contraception question

[PaulGH]

Legally, you are required to dispense the medication.

Actually, I think that depends on where you live. In the U.S., I think that there are a few states that do allow pharmacists to exercise their freedom of conscience not to fill certain medications that they find morally objectionable. However, other states (like Illinois) do not allow such conscientious objection by pharmacists. But regardless of what the law says, I think (and I’m pretty sure that the Catholic Church has taught) that we are permitted, perhaps even obligated, to ignore any law which requires us to perform an immoral action.

Also, I would point out that pharmacists sometimes may refuse to fill prescriptions for other legitimate reasons. For example, suppose that you are a pharmacist who owns and operates a small independent pharmacy, and someone brings in a prescription for a rarely-prescribed drug which you do not keep in stock. One option is that you could order the drug from your wholesale distributor, and fill the prescription the next day. But suppose that this is a very expensive drug, and that you know that the minimum quantity which you can order is much more than you will dispense before the pills go out of date, since the drug is prescribed very rarely. Therefore, you will lose a substantial amount of money by filling this prescription.

In such a scenario, I don’t see why the pharmacist could not simply ask the patient to take this particular prescription to a larger pharmacy, where they would probably have the drug in stock, or where the pharmacy could obtain a smaller quantity of the drug from another store in the same pharmacy chain. Perhaps there is some law that I am unaware of that requires the pharmacist to fill the prescription anyway, but if so, I would argue that the law is unjust since it potentially places an unfair financial burden on a small, independent pharmacy.

Likewise, pharmacies are not interested in your “personal view” of the medication dispensed. They hired you for a specific job and you will perform it, or you will be fired, end of story. Again, if you accept the job, then you accept the rules of the job. The job says dispense it, if there is a question as to the counter actions of more than one drug or a question regarding the dosage of the drug, verify with the practitioner that this is correct.

I think that you are correct that this is indeed the way that most large chain pharmacies look at the situation, and this is precisely why a number of pro-life pharmacists have been fired. However, I have also heard of situations where pro-life pharmacists have reached agreements with their employers that they will not fill prescriptions for certain drugs. Such agreements may be rare, but they are possible.

Also, some pharmacists are self-employed (my parents were for many years, and I know of other pharmacists in my area who are as well), though I know that this is rare and that it is becoming more so all the time. In the case of a self-employed pharmacist, it is only state laws and requirements that they need to worry about.

Once verified, it is your duty to dispense the perscribed drug. to do otherwise is going against the terms of your employment.

If it is legal to disppense the drugs, the Practitioner and the Patient are the ones that are culpable, not the Pharmacist.

The above two quotes are where you and I will just have to agree to disagree. I just don’t think that the pharmacist can separate himself from the process to that extent, and overlook his participation in what could be a grave evil. But I respect that you see it differently.

Paul

 

[PaulGH]

I did have a response for this that was so elequently stated, but deleted by accident…GRRRR…

I hate it when that happens! I feel your pain.

What if it’s not that simple. Let’s continue the example further using me as the patient who has an anti-psychotic and anti-drpression medicine to fill. I have already been delayed three days in getting this perscription which prevents me from harming myself or anyone else.
You are the Pharmacist who truly and honestly believes that psychological medication is wrong and will refuse to fill the perscription.
you tell me that I am sinning and that I don’t need it and refuse to distribute the medication to me.
In light of this, I go to another pharmacy, and am greeted with the same answer. I go to a third, pharmacy and, again, am refused.

I understand what you are saying, but in real life, I think that situations like this would tend to work themselves out, so that the situation that you have described above would be very unlikely. Here’s what I mean:

Let’s assume that the moral values of pharmacists as a whole are about the same as the moral values of society as a whole. This is probably a fairly good assumption. Now suppose that 5% of people in society, and thus about 5% of pharmacists, have a moral objection to psychiatric drugs. In this case, you probably aren’t going to have a problem getting a psychiatric prescription filled, because you can go to any of the 95% of pharmacists who have no problem filling such a prescription. Even if we bump the numbers up to 25% or 50%, you still probably wouldn’t have any trouble finding a pharmacy to fill your prescription, unless you live in a VERY remote area. And if the number were around 50%, then you would probably see certain pharmacies advertizing that they will fill psychiatric prescriptions, or your doctor would point you to a pharmacy where you could get the prescription filled at the time that he wrote it for you, since it would be a known fact that only half the pharmacists out there are willing to fill your prescription. Or, you could simply call a few local pharmacies and see which one is willing to fill your prescription. Thus you would probably be saved from having to travel to pharmacy after pharmacy.

So then let’s take things further, and suppose that the number climbs higher. What if 80% or even 90% of pharmacists refused to fill prescriptions for psychiatric medications? Well, this probably means that a lot fewer doctors are writing such prescriptions, and that a lot fewer patients are willing to take them, if we assume that the moral values of patients, doctors, and pharmacists are at least roughly in sync. So there would be fewer frustrated patients trying to find those few pharmacists who will fill their prescriptions. Also, it’s more likely in such a scenario that the few pharmacists and doctors who are willing to dispense or prescribe such medication would work more closely together, so that the doctor could still recommend a place for you to go to get your prescription filled.

What if we take it even higher then, to maybe 95% or even 99% of pharmacists who are unwilling to fill psychiatric prescriptions? Well, in that case, we probably wouldn’t be having a discussion about this topic, since society as a whole would be in almost unanimous agreement on this issue – unless for some reason pharmacists are WAY out of step with everyone else.

So the bottom line is that I just don’t find this example, or the analogous example of some pharmacists refusing to fill contraceptive prescriptions, as being horribly problematic, from anyone’s point of view.

Also, as one final note, you said in your example, “you tell me that I am sinning and that I don’t need it and refuse to distribute the medication to me.” I just want to clarify that if I were a pharmacist, and if I refused to dispense contraceptives to someone, I would never accuse them of sinning. That is not at all the approach that I would take.

Paul

 

[Spirithound]

When you take a job, you know what it involves, especially when you have to go to school for it. If you morally object to any of the tasks asked of you by the career you are persuing, then you should not be pursuing that career.

When we abdicate our responsibility to at least attempt to fix moral situations, hell ensues.