Big trouble in little Pharma

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

I can't help but think that Ruy Teixeira John Belisarius is being a little facetious, but this part of the argument against "right of conscience" exceptions for pharmacists is a winner.

This is not an abstract issue. There are tens of thousands of retail sales workers who have lost husbands, wives and parents to lung cancer and who are deeply and sincerely disturbed and saddened every single day of their working lives by the moral implications of selling a product whose destructive long-term effects they know all too well. They feel serious moral guilt about selling cigarettes, but do it simply because it is part of their job.

But seriously, in a country with wide-ranging choice of occupation this talk of "right of conscience" is a bit ridiculous. Sure, if you go to a Walgreen's in Chicago and the pharmacist refuses to fill out a prescription for birth control pills, you just walk a block over to Osco and get it there. But what your pharmacist is not only refusing to fill out your prescription, but won't refer you to another drugstore, as "Pharmacists for Life" refuse to do? Or if he won't even give the prescription back to you so you can have it filled elsewhere? To hold on to a patient's presciption is not freedom of conscience—it is theft and should be punished accordingly.

more...

These aren't isolated cases or spontaneous discoveries of sanctimonious faith. Far from it. The Alan Guttmacher Institute explains that the "conscience clause" movement is part of a larger strategy.

Three news stories from one month this year alone illustrate the pattern: In May, an ambulance worker in suburban Chicago sued a company that had purportedly fired her for refusing to transport a patient suffering severe abdominal pain to a clinic for an abortion. Later that month, an Illinois county settled a lawsuit brought by an employee denied a promotion purportedly because she refused to translate into Spanish information for family planning clients on abortion options. Also that month, a Wisconsin pharmacist faced a disciplinary hearing for refusing to even transfer a woman's prescription for oral contraceptives to another pharmacy.

Perhaps there is a balance to be struck if you live in a large metropolitan area and other pharmacies are readily available. If so, we can tailor the law so that the only pharmacies affected are those that are sole-providers for a suitably large area. And what the hell, maybe we can grandfather current pharmacists under a "right of conscience" clause. Maybe no one told them that dispensing medicine was part of their job.

But make sure to explain to the pharmacy students now in school that today's the day to change their career track if they can't stomach the responsibilities of their chosen profession. As Dahlia Lithwick put it, "[i]f you don't believe an FDA-approved drug should be legal, work at the Dairy Queen. But if a pharmacist doesn't have to dispense birth control, or an EMT can refuse to drive someone to an abortion clinic, or a nurse can refuse a rape victim emergency contraception, none of us can really trust in the professionals around us at those moments when we need them the most."

Quakers don't demand to be allowed in the military, but only if they're not required to fight. They ask to be relieved of military service altogether. So you're good in chemistry and like to wear a lab coats? There's plenty of research jobs in labs across the nation. But if you want a license to dispense medicine, dispense medicine you should do. If you want to choose what medicines are allowed behind the counter, get a seat on the FDA board. Or run for office. It's a free country, you know.