By
Chris Heide
November 2, 2007
While addressing an international conference of Catholic pharmacists Monday, Pope Benedict XVI urged Catholic pharmacists to refused dispensing medications that have "immoral purposes such as, for example, abortion or euthanasia," according to the Associated Press.
He argued that pharmacists have a duty to protect the lives of humans from conception until natural death. This includes all drugs that would inhibit normal human life.
Although this speech doesn't have any legal implications that would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill certain prescriptions, such as emergency contraception, it would have problematic implications if the pope's advice were followed and that type of behavior was deemed socially acceptable within the United States.
Thankfully, many international pharmacists and health professionals reacted angrily in response to the pope's plea.
However, the issue of pharmacists wielding insurmountable power over their patrons has hit close to home.
Within the past few years, several cases dealing with a pharmacist's refusal to fill a prescription have arisen in the United States.
In July 2007, several Washington pharmacists "filed a federal lawsuit over a regulation requiring them to sell emergency contraception, saying it violates their civil rights by forcing them into choosing between 'their livelihoods and their deeply held religious and moral beliefs,'" according to the AP.
A pharmacist's responsibility to his or her customer must trump his or her personal values. Clearly, this is an issue that should have been put to bed several years ago, but the Pope has managed to reopen old wounds.
Few people would appreciate a dose of morally superior advice from a pharmacist when they go to pick up a prescription. A person's autonomy over his or her own body is sacrosanct. It must be protected from interference by both church and state.
If a drug is approved by the FDA and prescribed by a doctor, then a person has a legal right to obtain and consume that drug. A pharmacist's refusal to fill a prescription could put the lives of his or her customers at risk.
Many conservative religious groups link the accessibility of birth control with sexual promiscuity and an increased rate of contraction of sexually transmitted diseases among teens and young adults.
And just as a Catholic pharmacist may find abortion morally repugnant but has no legal right within the United States to impose those beliefs on others, he or she has no right to inhibit the sale of the day after pill.
Livia Turco, the Italian health minister, responded that while the pope has the right to urge young people to be sexually responsible, he cannot tell professionals such as pharmacists what to do, according to Reuters.
Reuters also reported that last August President George W. Bush said he supported restricting access to emergency contraception for minors.
Sexual promiscuity is a problem with teenagers in the United States. However, restricting access to birth control options such as emergency contraception does not prevent teenagers from having sexual intercourse. It simply makes them less prepared and definitely less safe while having sex.
While it is a compromise, we all have to realize that if you are going to have sex, then have safe sex. While not everyone agrees with such safe-sex education, pharmacists should not be able to toy with a person's ability to decide. A pharmacist voluntarily chooses his or her profession and must perform all aspects of the job.
A person certainly is entitled to his or her moral beliefs and should be applauded for defending them. However, if pharmacists feel that their moral objections would prevent them from performing all aspects of the job, then they should simply quit.
The pope's suggestions would incite something of an illegal coup in this country. Religious freedom is a fundamental aspect of the first amendment. To refuse to fill a prescription for deep religious values would be to impose those values on other citizens.
This is different than pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for their personal beliefs, because normal citizens have no other alternatives to obtain their meds. This would violate the first amendment and would therefore be unconstitutional.
Let's hope that the pope's suggestion never becomes a legal reality in our country.
[Reach columnists Chris Heide at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.]
14 Comments
#1 Lee Smith
on November 2, 2007 at 7:30 a.m.(Effingham, IL | Unverified Name)
Chris Heide's opinion piece carries pro-abortion newspeak to absurd, new extremes. Agreeing with Italian health minister Livia Turco that the pope has no right to urge pharmacists to follow their consciences, Heide appeals to "choice" to argue against the right of pharmacists to choose life and against the right of the head of the billion-member Catholic Church to encourage such a choice. In stating, "A pharmacist’s responsibility to his or her customer must trump his or her personal values" Heide also stretches to new lengths the insidious claim first made by JFK and now used by virtually every US Catholic politician to excuse the abandonment of the teaching of his or her faith in the public arena. Heide now wants this despicable formula to cover all professionals, not just elected officials. Posing as an apostle of "choice," Heide asserts that pharmacists should have no choice but to obey a "responsibility to their customers" that mandates assisting a mother in killing her unborn child. In Robert Bolt's play, A Man for All Seasons, when Cardinal Wolsey chides Thomas More for "obstruct[ing] those measures [to obtain a divorce for Henry VIII] for the sake of your own personal conscience," More replies: Well ... I believe, when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties ... they lead their country by a short route to chaos." But Heide can rest easy because in this country and in Europe - already in chaos - most Catholics, unlike More, who was ready to face prison and death for his faith, agree with society at large rather than their church in approving of abortion.
#2 Joel Pierce
on November 2, 2007 at 9:01 a.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
This may display my ignorance, but how is a pharmacist deciding to not provide a certain product because they find it immoral, different from a clothing shop deciding not to sell sweatshop produced clothes or a coffee shop only selling fair trade coffee? If we are willing to let merchants make moral decisions about their products in other arenas, why are pharmacists not allowed to?
#3 Joel Pierce
on November 2, 2007 at 9:17 a.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
That being said, I think if a pharmacist works for a hospital or other institution, it seems right that the institution should be able to fire a pharmacist for not providing the drug, just as Walmart should be able to fire an employee for refusing to stock the shelves with sweatshop produced clothes.
#4 Joel Pierce
on November 2, 2007 at 10:03 a.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
As to Heide's claim that pharmacies are somehow different (and again I may be displaying my ignorance), because they are the only place patients can obtain the required drugs, I am guessing that in any given town their probably exists more than one pharmacy and probably not all of them are run by strictly observant Catholics. If this is not the case and people will really not be able to get access to the drug, might I suggest Heide and others like him engage in reasoned debated and campaign to sway the moral reason of pharmacists instead of arguing for the suppression of that reason in the workplace. Such efforts might be difficult, but I believe that Heide must agree that an approach biased toward protecting the free use of a people's moral faculties, even when it is inconvenient for the rest of us, is preferable in a free society.
#5 Brad
on November 2, 2007 at 2:01 p.m.(Seattle, WA | Unverified Name)
If a pharmacist owns his own establishment, I can understand his right not to dispense medicines that conflict with his moral beliefs, as the above example of not stocking sweatshop-produced clothing or only selling fair trade coffee illustrates. If they work for someone else though, I don't think they should be shielded from the consequences of their decisions - they shouldn't be protected from being fired for their refusal to dispense such products. It's part of the job, if you don't like it, find another. It's just like the multiple incidents at the Minneapolis (I think) airport where individuals of the Muslim persuasion refused to transport passengers carrying alcohol. It's part of the job - if you don't like it, find another.
#6 Peter Einwaller
on November 2, 2007 at 2:31 p.m.(Portland, OR | Unverified Name)
The Pope's recommendation is already a legal reality in our country: each person has the freedom and liberty to provide a service to whomever they choose to; this is a fundamental liberty. It sounds like you would like to compromise the real "choice" of a citizen just like a marxist would - you must do whatever insane thing the state might determine you should do. Can you say "secular progressive brainwashing".
#7 Joel Pierce
on November 2, 2007 at 2:39 p.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
On a separate point, Heide's analogy concerning abortion seems to be a bit fallacious. While it's certainly true that a Catholic pharmacists, or more the point Catholic doctors, do not have the right to stop someone from having an abortion, they do have the right (or at least should) to not participate in that action.
Finally, just to clarify what I believe the Pope's position is (in accordance with Humanae Vitae): the Pope is opposed to not only the morning after pill, but also all forms of contraception. This is different from the standard Protestant pro-life (or anti-choice, however one wishes to label it) position and one needs to be careful not to conflate the two.
#8 Stefaan C Hublou
on November 3, 2007 at 11:10 a.m.(Leuven, Belgium | Unverified Name)
Hello people;
I have read with great interest Heide's article and the coments made. I am happy and impressed by the quality of this discussion thread. These viewpoints have enriched my thinking on te Pope issuing moral Calls and on the difficult moral and existential problem of different ways people use to enable themselves to enjoy affection and sexual intercourse without leaving open the (Super)Natural effect of the woman becoming a mother and both people assuming their role to become a father and a mother (again)...
As a historian with an autodidactical knowledge on natural history and (evolutionary) biology, I would like to add the perspective that Mother Nature/The Creator seems to make a big difference between a fertilized egg and a creature that has reached maturity; the former are usually much less protected and thus inbued with value (out ot the one million fertilized Salmon eggs, only a couple of adult fish stay alive after one year) then individuals that are of a higher degree of refinement and complexity like (sub)adult Bonobo's. These fellow creatures are protected by groupmembers as well by their own skills against the dangers that always seem to lure around the corner in this World..
#9 Lee Smith
on November 3, 2007 at 10:05 p.m.(Effingham, IL | Unverified Name)
Stefaan,
In teaching yourself about natural history and evolutionary biology, you may have discovered that once a human egg is fertilized by a human sperm in a uterus (as opposed to salmon eggs in a spawning pool, the resulting blastocyst just about always develops in the following two score weeks into a human baby. Then the mortality of the baby who is born depends on the material conditions of the family and society into which it is born. But in our society - where a baby has an excellent chance of living until old age - 4,000 have been killed before being born each day since 1973, not by "Mother Nature/Creator" but by people who want to "enjoy affection and sexual intercourse" without taking any responsibility.
#10 Joel Pierce
on November 4, 2007 at 5:21 p.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
Stefaan and Lee,
Fascinating points from both of you. But the article seems to be not so much about the rightness or wrongness of abortion, but really about the one's abilities to act on one's convictions concerning abortion and what actions are appropriate in a specific professional setting.
#11 Lee Smith
on November 5, 2007 at 12:22 a.m.(Grayville, IL | Unverified Name)
Joel,
You are right. The discussion - correctly - has focused on the very issue you define: one's ability to act on one's convictions concerning abortion and whether or not, specifically, a pharmacist whose conviction is that abortion is an abominable taking of innocent life should be able to refuse to assist in such an abomination or, as Brad put it on Friday, have to find another job. But not to let the discussion becomes so rarified that we lose sight of what makes Chris Heide want to deny pharmacists the right to choose to defend the life of the unborn and remain in their profession, it is not our of place, I think, to consider the nature of abortion in the same context. As you pointed out on Friday, while Benedict XVI's appeal to pharmacists addressed the dispensing of drugs that have "the goal of preventing the implantation of the embryo or shortening a person's life", the church also teaches that contraception is wrong in that it artifically separates sexual intimacy from its divinely ordered purpose; presumably then the pope might advocate also that pharmacists should refuse to dispense any birth control pills. But that is not what he did in his October 29 appeal (http://www.zenit.org/article-20868?l=...). He specifically urged that pharmacists should exercise a right of conscientious objection to assisting in abortion or euthanasia. Heide argues that pharmacists have no such right. And to a limited degree you and Brad agree with her -suggesting that pharmacists who work for a hospital or other institution (as the majority of pharmacists do) should not have that right without forfeiting their employment. I disagree with Heide and with you and Brad; I agree with the pope.
#12 Edward Phillips
on November 16, 2007 at 1:34 p.m.(Seattle, WA | Unverified Name)
I'm a vegetarian who just accepted a position in the meat department at Safeway. I am going to refuse to deal with any of the products in my department as a result of my convictions even though when I accepted the job I knew what the requirements of the position were. Fair? I don't think so. You don't have a right to accept a job knowing what the expecations are and then refuse to fullfill them. Get a job where you convictions are not at risk. It called choice. Use it!
#13 Stefaan C Hublou
on November 24, 2007 at 12:56 p.m.(Wilsele, Belgium | Unverified Name)
@Lee:
I still feel that, when you put the things in their ultimate perspective, it is possible to attribute a level of "dignity" to all animals, from the lowest amoebe to the ants, to the bonobo and finally the human creature. The ability of awareness of the environment, of the self-awareness and of compassion (Jesus could be moved "in his bowels"!!) seem to me criteria that stand; they follow the line that a more and more complex and interiorated brain in creatures has given.
And answering to an American, I feel obliged to confront him with the fact that the president of the country makes a hideous thinking error in the case of evaluating life and defending the aboltion of abortus provocatus, while he moves "in defence of life" and on the other hand he is not ready to defend the lives of millions of children (= not human eggs!!!) in denying them a good social health system!
In the same way it seems obtuse to me to defend moral protection for unborn life (in issues like making use of embryo of humans) and on the other hand use a veto against laws that take care of adult humans (see "Sicko" by michal Moore!) or being hard hearted in denying grace to people that are convicted to death penalty.
In my view, that man is in many aspects opposite to good and christian, godly life; it is beautiful to see that his image and popularity are consequently decreasing day to day: democraty works; his dire ideas "can not fool everybody all the time"... In my view, God - as the King of the Universe - works trough history of mankind, and the case of George W. Bush is a clear exeple of how that goes...
Truth is prevailing in the end.. (The messiah rightly has put great value in Truth).
I really hope that the point I make is not too shocking to you, but I even more hope that my view on a certain deep Truth reaches you...
#14 Edward Phillips
on November 24, 2007 at 1:13 p.m.(Bellevue, WA | Unverified Name)
This article is not a right to life debate. It's about whether or not you have the right to refuse to perform your job based on your personal convictions. I am so sick of religious zealots misinterpreting yet another article and using it as a platform to spew their opinion. Try to get out from under your one track thinking and reread the article. You might then understand what it's about.
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