...do they dispense me a quiet place to read?

I'm just thinking: when you go to pharmacy school, don't they tell you you're probably going to be asked to dispense birth control? I'd think that'd be what half the women in America go to the drugstore for. It can't be that it's a profession closed to Catholics, right? So it's not like nobody told them, or am I just assuming too much?

Great point. This isn't about agreeing or disagreeing, this is about necessary medical treatment. I don't care what people choose to sell or not sell in private storefronts, but a pharmacy is obligated to provide medical treatment as decided and prescribed by a patient's doctors. How can anyone disagree with that? How is this not discrimination against women? What if it's your medical condition or you pharmacist who one day decides to refuse service or medicine to you? If my political stance as a pharmacist was that the very old and the morbidly obese were drains on society (or any silly reason), could I refuse life-prolonging medication to them? I don't want to do that, but why couldn't I? What if we were in a rural area of the US where these people, who aren't very mobile (as a desperate teenage girl might be), couldn't access another pharmacy?

????????????necessary medical treatment????????????

What rock did you you pull that from under.....?

Then find a different pharmacist.....it's that easy.....

It's very easy to find another pharmacy if you live in a larger town or city, and if you have insurance that is widely accepted. It's not easy to find another pharmacy if you live in a smaller locale, have poor insurance, or don't have a ready means of transportation. The pharmacy in a big city that stops dispensing has lots of competition (probably including a Planned Parenthood somewhere) but the pharmacy in a small town may not.

So if you have a Dr. in town wh oyou don't trust do you keep going to him/her even though they ae know for mal-practice etc....?

I do not understand why those persons who have religious objections to the nature of their chosen profession would enter into that profession in the first place. What if a rape victim comes to a hospital and as part of the post-rape exam, victims are giving the morning after pill. Would this same doctor have the right to ignore hospital protocol and the law to offer the pill at all?

At a pharmacy or a hospital, the needs and wants of the patient are paramount. Anyone who feels that s/he has a right to subordinate the needs of a person in need of medical care in whatever form, needs to find a new job. What potential pharmacist would not know that s/he would not prescribe contraceptives?

Regardless of religion, everyone has a right to a job. But everyone has an obligation to do all that that job requires. Otherwise, find another line of work

If your beliefs, whether religious or otherwise, would put you in a position to not be able to perform the duties, then you should choose a different profession. Simple as that. If you don't want to shoot people, you shouldn't join the military voluntarily. If you don't want to teach evolution you shouldn't be a science teacher. If I don't believe any history exists before X years ago, despite scientific evidence to the contrary, I shouldn't be a historian. If am an anarchist I shouldn't be a police officer. How is being a pharmacist special? What other professions get to pick and choose when they do and don't have to fulfill their obligations, especially when these choices may have profound effects on other people? How is this different than any number of stories where someone "takes the law into his own hands" and is arrested?

Being pro-life and dispensing birth control pills is not being hypocritical, you aren't taking them. And your "choice" could be severely affecting another person's life against their free will...

Someone who thinks abortion is illegal, especially if that person is a proponent of the death penalty, then s/he should be called "anti-choice." Calling them pro-choice gives these people the high moral ground on language if mortality.

Anti-choice is describes them perfectly.

TruettCollins:

????????????necessary medical treatment????????????

What rock did you you pull that from under.....?

The rock that says that millions of women take the pill for non-contraceptive reasons. Pull your head out from under your rock. The pill has MANY uses. For me, it IS necessary medical treatment in order for me to function normally in life.

Indeed, when I was in high school my cramps were so bad I had to stay home from school, threw up a lot, and basically took drugs and slept all day a few days out of every month because my mom and gyno thought I'd turn into a slut overnight if I was prescribed the pill. Of course the pro-life camp would probably argue that is was less "necessary" for me to be in school than on the baby-killing pill (the pro-life camp's newest campaign is "the pill kills").

But people deserve freedom over their own actions. A pharmacist can resign from an employer that dictates they must perform actions against their conscience. The employer can mandate the policies they must follow. That is a contract that both parties enter into at employment.

But a pharmacist that sets up their own pharmacy in order to follow their own beliefs should not be forced into actions that they disagree with. Would you force a Jewish grocery store owner to sell non-kosher products if it were against their beliefs? Would you obligate an Amish shopkeeper to stock batteries? Should you force a quaker to fire guns in the military? Perhaps one day heroin will be legal: should pharmacists be forced to dispense it? What if they run out? How much should they stock? Forcing people to perform against the dictates of their conscience is unkind to ask, and using the force of law to do it is tyranny. Refusing to act is not a crime.

Many of the best doctors are called to their profession by God, so you want to dictate that they should not follow where God leads them? Then you want to dictate how they obey what they feel God is leading them to......YOU ARE NOT OVER GOD.....

I personally have no problems with a birth control pill but the abortion pill is murder in my view. And I do have a problem with people who think that they are soooooo big that they are above the leadership of God.

that you can over rider God's leadership.

Many of the best doctors are called to their profession by God, so you want to dictate that they should not follow where God leads them? Then you want to dictate how they obey what they feel God is leading them to......YOU ARE NOT OVER GOD.....

I personally have no problems with a birth control pill but the abortion pill is murder in my view. And I do have a problem with people who think that they are soooooo big that they are above the leadership of God.

Advn2rgirl,

I agree with you.

How absurd is it that a person goes to pharmacy school, theoretically in order to learn to dispense medication (that's the JOB, right?) And then once in the position of 'power', they think they have the right to make a personal decision about which medications they choose to dispense, based on their own personal preferences at the moment?

So, hypothetically, say, the PHARMACIST, has a problem with someone's allergy medication prescription because the PHARMACIST has a beef with the medication's manufacturer (maybe he/she thinks they cut down too many trees, or not enough trees, or did or didn't support NAFTA, or whatever.

So they, in their ultimate wisdom, enact their own personal agenda by denying the patient their medication? And they would then dare to call this type of behavior ethical?

With this sort of rationality, I suppose each patient can expect to approach the pharmacist's counter with all the excitement of scratching a lottery ticket.

Absurdity upon absurdity.