New Jersey Forces Pharmacists to Dispense Abortifacient Drugs Regardless of Conscience

TRENTON, New Jersey, November 5, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The state of New Jersey has passed a law denying the conscientious objection right of pharmacists, won in other states through lengthy court battles, to refrain from dispensing abortifacient and contraceptive drugs.

“Discussions of morals and matters of conscience are admirable, but should not come into play when subjective beliefs conflict with objective medical decisions,” said state Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, a bill sponsor.

The decision comes just days after Pope Benedict XVI gave his support to pharmacists worldwide who reject the culture of death in their profession. “Pharmacists must seek to raise people's awareness so that all human beings are protected from conception to natural death, and so that medicines truly play a therapeutic role,” the pope said on Monday.

He called the right of conscientious objection, “a right that must be recognized for people exercising this profession, so as to enable them not to collaborate directly or indirectly in supplying products that have clearly immoral purposes such as, for example, abortion or euthanasia.”

The New Jersey law was passed in the context of numerous battles in courts and legislatures between pro-abortion governors and pharmacists fighting for conscience rights currently raging across the US.

Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich was forced by courts to back down on a law similar to that passed last week in New Jersey. The order attempted to force pharmacists in Illinois to dispense death-dealing drugs, was recently obliged by the courts to back down. The decision followed a long-running dispute between four pharmacist employees of Walgreens stores who were fired when they refused to dispense abortifacient drugs.

The American Center for Law and Justice, a public interest law firm, sued Walgreens on behalf of their former employees, saying the company had violated the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, which makes it illegal for any employer “to discriminate against any person in any manner ... because of such person’s conscientious refusal ... to participate in any way in any form of health care services contrary to his or her conscience.”

In 2005, Janet Napolitano, Arizona’s aggressively pro-abortion governor vetoed legislation that attempted to recognise the rights of conscience of pharmacists. Napolitano said, “Pharmacies and other health care service providers have no right to interfere in the lawful personal medical decisions made by patients and their doctors.”

In Wisconsin, when pharmacist Neil Noesen refused in 2002 to dispense oral contraceptives he was reprimanded and fined by his pharmacy board and limits were set on his license to practice as a pharmacist.

Currently Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Dakota have laws protecting the rights of pharmacists to refuse to dispense drugs according to their conscience and Florida, Illinois, Maine and Tennessee have some legislation that could be so applied.

New Jersey joins California where pharmacists must fill all prescriptions and may only refuse with the approval of their employer and ensure that the customer can get the drugs elsewhere. In Washington state pharmacists are challenging a similar law.

US Pharmacists Battle over Forced Dispensation of Abortion Drugs
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/apr/05041504.html

Illinois Court Rules Pharmacists May Reject Plan B
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/aug/07080308.html

“Does the law require all pharmacies to stock all legal drugs at all times? I think not. Could it do so justly? I think not. Can the law -— justly -— require pharmacists to violate their professional ethics, and fill prescriptions known to be harmful or fatal? I think not.
What is more important: to act legally, or to act justly? The latter.”

Is the drug harmful or fatal to the patient? If the doctor misdiagnosed or misprescribed, then fine, otherwise, it’s the patient’s right to have the prescription filled. The pharmacies don’t have to stock the medications, but if they do, the pharmacists, as licensed by the state, DO have to fill the prescription. If the pharmacists don’t want to fill the scripts, then they need to find employment with a pharmacy that doesn’t stock the items they won’t fill. They still have a legal obligation to send patients to the stores that do, though.

“True, the law should be overturned. But until then, conscientious pharmacists must resist.”

Then they should, and will lose their jobs, and maybe their licenses.

"Is the drug harmful or fatal to the patient? If the doctor misdiagnosed or misprescribed, then fine, otherwise, it’s the patient’s right to have the prescription filled."

Abortion drugs and euthanasia drugs are by definition fatal to at least one of the patients (understanding, of course, that a pregnant woman's doctor has two patients.) Fatal is still fatal, whether it was legally bought and paid for or not. And notwithstanding the unfortunate legality of elective abortion in this country, it is still a violation of the medical profession's ethics, which ought to be at least recognized and honored, if not enforced, by law.

"The pharmacies don’t have to stock the medications, but if they do, the pharmacists, as licensed by the state, DO have to fill the prescription."

The article makes reference to laws which vary fron state to state, and does not make clear whether in some cases or in all cases the pharmacies are obliged to stock lethal drugs. I know that in recent news the government of Chile has taken legal action against 6 major pharmacy chains which declined to carry life-destroying drugs (google news chile pharmacy) --- whether that has happened in some US states I do not know.

"If the pharmacists don’t want to fill the scripts, then they need to find employment with a pharmacy that doesn’t stock the items they won’t fill. They still have a legal obligation to send patients to the stores that do, though."

As I stated above, it's not clear that that's possible, since we don't know whether the pharmacies are in any or every case required to stock the drug.

“True, the law should be overturned. But until then, conscientious pharmacists must resist.” "Then they should, and will lose their jobs, and maybe their licenses"

All the more reason to overturn the law. The church related clinics and hospitals and associated pharmacies (Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, whoever) should join forces and push for the rights of conscientious objectors.

Odd to think that the Left would join in this defense of conscence if it were a matter of physicians and pharmacists being pressured to assist in administering the death penalty.

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