You can't force someone to throw the switch on the electric chair or lose his job just because he is a guard at the prison.

What makes you think you can make a pharmacist dispense RU486?

If you hire on as an executioner at prison and take the bonuses that an executioner gets, then yeah, you get canned if you don't pull the switch.

If you don't want to dispense all possible medications that a patient might have prescribed for them - say pain meds because you are a Seventh Day Adventist or a Christian Scientists - then you shouldn't sign up to be a pharmacist.

Dispensing pharmaceuticals is, in some ways, a powerful position. You are involved in important and sensitive parts of people's lives. If your view of the world is so narrow that you can't handle giving people the drugs that they are legally allowed to have, you do not deserve the job.

Petty moralizers are more than welcome to work in real estate or retail or investment banking or whatever else they want.

Actually spiker is correct (by complete accident and ignorace)--RU486 is not sold at pharmacies, so no pharmacist in the US has ever been asked to dispense one. Plan B is available of course, but that is a different pill altogether.

Hey, even a blind pig gets an acorn once in a while.

"flies in the marketplace"

I'm a technical writer who spends most of her time at work in front of a computer. If I decide that technology is contrary to God's Plan (and there are plenty of "tis a gift to be simple" folk out there, so I don't think I'm being totally ridiculous), what do I do? Knit at my desk all day? Cos that would be awesome.

I don't understand why pharmacists are allowed to deny patients birth control (although no pharmacist can dispense RU486), but "moral opposition" doesn't allow them to deny any other drug. I'm sure if you convolude the Bible enough, you could find an argument against Claritin.

Right, lovelyrita. Couldn't you argue that being a pharmacist is 'playing God'? I mean, maybe God wants those people to be sick, and you are messing with God's will by giving them medication that will improve their health. Should a pharmacist be able to just sit there with his or her arms crossed all day, telling everyone they're going to hell, refusing to dispense any pills at all, and get paid for it?

The irony is, some women need to take birth control pills in order to get pregnant, at least in the long run. If hormone levels are out of whack, the pill can help get them into balance (as part of a overall course of treatment of course, not by itself). I don't know how rare or common that condition is, but I would be hopping mad if some pharmacist refused to give us the meds we need. Sure, I guess we could explain that to him/her, but it's not really his business, is it? Find a differant job.

So all prison guards are executioners?

Petty moralizers are more than welcome to work in real estate or retail or investment banking or whatever else they want.

But then there would be no doctors, nurses, or pharmacists?

RU486/Plan B do you see how you purposely miss the gist of the argument. You are ill you know :-)

If the gov't makes it generally legal for practitioners to not participate in birth/conception control then their professional licenses should contain verbiage denoting that objection. It is likely that many people would desire to enter into healthcare and still retain their belief system in this controversial area. They should not have to sacrifice a career or a field of interest because of that. Yet their employers deserve to be advised about this objection prior to their being hired. If the position in question involves a significant risk of ethical conflict then the employer can so advise the prospective hire. There is no need for the front line ethical throw down that leaves the end user shorted and at time highlighted.

This is a solvable problem. Religious people are by some definitions inherently altruistic. There are more reasons to seek them in healthcare than to avoid them. This country needs healthcare workers and there is a lot more to healthcare than abortions and birth control.

You should add that overwhelmingly those seeking procedures or medicines that some health care workers object to are not emergencies. Time does allow for alternate providers to be sought out.

I like the idea of small private pharmacies displaying their philosophical bent and that larger institutional pharmacies train objectors to diplomatically deal with incidences (i.e. finding someone to service the patient/customer).

If an employer tells you "your job is to dispense all drugs as prescribed and do it accurately," and you refuse to do it, you are liable for firing. You can't simply refuse to dispense because you don't like a certain drug. Other people make the moral decisions here, not you.

Not really a debate about this, is there?

He said "If you hire on as executioner," so why even ask?