Plan B for Pharmacists

There is a growing movement in America to allow pharmacists to ignore their professional obligation to fill the prescriptions written by doctors. They aren't seeking the power to refuse dangerous prescriptions; instead, they want the authority to refuse legal, valid prescriptions because they have religious objections to the drugs.

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Turning customers away is bad for business. Pharmacies are in business to sell drugs. It's not good enough to tell a customer to call back tomorrow when a different pharmacist is on duty, or just go somewhere else. That may be relatively easy in a big city, albeit a good way to lose that customer's repeat business. But in some rural areas, the next pharmacy isn't a few blocks away, but many miles.

Much of the recent controversy seems to be centered on dispensing the morning-after pill, which is most effective in preventing pregnancy when taken within 24 hours of unprotected intercourse but remains effective for up to 72 hours. Women seeking morning-after pills often don't have the luxury of time to find another drugstore and pharmacist who won't have moral qualms about filling a prescription.

Pharmacists must be free to exercise their professional judgment. They provide an important check on doctors, and are a valuable source of information for patients. But there's another, arguably more important relationship that could be violated here: doctor and patient. It's easy to see how patients might find a pharmacist's refusal to fill a prescription an unwarranted intrusion into that relationship.

Good business practice dictates that employees' moral qualms cannot be ignored. But in respecting one set of concerns, pharmacy owners need to make sure another doesn't get trampled.

Pharmacists simply don't have the right or authority to determine what is and is not ethically appropriate medication for other people to use. If they can't in good conscience fill prescriptions for drugs that are medically valid, standard treatments, then they don't belong in the profession anymore.

Much of the controversy is being pushed by one group, "Pharmacists for Life." This organization is led by Karen Brauer, a pharmacist who got into trouble in Ohio when she not only refused to fill a prescription, but lied about it as well. Media Matters quotes her admission on the O'Reilly show:

O'REILLY: I got you. Now, when the customer complained, what happened there? Did you refer that customer to somewhere else?

BRAUER: I asked -- I -- she did not complain to me. OK? What happened is, she came in for a refill. I informed her that we did not carry the drug at the time. And I offered to call a copy of her prescription to the pharmacy of her choice.

O'REILLY: And then she complained. But did you -- how -- why would she complain about that, if you didn't have the drug on hand?

BRAUER: Somehow she found out that this pharmacy actually did have the drug at the time.

O'REILLY: So you lied to her.

BRAUER: Yes, I did.

O'REILLY: Ohh. Well, that wasn't good.

BRAUER: The situation concerning her privacy and concerning the people present did not really -- it was not really amenable to giving her information about her drug.

Brauer's dishonesty seems to have violated the guidelines of the American Pharmaceutical Association, but she's still suing Kmart for firing her.

Some people argue that it's OK for a pharmacist to refuse to fill a prescription so long as they transfer it to another pharmacy, but Brauer and her group oppose just that:

Brauer, of Pharmacists for Life, defends the right of pharmacists not only to decline to fill prescriptions themselves but also to refuse to refer customers elsewhere or transfer prescriptions.

"That's like saying, 'I don't kill people myself but let me tell you about the guy down the street who does.' What's that saying? 'I will not off your husband, but I know a buddy who will?' It's the same thing," said Brauer, who now works at a hospital pharmacy.

Also:

"There is no moral or ethical obligation to tell a person where to get a drug that is detrimental," Brauer said. "Any patients who can transport themselves to a pharmacy can obtain the product they desire without need of a direct referral. Patients have proven themselves to be quite resourceful in obtaining pharmaceuticals. The referral rhetoric has been a tool to obtain involvement by the unwilling in dispensing drugs that stop human life or are detrimental. Obtaining the involvement of the unwilling has been used as a tool to legitimize the procedures and drugs that are in controversy."

Finally:

A pharmacist by virtue of properly understood conscience cannot be licitly compelled to cooperate in such a fashion with what he knows will result in a chemical abortion and, hence, a dead baby. Such activity is called material cooperation. Further, it is not an inconvenience to refuse to refer such a client since the pharmacist is doing the woman and her preborn child a favor in terms of physical and spiritual health.

Material cooperation with such an evil can never be licit even if it may be lawful, as it is in today's society. In fact, pharmacists aware of the evil nature of such a scenario would have a duty as a pharmacist and a person not to cooperate in such an evil even under pain of serious adverse ramifications. Some authors, hiding their publicly stated support for any and all baby killing, have erroneously stated shameful opinions which equivocate on the rights of conscience and thus claim a pharmacist may have a right of conscience, but if all else fails, he must cooperate with the evil in our example. Such thinking shows the irrational absurdity and confusion in the minds of those who adhere to such ideas.

The above Media Matters link has quite a lot more information on Karen Brauer and "Pharmacists for Life," apparently the newest Christian Right group trying to limit women's rights in the name of personal religious piety.

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