Meet The Pro-Life Pharmacy - No Contraceptives
23 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // June 16th, 2008 // 11:29 am
When DMC Pharmacy opens this summer in Chantilly, Virginia, the shelves will be stocked with the usual array of remedies, with one big exception - anyone who wants condoms, birth control pills or the Plan B emergency contraceptive will be turned away, The Washington Post writes.
The pharmacy is one of a small but growing number that have become the latest front in a conflict pitting patients’ rights against those of health-care workers who assert a “right of conscience” to refuse to provide care or products that they find objectionable, the paper continues.
“This allows a pharmacist who does not wish to be involved in stopping a human life in any way to practice in a way that feels comfortable,” Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life International, which promotes a pharmacist’s right to refuse to fill the scrips, tells the Post. “It’s just the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “And there’s new ones happening all the time.”
“If you are a health-care professional, you are bound by professional obligations,” Nancy Berlinger, deputy director of the Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank, tells the paper. “You can’t say you won’t do part of that profession.”
Pharmacists at eight pro-life drugstores contacted by The Post said they would not actively interfere with a woman trying to fill a prescription elsewhere, but none posts signs announcing restrictions or offers to help women get what they need elsewhere. “If I don’t believe something is right, the last thing I want to do is refer to someone else,” Mike Koelzer, who owns Kay Pharmacy in Grand Rapids, Michigan, tells the paper. “It’s up to that person to be able to find it.”
California, New Jersey, Illinois and Washington state recently began requiring pharmacies to fill all prescriptions or help women fill them elsewhere, and at least another 10 states are considering such requirements. But some states exempt pharmacies that do not generally stock contraceptives, and it is unclear how other existing rules and laws and those being considered would apply to those pharmacies, the Post writes.
Jane
I wonder if Scientology took over the pharmacies if they would get away with not prescibing psychotropics.
HorusCat
Seems to me that a private business owner should be able to conduct business as s/he sees fit. The entitlement crowd wrongly believes that it is the government’s job to make business decisions for business owners. If a Scientologist opened a private pharmacy, I see no reason why s/he could stock or not stock medications as s/he saw fit. Wouldn’t bother me in the slightest.
harpy
It’s very unprofessional, but it’s their choice. I would distinguish this from pharmacists refusing to sell contraceptives in pharmacies where they are available, however. Rest assured it will come back to bite them in the ass in one way or another. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about investing in orphanages.
Kit
This is a positively disgusting way to force patriarchy, religion and dominance over women. Don’t you tell me that I have to change MY way of life to live in accordance with YOUR religion! This country ahs freedom of religion, and no pharmacist has the right to tell me, of another faith, to live otherwise.
And to not sell condoms, even more disgusting. So that means even a married couple who don’t want to have a 15th child, must go on and have that 15th child, all so some self-righteous pharmacist can promote their extreme religious agenda?
It’s extremely irresponsible. But he, I’m SURE this pharmacy sells Viagra by the bucket, so that men can go on and pork their wives on a daily basis, whether they want it or not.
M Helm, MD
Ed, Can you find out if they will sell tobacco products? Depending on the state laws, they may be able (but chose not) to sell alcohol. I’m curious also about the chain’s approach to candy, sodas and other junk foods - these are products are not healthful and “life-promoting” (if you will).
It has always irked me (and most of the pharmacists I know and have worked with) that customers should come to a pharmacy and be able to purchase both medications and products with no health benefits, or worse, well-known and significant harmful effects to the user and others around them. However, just try buying tobacco at your local health food or vitamin store.
The chains and small stores described seem eager and willing to take a stand on a moral issue (and extend their moral concepts to others who may happen to wander in - apparently without notice). I classify the sale of condoms as a moral issue primarily as there is more than one reason (pregnancy prevention) for the use of condoms. I can argue the same for hormonal contraceptives.
To me at least, it is relevant to know their stand on the other issues which affect the quality and duration of life after it arrives. If the “right of conscience” does not apply to the sale of frankly unhealthful products, then this is all a smokescreen.
Pharm
HorusCat @12:58pm: opening a pharmacy is not like opening a country club; you have to be licensed by state to practice as a pharmacist, and, thus, gov’t inherently is involved in “private” business; you can’t just willy-nilly sell and do what you want with your private business.
Bob Freeman
Pharm, you are confusing a licensed pharmacy with a registered pharmacist; they are separate issues. The license that a pharmacy has is a business license and can be granted to a non-pharmacist; a registered pharmacist is one who passed a state board exam, etc.
Pharm
HorusCat: Also, would it bother you if your local pharmacies, refused to carry any antibiotics? thus, leaving you to travel 100 miles or more to get the medication you need to cure your common sinus infection, etc. Give me a break.
Atlex
Since these pharmacies can’t provide full service to Medicaid or private plan patients, can or should the State Medicaid program or PBMs refuse to include them in their service network? Without 3rd party reimbursement, I don’t think they would survive very long.
Nathan
It’s a sad state of affairs when one’s work requires a choice between obeying one’s conscience and getting fired. I’m glad that as a pharmaceutical researcher I’m free to “opt out” of projects that I feel are unethical. It’s a shame that other health care professionals are not allowed the same freedom. In spite of what you guys think, this is not just an issue with pharmacists. Here’s a quote from the NYT article that Ed’s story is based on:
“The pharmacies are emerging at a time when a variety of health-care workers are refusing to perform medical procedures they find objectionable. Fertility doctors have refused to inseminate gay women. Ambulance drivers have refused to transport patients for abortions. Anesthesiologists have refused to assist in sterilizations.”
People on this site continually pound on researchers, doctors, and pharmacists for lack of ethics. Finally a group of professionals is taking a stand for something they believe is unethical and you guys pound on them too. You guys want don’t want these people to have ethics. You want them to have YOUR ethics.
Doc
Here we go again. If you are a MD, licensed to practice medicine in your state, even if you are an ob-gyn who has trained and knows how to perform abortions, you can decide that you will not provide that particular medical procedure to patients.
Pharmacists are licensed medical professionals practicing in their state - they should not be required to dispense abortiofacients. What’s next, force them to dispense enough opioids knowing they would be used for suicide? Where is Dr. Kevorkian when you need him?
HorusCat
kit,
No one is forcing their way of life on you. You don’t have a RIGHT to purchase whatever you want wherever you want, and that has nothing to do with patriarchy or domination. Give me a break.
Pharm,
Since these are apparently small, independent operations, I doubt that they will be the only pharmacy available within hundreds of miles. I can’t envision a market environment where a small pharmacy would find it profitable to open up where no other pharmacy of any kind had found it profitable. And a pharmacy refusing to sell a wide array of products such as antibiotics probably would not remain in business very long, so the free market would take of the issue.
No matter; no business owner should be forced to sell a product, period. You won’t catch me with that “refuse to sell antibiotics” line–I am consistent in my belief in a free market and capitalism. Someone who does wish to provide contraceptives, etc., is perfectly free to open up a competing pharmacy. That’s the way a free society operates, not by government coercion.
HorusCat
Little by little we give away our liberty by agreeing that someone else should be forced to do something or prevented from saying something…individual liberty is the most precious thing we have. And we are smilingly giving it away.
Robert Bird
It depends what expectations/requirements if any for availability of services whether they should have to state openly the unavailability of birth control/Plan B services - if there is no expectation of such, then they don’t have any reason to announce their refusal to sell such services. Of course, if they refused to carry antibiotics people might be peeved, and if they didn’t carry tobacco, junk food, or candy, their profits would be peeved.
From the response, I assume that part of the purpose in refusing to provide services is to prevent behavior they don’t like (refusal to state their position or to reveal availability elsewhere). I don’t believe in giving the power over self to my pharmacist, and it would be an easy decision for me to go elsewhere. In some cases, though, that may not be possible, and it seems to bring back the birth control issues of pre-1960’s America, with availability of certain services depending on where you live. This doesn’t seem like a good thing to me.
Oh, and a detail - didn’t the concept of sperm being sacred die with the Monty Python skit? Just curious.
Choirgirl337
Oh, that’s just lovely. I take Levora (a brand of the birth control pill) because my body doesn’t produce the proper female hormones, and without it I would have (have had, in fact) periods that last up to three months - I think that we can all agree that bleeding for three months straight is NOT healthy. Not all of us who take birth control are trying to prevent pregnancy.
HorusCat
As I pointed out earlier–a small, independent pharmacy such as this is not likely to be the only game in town. They are not going to find it profitable to open up where large-volume chain stores haven’t found it profitable. So there will almost certainly be a choice of places to fill your scrips. The free market works–people spend their money where they choose, and stores open and close in response. The sense of entitlement in America is unbelievable–you don’t have a RIGHT to force someone to sell something.
Jack2
I’m with HC. If you don’t like it, make sure you never go to this pharmacy for any reason. If you really, really, don’t like it, open a pharmacy next door and make it clear that you do provide those products.
Robert Bird
I wouldn’t think anyone could force pharmacists to deliver a service - but I would think that they should have to tell people what services they are willing to provide and which they are not. Once that is known, people can go where they wish to fill prescriptions - if they wish to support them, they can, or alternatively go elsewhere. This only works where pharmacies grow like fungus, though - if an area doesn’t have enough people, it may only support one chain drugstore, not more than one. The presence of alternatives is necessary for them not to be dictating behavior to all rather than simply following their own call.
Their position, however, seems not to be prolife - if so, not providing Plan B would make sense but not refusing to sell contraceptives (which have uses other than simply allowing people to have sex without getting pregnant). If you are interested in preventing abortion, providing contraception is likely better than not providing it (even with the failure rates of contraception, the increase in sex will likely not compensate for the failure rate of no contraception). This seems more like a method of attempting to give pharmacists control over their customers’ behavior, which makes little sence when doctors do not in general have such power (but have the responsibility of fixing the consequences, while pharmacists do not).
sosonj
The pharmacist should facilitate the proper dispensing of a physician and alert the patient to proper administration and dosage. It should not be the function of a pharmacist to intrude on the doctor-patient relationship or the prescribed medication. The pharmacist has neither the training nor the legal right to diagnose or prescribe. If the pharmacist has an ethical objection to filling a legally prescribed medication, find another job but do not put the onus and inconvenience on the patient.
HorusCat
Robert,
Strict Roman Catholics may believe that preventing pregnancy in any way is not within the guidelines of their faith. Such believers are relatively rare these days, but I went to school with a number of kids who came from extremely large RC families–the only birth control practiced was what was then known as the rhythm method. Similarly, there are some Protestants who believe that birth control is proscribed.
Robert Bird
HC - That would be true for themselves, but I’m not certain that they can reasonably apply that rule to others. Abortion seems a arguable point - though it isn’t murder (legal determination), there is a second life that lots of people treat as human to be factored in (it might be considered that if they sold Plan B, they might be asking the pharmacist to assist in the moral equivalent of murder). It seems different to forbid others from doing something you disagree with (but which doesn’t put the lives of others at risk) than to be asked to participate in what you believe to be a murder (where there is someone else who life may be at stake).
HorusCat
Robert,
They aren’t forbidding anyone else to do anything–they just aren’t aiding and abetting. Freedom cuts both ways–freedom to abort, freedom to prevent conception, but also freedom to refuse to participate in that. And I don’t believe that disqualifies one from owning a business. The customers can go somehwere else. These pharmacies aren’t replacing the local CVS…and I am sure they aren’t opening in isolated outposts in the wilds of Montana, either. Wherever these stores may open, I would wager there are competitors. These stores didn’t exist a year ago–what were these outraged women doing for contraception before that?
What this is a case of is “I want what I want and YOU better give it to me” and I’m going to use the government to force you. It is animosity to the faith-based action of another human being, because we have totally misread the constitution on the role of the state in religion. And in this society, it is pc to insult and coerce Christians. Muslims in this country are refusing to scan pork items at the grocery or carry passengers with alcohol in cabs; no one is yapping about church and state there. No one’s rights are being infringed if a pharmacy doesn’t fill Rxs for birth control pills or stock condoms.
No one has the right to coerce another into selling something. I don’t understand what’s so hard to get about that point–let the customers drive to the nearest Walgreen’s.
Jane
At the very minimun these Pharmacy’s should have to post in clear view they are pro -life pharmacy’s and do not fill birth control items. It would seem to be an invasion of my privacy to have to hand them a presciption with my name and doctor information only to tell me I have to go someplace else.