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Posted on 10/30/2007 5:37:03 AM PDT by NYer
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI said Monday that pharmacists have a right to use conscientious objection to avoid dispensing emergency contraception or euthanasia drugs — and told them they should also inform patients of the ethical implications of using such drugs.
Benedict told a gathering of Catholic pharmacists that conscientious objection was a right that must be recognized by the pharmaceutical profession.
"Pharmacists must seek to raise people's awareness so that all human beings are protected from conception to natural death, and so that medicines truly play a therapeutic role," Benedict said.
Benedict said conscientious objector status would "enable them not to collaborate directly or indirectly in supplying products that have clearly immoral purposes such as, for example, abortion or euthanasia."
In his to the 25th International Congress of Catholic Pharmacists, the pope also said that they have an educational role toward patients so that drugs are used in a morally and ethically correct way.
"We cannot anesthetize consciences as regards, for example, the effect of certain molecules that have the goal of preventing the implantation of the embryo or shortening a person's life," he said.
Emergency contraception pills, which can be taken up to 72 hours after unprotected sex, work by preventing ovulation or fertilization. They may also prevent an embryo from being implanted into the uterus.
The issue has also been debated extensively in the United States, primarily following the introduction of the emergency contraceptive Plan B in 1999. Since last August, the drug has been available to women 18 and older without a prescription.
A few U.S. states have passed laws that specifically allow pharmacists or pharmacies to refuse to provide health care because of religious or moral objections, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights think tank based in New York.
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich made headlines two years ago when he introduced a rule requiring pharmacists to fill all prescriptions. Pharmacists challenged the rule, and a legal settlement earlier this month allowed pharmacists who object to dispensing emergency birth control to step aside while someone else fills the prescription.
The American Pharmacists Association, the largest U.S. association of pharmacists, says in its policy that pharmacists should be allowed to "step away" from activities they find objectionable. The policy also says, however, that there should also be systems in place to ensure that patients have access to prescribed medicine, said Anne Burns, a pharmacist and the association's vice president of professional affairs.
Benedict's comments resonated strongly in Italy, where pharmacists are required to fill prescriptions regardless of their moral or ethical positions, according to Federfarma, Italy's national federation representing 15,500 private pharmacies.
In a statement, the organization said the law would have to be changed to allow for conscientious objection, but noted that the change might result in pharmacists objecting to dispensing basic contraception or other hormonal drugs prescribed for medical reasons.
The issue came to a head on Monday in Chile, when the government warned it could close drugstores that refuse to sell the morning-after pill, which has been legal in Chile since last year for sale to girls as young as 14. The country's three largest drug store chains have not been selling the drugs, claiming they could not buy them locally. The government responded by fining the stores and importing thousands of doses.
One of the store chains, Salcobrand, said the government's order was a violation of "the legitimate right to freedom of opinion" on the pill. Abortion is illegal in all circumstances in Chile.
I am having a hard time picturing the Pope saying “Scripts” although it is a funny thought.
They certainly do "have a right". A "right" to go into employment that is morally acceptable to their conscience. It they are going to pursue pharmacy, they will have to do the bidding of their employer or go somewhere else whether the Pope likes it or not.
I would hope that all good Catholics would read a script before they decide whether or not to be in the movie.
Will do, Pope! Sending people who ask for Plan B down the block. :)
Apparently not.
From the article:
"Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich made headlines two years ago when he introduced a rule requiring pharmacists to fill all prescriptions. Pharmacists challenged the rule, and a legal settlement earlier this month allowed pharmacists who object to dispensing emergency birth control to step aside while someone else fills the prescription."
My wife and I have been discussing this very topic the past few days. I’m an emergency medicine physician and she’s a pharmacist. I often take care of women who have been raped. I routinely offer them prophyllactic contraception as well as medications to prevent STD’s and HIV. I leave the decision on whether they want to take it or not up to them. It’s a personal matter and I feel that pregnancy prophylaxis should be offered for victims of rape.
On one occasion, a 14 yrs. old child came in after she was sexually assaulted. She was at a party and had been drugged with GHB by the assailants. Unfortunately that day, the hospital ran out of “the morning after pills.” Both she and her parents wanted her to receive prophyllactic contraception. Thus, I wrote a prescription for Ovral. The parents of the child was unable to fill the prescription at our local pharmacies due to the personal objection of the pharmacists. They had to drive 2 hrs away to another town to get the prescription fill.
Pharmacists often do not know the entire story behind a presciption. Many see a presciption for Ovral or Plan B, and they immediately object without knowing all the facts. As a pharmacist, my wife have told me that they do not ask the bearer of the Rx for any specifics aside for the routine information, nor do they feel that they should ask whether or not the Rx is because the person had been raped. Furthermore for patients, they may view it as an intrusion of privacy.
Another scenario is when these type of medications are prescribed to patients in order regulate their menstrual cycles. Many women suffer severe metomenorrhagia and bleed severely every period to the point that they become severely anemic requiring blood transfusions. They show up to the pharmacies to get oral contraceptive prescriptions filled and are turned away.
Here’s how I’ve been handling the situation. I tell the patients up front that the local pharmacies have a tendency to refuse such medications. So I ask them if it is alright for me to talk to the pharmacist directly to give him/her some information as to why the prescription is being written so that when they come to the pharmacy the Rx won’t be rejected. I find thus far that all of the local pharmacists have no objection to filling these scripts if I tell them that the patient had been sexually assaulted or the Rx is to regulate her menstrual cycle.
Which drugstore chain does not require pharmacists to issue Plan B Baby Killers?
>>They had to drive 2 hrs away to another town to get the prescription fill.<<
When I was pregnant with my second daughter I started spotting at seven weeks. I was given a script for Progesterone suppositories. The ONLY pharmacy that carried them was two hours away. And I drove there to get it. So what?
As for the story of the girl, I smell a little BS. Before Plan B, doctors were giving multiple BC pills to do the same thing. Hospitals don’t “run out of pills” without a backup plan. If the girl was truly sexually assulted, a rape kit would have been used then easily a D&C could be performed. You were fooled, my FRiend.
The man has a right to say what ever he wishes. Everyone else has the right to tell him to keep his nose out of a legal businesses methods of operation.
I’m glad I never experienced this. I think it’s the height of arrogance for a pharmacist to judge a patient based on this prescription. I certainly would have been a very angry college student getting BCPs for severe endometriosis and being accused of being immoral by some pharmacist.
On the other hand, you as a physician know why a medication is being prescribed. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for physicians to decline to write such a script.
Do you therefore mean to say that the only people who should become doctors are those who are willing to perform abortions?
The role of a pharmacist is to cure through the dispense of drugs. If the pharmacist is being compelled to “kill”, instead, why do you think it’s fair to place them under the hardship of making them move to another state so they don’t have to?
How does Plan B kill babies?
>>Forms of EC include:
Emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs)—sometimes simply referred to as emergency contraceptives (ECs) or the “morning-after pill”—are drugs that act both to prevent ovulation or fertilization and possibly post-fertilization implantation of a blastocyst (embryo). ECPs are distinct from medical abortion methods that act after implantation.[1]
Intrauterine devices (IUDs)—usually used as a primary contraception method, but sometimes used as emergency contraception.<<
Note the word “embryo” There is no more pivotal moment in the subsequent growth and development of a human being than when 23 chromosomes of the father join with 23 chromosomes of the mother to form a unique, 46-chromosomed individual, with a gender, who had previously simply not existed. Period. No debate.
Target and Kroger so I have heard.
I use Kroger with pride.
You would put a (potentially) traumatized 14 year old girl through an invasive D & C, to avoid letting her take a pill to prevent pregnancy? That is insane. First problem is that a D & C is most likely unneccessary. Second flaw in your argument is that hospitals definately do run out of pills. It happens all the time and with many meds. Third problem is that you assume that this doctor cannot tell a phony rape victim, after practicing in an ER, while you are more than capable of assessing the situation from a paragraph he has written.
I don’t understand your post, your reference to a rape kit doesn’t make sense and you seem to have no problem with a D&C, while having a major problem with Plan B. Do you have any knowledge of procedures for assisting rape victims at all, or are you just guessing?
I drove two hours to get a script I needed. There are many pharmacies who do not carry all drugs. Call ahead and see if they carry the med. If they do, they will fill it.
A big fuss is being made about this because of what it is.
A Pharmacist is not going to take the time to come out and tongue lash a person for her immorality, even the post said that they were only “turned away”. One would see a clerk who would say that the Pharmacist will not fill the script or that they don’t carry it. So then don’t go back there. Simple. Because really, it’s not about feelings or morality, it’s about the 20 scripts behind that one that this person has to fill.
My sister, the 54 year old lesbian with no Uterus sent me an email about Kroger taking away her “choice” by not carrying Plan B. LOLOLOL! I told her that I forwarded her email to every Homeschooling and Christian board I am on to SUPPORT Kroger for their position.
You have to feel for pharmacists who can lose their jobs for refusing to fulfill these kinds of prescriptions. “’No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also.” —Jesus
You need to reread my post. I said hospitals do not run out of meds without an ALTERNATE plan. D&Cs had been used for rape along with multiple BC pills as the first line of defense before the Plan B pill.
There is virtually no difference between the look of the vaginal openning after the rape of a 14 year old girl and the look of that same openning after “dry sex”. The tears and cuts look the same. Medicine is not an exact science. Much of it is on what the patient tells you. If this girl said she was raped, the doctor treated her as such. My “feelings” have nothing to do with it.
And yes, I have been very involved with the process. I was the office manager for the Head Psychiatrist at one of the major hospitals in Cleveland. Where do you think the rape victims end up after they are treated? Right with us. I did my time with them.
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