The Christian Right has insisted on using the concept of "conscientious objector" to describe pharmacists who refuse dispense legal prescriptions on moral grounds. I'm not sure, however, if they really understand what the concept means and whether they would be willing to take it to its logical conclusion.

Chris Floyd writes:

A conscientious objector refuses military service because he feels he might be called upon to violate his moral code by taking up arms; vegans don't open butcher shops. We can all agree that no one should be forced to act against their conscience (although try telling that to the IRS if you object to your tax money feeding Bush's war of conquest); but no one has drafted these pharmacists and forced them to dispense their nostrums. As Jesus said, If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off. And if thy freely chosen profession puts your moral panties in a twist, then go do something else.

Obviously they use the concept of "conscientious objector" because they want to be associated with the positive image people have of pacifists — and no one feels right about forcing a pacifist to go to war and kill others, right? Floyd points out here, though, that no one is forcing pharmacists to adopt a profession in which they will be dispensing prescriptions. Being a pharmacists is not at all like being drafted.

If the Christian Right's image of "conscientious objection" here were to be extended to the military, then people could be drafted or even volunteer for the army, but pick and choose which battles they will go fight. Would the Christian Right support this? Of course not. They would argue, quite correctly, that the mission of the military is undermined when people can pick and choose which duties to perform. The same is true, however, of pharmacists: the public mission of providing medication to people who need it will be undermined if people can't trust pharmacists to do their job.

Leonard Pitts, Jr. writes:

Let's say you join the Army. You go through basic training and are sent to Iraq. One day, your unit comes under fire. Everybody shoots back except you. When your commanding officer demands to know why, you explain that as a Christian, you have moral objections to killing people.

[N]o one has the right to refuse to perform some foreseeable aspect of their job. I mean, if pharmacies of the future began dispensing crack, OK I might sympathize with the pharmacist who refused on moral grounds. How was she to know that would become part of the job description when she signed on?

However, just as the soldier in the scenario should have known that shooting people might be part of his day's work, so should a candidate for a pharmacy job understand that she might have to hand out contraceptive pills and devices.

The problem is getting more and more serious:

[A] chilling report last month in the Washington Post suggests that some have gone even further. It told of pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control pills to unmarried women, of those who will not sell contraceptive devices to anybody, period, and of those who not only won't fill morning after prescriptions, but who hold the prescriptions hostage, refusing to return them to customers, knowing time is of the essence because the pill is less effective if taken too long after intercourse.

I rather doubt that the Christian Right even supports the cause of the few soldiers who have refused to return to Iraq and are trying to claim "conscientious objector" status in that situation, which means that their defense of pharmacists contains more than a wee bit of hypocrisy.

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