills. Fine, right now, that's the issue. But let's suppose, instead, that you get a Muslim pharmacist who, for religious reasons, refuses to dispense Iletin (a pork-based form of insulin) to a diabetic in an emergency. Even in a big city, if it's the middle of the night, this is a problem. Not all pharmacies are 24-hour pharmacies and those that are generally don't have more than one pharmacist on duty at 2 a.m.
The issue was dismissed by some as "much ado about nothing".
The complaint also includes an incident from November 2005 in Yakima, in which a pharmacist at a Safeway reportedly refused to fill a Cedar River patient's prescription for pregnancy-related vitamins. The pharmacist reportedly asked the customer why she had gone to Cedar River Clinics and then told the patient she "didn't need them if she wasn't pregnant."
Hmm. So now certain pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions for other items simply based upon who prescribed them. Refusing to fill a prescription for pregnancy-related vitamins on moral grounds? Does anyone's morality seriously proscribe helping women have healthier pregnancies? Really, what next? Refusing to fill a prescription by a certain doctor because the pharmacist doesn't like him/her and thinks he/she might be cheating on his/her partner? Refusing to fill prescriptions from gay doctors? Refusing to fill prescriptions for gay patients? Where does it end?
I'm going back to my original point. If you don't want to fill perfectly legal prescriptions, don't become a pharmacist.