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Private employer has the right to set what it requires its private employees to sell.
Similarly, a private pharmacy has the right NOT to sell these products.
It's their choice.
The government need not be involved either way. The market will resolve.
How is it a violation of ones religious rights? Do your religious rights override your duty to perform you job as required by your employer? Don't want to dispense drugs that cause discomfort or possibly violate your religious standards? Don't become a pharmasist.
Walgreen's is now on my poo-list.
Change the damn law!! It's like saying a nurse MUST participate in an abortion to keep her job.
If the pharmacists are Muslim, they will be reenstated with back pay, a promotion and get a year end bonus. If they're Catholic, they will be fired, have their licenses permanently revoked and spend two lifetimes in jail.
I don't really see the religious issue here. I'm a non-Christian, so I don't really care all that much about the religious beliefs of the person who waits on me in a store.
If my doctor prescribes a medication for me, I expect that prescription to be filled when I go to the pharmacy. Right now, I use Walgreens, because it is convenient for me to do so. My wife does, too. Between us, we give our local Walgreen's a good bit of business.
One refusal by Walgreen's to fill a prescription for either of us would instantly result in our transferring our prescriptions to another pharmacy. It would also cost that Walgreen's the multiple prescriptions of my wife'd parents, who are in their 80s and take lots and lots of meds.
I am not interested in the religious beliefs of the pharmacist. They are irrelevant to me. They will either fill all of my prescriptions, or they will be filling none of them.
Surprising that this sort of thing isn't settled with a 'terms of employment' contract.
I also believe the employer has a right to terminate their position with the company if they will not comply with the terms of their employment.
Consider what most people would say if you hired a Muslim and they refused to honor customers' requests to purchase liquor and pork. You would be well within your rights to dismiss them from their job.
There is no "religious rights" stuff involved here. If the pharmacists didn't like the rules, they shouldn't have worked there in the first place.
It is interesting to see how some perpetually-offended FReepers use double standards when it comes to certain issues. By the logic used here, that catholic school that fired that out of wedlock, pregnant teacher (for breaking her contract) had no reason to do so either.
What's good for the goose and all that.....
It's the state, not Walgreen's that you should be directing your anger to, people...
Walgreen's isn't to blame here as they are following the laws of the land.
Rod Blagojevich, however, who claims to be an Eastern Orthodox Christian, is to blame. I've got to find out what Archdiocese he claims to belong to and start pushing for a public excommunication!
If you find you can't (whether for religious or any other reason), there are plenty of people who WILL do the job, despite Vicente Fox's admonition otherwise.
If you can't/won't do the job, then you need to find another job or employer.
Period.
Just damn.
If you want on the list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...
I didn't know that IL was now a dictatorship.
I hope Dear Leader Blogojevich doesn't outlaw cheese or Episcopalianism tomorrow on a whim.
The day is one day approaching when pharmacists may be asked to dispence suicide cocktails. Should the religious beliefs of the pharmacists also be ignored in this case, as the amoral morons demand?
Do the demands of religious freedom for pharmacists include every religion, e.g. Christian Science, or only Catholicism and Christian Fundamentalism?
While I commend these guys for sticking to their principles, I wonder if they refuse to dispense birth control pills as well? Birth control pills can act in the same way the morning after pill does: if fertilization does occur, the embryo is prevented from attaching to the uterine wall. In fact, that's what morning after pills are: high dose birth control pills.
Anyway, what this means is this: when Muslims want to pray during the workday, or a Jewish person wants to wear a yarmulke instead of their Burger King hat, or when Muslim police officers insist on wearing beards in violation of the uniform standards, their employers must either accommodate these religious practices, or be able to prove that to accommodate the religious practice would be an undue hardship on the employer's business.
It seems to me that these pharmacists have a case, namely: "You are requiring me to dispense a drug which violates my deeply held religious belief in the sanctity of life. I ask that an accommodation be made in order that I not be required to violate my religious beliefs and practices in order to keep this job. What accommodation, you ask? Oh, I don't know. Maybe find another Walgreens pharmacist to fill it?"
Walgreens will then try to make the case that any accommodation would be an undue hardship on the conduct of their business. Something along the lines of, "What you are forcing us to do is to have TWO pharmacists on duty when only one is really needed. This costs us lots of money and is inefficient and thereforce constitutes an undue hardship on our business."
And, a jury would decide who is right.
Abortifacients. Liars!