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September 13, 2005
Clause allows pharmacists to refuse emergency contraceptives
It seems that impartiality in law can take a backseat to personal beliefs more than we like to admit. No, I’m not referring to the Roberts decision, but instead to something a little close to home; a few blocks from what we all might call home to be precise.
CVS pharmacy may look about as cuddly as the IRS on tax day from the outside, but they are the pharmacy that really cares. They care so much they want to give you moral guidance. Step aside priests, pastors, and rabbis. Here comes the neighborhood pharmacist.
CVS gives its pharmacists the right to refuse to dispense abortifacients, also known as emergency contraception or the morning after pill, to their customers on the basis of personal moral or religious beliefs.
Even more bizarre is the fact that it’s completely legal. According to the National Organization for Women, under what is called the “conscience clause”, initially started by the American Pharmacists Association in 1998 and later made law in 44 states, according to NCS News, health care providers can refuse to dispense emergency contraceptives on religiously affiliated grounds.
Inevitably, this issue has become national, and both sides of the Senate floor are duking it out while pharmacists exercise martial law in “pick up” windows all across America and get away with it the majority of the time.
For example: according to ABC News.com, a Kentucky K-mart pharmacist was fired for refusing to fill contraception prescriptions, got the okay from a federal judge to sue her former employer on the grounds of the “conscience clause,” which by no means has been declared federal law.
Somehow it seems that the personal beliefs of the medical community have become more important than ours in the eyes of the law and the nation’s largest pharmacy chain. Is there a professional hierarchy of religion somewhere that they’re referencing? What precisely are these religious grounds that these decisions are based upon? Are certain beliefs deemed “officially religious and/or moral” in some statute somewhere? If my pharmacist is morally opposed to my fashion sense do they get to tear up my prescription?
To my recollection there are people morally opposed to war out there, but they will still get drafted if it is deemed necessary. None of the rest of us get to use our workplaces as a pulpit (with the obvious exception of clergy and the like), why do CVS pharmacists? I sure could use some guidance in finding the answer, and maybe I could pick up some Advil at the same time.
Posted by msveum at September 13, 2005 01:05 PM