Posted on 04/02/2005 7:26:51 AM PST by Sthitch
ST. LOUIS — Responding to complaints about a Chicago pharmacist who refused to dispense birth control pills, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Friday issued an executive order requiring drugstores to fill prescriptions for contraceptives.
The policy, the first of its kind in the U.S., requires pharmacies that carry contraceptives to fill prescriptions without delay.
"No hassles, no lecture, just fill the prescription," Blagojevich said.
If an individual pharmacist will not provide birth control pills because of moral or religious beliefs, the drugstore must have a plan to ensure that the patient receives the pills promptly.
In most cases, that means having another pharmacist on hand to dispense the drug.
The policy does not require that all drugstores carry contraceptives; many don't, especially in Catholic hospitals.
But if the pharmacy has them, it must dispense them to anyone with a valid prescription — or risk suspension of its license, said Susan Hofer of the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which oversees pharmacies.
Because Blagojevich issued the policy as an emergency rule, it would remain in place for 150 days. During that time, Hofer said, the state will hold public hearings on a proposal to make the policy permanent.
"When you or I walk into a pharmacy with a prescription," she said, "we have to have a strong level of confidence that we're going to walk out carrying the drugs we need. If the drug is in stock, it must be dispensed. End of discussion."
But that's not the end of the discussion for a growing number of pharmacists who consider it immoral to dispense birth control pills and morning-after emergency contraceptives.
Some consider the morning-after pill a form of abortion because the hormones can block a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. Because they view that as tantamount to murder, they may not only refuse to provide the hormones, but also to transfer the prescription to another pharmacist.
"To transfer the prescription would make me part of a bucket brigade … a party to selling something that demeans or endangers life," pharmacist Neil Noesen told the National Catholic Register this year.
Noesen was recently reprimanded by an administrative law judge in Wisconsin for refusing to fill a college student's birth control prescription in 2002. That state's Pharmacy Examining Board will meet this month to decide whether his license should be restricted.
Similar cases have cropped up in Georgia, New York, Ohio, Texas, Missouri and other states in recent years.
"We're hearing about it happening more and more frequently," said Karen Pearl, interim president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
In response, abortion rights groups are promoting legislation that would require pharmacists to fill prescriptions or promptly transfer them to someone who will. A California Assembly committee is scheduled to consider such a bill next week.
On the other side of the debate, abortion opponents have proposed bills to protect pharmacists from lawsuits and disciplinary action if they refuse to provide contraceptives.
In the mid-1970s, after abortion was legalized, most states passed laws that let doctors and nurses refuse to participate in procedures that violated their religious beliefs. But only Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi and South Dakota explicitly extend that right to pharmacists.
Legislation to give pharmacists the right to act based on their beliefs is pending in several states, including Wisconsin.
"People should not feel excluded from entering the pharmacy field because they hold a certain view on when life begins," said Francis Manion, a lawyer with the American Center for Law and Justice, a group that presses religious rights cases.
Manion acknowledged that letting pharmacists turn away prescriptions could be "horribly inconvenient" for some patients, especially those in rural areas who might not have ready access to another drugstore.
"I know if I went into a drugstore and was told the pharmacist wouldn't give me my medicine, I'd be really mad," Manion said.
"But that's the price we pay for being a society that values religious freedom."
The govenor is looking out for those that dont have the power to get what they need and yes every business owner has the right to get rid of you if they dont like what you say or do just try yelling fire in a theater or hijack in an airport. If you dont want the job and all/ALL that comes with it dont do it. I dont want a doctor that is squemish around blood or a plumber that doesnt want to be around liberals(sp) because of the smell.
What? Where are you getting your info from? This is just your opinion, muawiyah, and a pretty unfair and unsubstaniated analogy.
You should stop trying to use "shock" analogies ... they make you look a little unbalanced.
I have not read all the responses, but most of them seem to ignore the real issue here--the morning after pill is not simply a contraceptive but could function as an abortifaciant. (Standard hormonal contraceptives also function part of the time as abortifaciants as well, but my understanding is that the "morning-after pill" [what a euphemism] necessarily will do so more frequently.) So the governor is bypassing the representatives of the people to force pharmacists to become potential material cooperators in abortion. That's moving abortion from a supposed "choice" for those who wish to do it to a civic duty for those in certain professions. That is a violation of conscience, in the same way that laws forcing hospitals to provide abortions or medical schools to train abortionists or (down the road, not to many miles ahead) forcing doctors to do abortions?? What has become of freedom of religion, freedom of conscience? Does citizen A's desire for an abortifaciant trump citizen B's choice to have nothing to do with what he is persuaded is immoral? Since when does the government have the power to force people to do what they believe to be morally evil?
Blago's tyranny is only the latest in a series of moves to try to force those who oppose abortion or contraception or both to become complicit in acts they belief to be wrong.
It's fine to say, "do civil disobedience and take your punishment" but surely, before a law is passed that puts people with conscientious scruples in a position of paying a professional price for their beliefs it ought to have an airing in the legislature?
Would those who see this as "no big deal" say the same if the government started ordering hospitals and medical staffs actively to participate in euthanizing babies or the disabled under the guise of carrying out a "medical procedure" rather than "filling a prescription"?
The first step is to stop calling this "contraception" and call a spade a spade: the "contraceptive abortion pill."
An addendum to what I just posted: the LATimes article itself is dishonest. The reports I had read said that the governor's action was prompted specifically by women complaining that Chicago Loop pharmacists refused to sell the "morning-after pill." The LATimes turns this generally into "contraceptives."
The governor's act may well be written with "contraceptives" language but that itself is a euphemism: all hormonal contraceptives and especially the "morning-after-pill" are at least partly abortifaciant. The Lie always begins with Orwellian double-speak.
How would the free market sort this out when only those buying bc were being denied service?
Here, let me help:
"It's a small world, after all, it's a small world after all...."
"It's a small world, after all, it's a small world after all...."
That's evil.
The misuse of language is terrible - the author equates abortion with birth control, as if there were no difference at all.
Tragic commentary on our society.
He said the day they wouldn't give him that latitude he'd have to quit otherwise he wouldn't take the chance of refusing filling prescriptions that, in combination, could cause damage or questioning obviously forged prescriptions for narcotics.
He may have been stretching to make a point, but the point was they take an oath just like doctors and not every doctor is forced to perform abortions, deliver babies, etc.
That is the worst of all ... I started humming, my wife followed, my daughter is singing it ... luckily the cats do not have the power of speech.
Tallyman, you are evil incarnate!
Good call. Did not notice it. I'm so used to these liberal rants that it's scary.
I mean come on, they equate beheading of tourists and missionary workers with putting panties on the heads of terrorists ... eventually we just get immune to it.
These people are warped beyond belief.
Words have meaning, my friend.
That said, I see the pharmacists' jobs becoming obsolete in the very near future, as we move towards mail order and Internet fulfillment of prescription purchases. It's damned expensive to have someone stand around in a white coat and count pills as they move from the big bottle to the little bottle. If there weren't so many computer-phobic old people running around, we'd have moved to this delivery model already.
It is one thing to make a point it is another to ram it down our throats until they just sound like blah-blah-blah.
I must have seen the "Bush lied, people died" signs half a million times.
" and not every doctor is forced to perform abortions"
Dont' give them any ideas... that will be next.
The abortion crowd is doing just that - "He would not dispense BIRTH CONTROL!"
They want the public to believe, he would not sell me a rubber.
When, in truth, the pharmacist would not sell an abortion pill.
There is a HUGE difference. Egg, meet sperm. Sperm, meet egg. Baby.
No meeting, no baby.
And then they'll refuse to treat gay people, fat people, sluts who get VD, smokers, kids who play with toys they don't like, people of religion they aren't a part of
the list goes on.
when the floodgates open, the water just pours in.
Great job, says it all!
"Good point, but it is their choice. Walmart and other retailers choose not to carry Playboy, a violation of freedom of speech."
It is not a violation of free speech for them not to carry it. Using your train of thought, it is a violation of free speech not to carry every magazine published. No one does that. It's only a violation of free speech if they did carry it and you were prevented from buying it.
The analogy with the ham and the jewish checkout person is much better.
I'll bet that every lawsuit about Vioxx which the chasers are currently drumming up also names a pharmacist and pharmacy as defendant. Pharmacists do have the responsibility of making sure that prescriptions don't negatively interact with other drugs the patient is taking and also of instructing the patient how to thake the prescription and advising about possible side effects. The drugs mentioned here are not completely safe.
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