Jewish delicatessens are not decreed to sell pork sausage.
Muslim-owned groceries are not forced to sell beer.
Vegetarian restaurants are not coerced into putting fried chicken on the menu.
Bookstore owners are not obliged to hawk racist tracts.
Video store owners don't HAVE to sell pornography.
Unemployed women are not required to accept job-offers from brothels
Doctors are not forced by law to commit assisted suicide, abortion, or the death penalty.
If a pharmacy OWNER is to be COMPELLED to do something that he/she believes is grossly immoral, or even a crime, aren't we saying that pharmacists, unlike every other category of American, have no right to actually live and work according to their conscience?
Aren't we saying that practicing Catholics (and other prolife Christians) are henceforth forbidden by law to be doctors or pharmacists?
The pharmacists who have balked at certain prescriptions which are (they are convinced) morally harmful and therefore unethical, are a small but valuable voice of conscience within their profession. We can certainly tolerate medical and pharmaceutical "conscientious objectors" for the sake of the Republic.
I think most of us are arguing from a standpoint that there are few pharmacists who own the pharmacy. It's assumed that this situation would most often happen where an employee is making this decision, and what's uncertain for me is how many pharmacy owners have backed up that decision. It's my view that pharmacy owners should certainly be able to decide. In fact, if someone wants to open a Catholic drug store where Catholics could go and not even have to deal with ~looking~ at condoms, then more power to them. But I would doubt there would be very many of the chains who would want to make that decision.