Posted on 11/06/2007 6:45:43 AM PST by NYer
TRENTON, New Jersey, November 5, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The state of New Jersey has passed a law denying the conscientious objection right of pharmacists, won in other states through lengthy court battles, to refrain from dispensing abortifacient and contraceptive drugs.
“Discussions of morals and matters of conscience are admirable, but should not come into play when subjective beliefs conflict with objective medical decisions,” said state Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, a bill sponsor.
The decision comes just days after Pope Benedict XVI gave his support to pharmacists worldwide who reject the culture of death in their 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,” the pope said on Monday.
He called the right of conscientious objection, “a right that must be recognized for people exercising this profession, so as to enable them not to collaborate directly or indirectly in supplying products that have clearly immoral purposes such as, for example, abortion or euthanasia.”
The New Jersey law was passed in the context of numerous battles in courts and legislatures between pro-abortion governors and pharmacists fighting for conscience rights currently raging across the US.
Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich was forced by courts to back down on a law similar to that passed last week in New Jersey. The order attempted to force pharmacists in Illinois to dispense death-dealing drugs, was recently obliged by the courts to back down. The decision followed a long-running dispute between four pharmacist employees of Walgreens stores who were fired when they refused to dispense abortifacient drugs.
The American Center for Law and Justice, a public interest law firm, sued Walgreens on behalf of their former employees, saying the company had violated the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, which makes it illegal for any employer “to discriminate against any person in any manner ... because of such person’s conscientious refusal ... to participate in any way in any form of health care services contrary to his or her conscience.”
In 2005, Janet Napolitano, Arizona’s aggressively pro-abortion governor vetoed legislation that attempted to recognise the rights of conscience of pharmacists. Napolitano said, “Pharmacies and other health care service providers have no right to interfere in the lawful personal medical decisions made by patients and their doctors.”
In Wisconsin, when pharmacist Neil Noesen refused in 2002 to dispense oral contraceptives he was reprimanded and fined by his pharmacy board and limits were set on his license to practice as a pharmacist.
Currently Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Dakota have laws protecting the rights of pharmacists to refuse to dispense drugs according to their conscience and Florida, Illinois, Maine and Tennessee have some legislation that could be so applied.
New Jersey joins California where pharmacists must fill all prescriptions and may only refuse with the approval of their employer and ensure that the customer can get the drugs elsewhere. In Washington state pharmacists are challenging a similar law.
US Pharmacists Battle over Forced Dispensation of Abortion Drugs
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/apr/05041504.html
Illinois Court Rules Pharmacists May Reject Plan B
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/aug/07080308.html
Damn is a key word there to these employees, should be to all.
I'm not familiar with the new law. Are you suggesting the way around this would be for the Pharmacy to stop carrying birth control medications?
God gave us free will, NJ took it away. Shame on them.
If I were a pharmacist in NJ I would relocate to another state before I would comply with that NJ law. AFAIC a pharmacist who sells an abortifacient to a woman is equivalent to a gun store owner who sells a loaded pistol to a well known hit man for the mob.
Pharmacists are not sales clerks. They are medical professionals who are paid to exercise their professional judgment.
Professionals like bankers, lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, etc. are employed on the understanding that they will not just do whatever their employer orders them to do, but that they will make a professional decision in accord with ethical standards and the best interests of the client.
Most adults in this country know that pharmacists routinely substitute and modify doctors' prescriptions - often because they are considering the financial needs and medical needs of the client at a level doctors sometimes are unaware of.
Many elderly persons have had their lives saved by a keen-eyed pharmacist who refused to fill a prescription because they knew the client was taking another medication that would cause a dangerous interaction - a medication prescribed by one specialist that the patient forgot to inform another specialist about.
Many employers realize that a pharmacist's judgment may cause a negative short-term economic impact, but save the employer much money in the event that a client dies of a seizure caused by negative drug interaction or a hemorrhage caused by RU-486.
Otherwise, you could simply automate drug dispensation and eliminate pharmacists altogether.
Heck, at least we’re coming around to the rights of conscientious objectors. Maybe now we can give all those military folks who refuse combat duty a break.
Yes, I do. By the same token, I’d also support anyone who refuses to get into a cab driven by people of certain races, ethnic groups, etc.
You may know more about this law than I do. This article makes it sound as if the law is directed at pharmacists in general, not specifically employees working in pharmacies.
That would be a very misleading headline. There is a wide verity of drugs that are legal for prescription use that many or most licensed pharmacies do not carry what so ever. There are many reasons for this. The drug is too expensive, it has a short shelf life, it requires special storage or handling and if it is a rarely used drug.
New Jersey pharmacies must now fill prescriptions for any drug they stock or locate another nearby pharmacy that carries the drug. They do not have to carry the drug!
I have to wonder what happens when a hemophiliac patient comes into one of NJ's pharmacies with a prescription for Recombinate. Do they arrest the pharmacist for not being able to fill it and not being able to find a local pharmacy which can?
I'm not DUMBGRUNT, but if the cabbie owns the cab I say yes, but not if he's just an employee of the cab owner.
But your question is not relevant to the situation in NJ in re abortificients. Refusing cab service to certain classes of people is in no way comparable to refusing to sell a deadly chemical compound for which the only known medical purpose is to kill an unborn human being in his or her mother's womb.
Pharmacies are not required to carry the drug but they must locate another local pharmacy that does for any patient that has a prescription.
They make it a condition of employment, as a pharmacist, to dispense licensed drugs.
muslim manufactured dilemma cannot compare to knowingly dispensing an abortifacient.
no one is saying these products are NOT to be dispensed as they are a legal pharmaceutical.
someone else can fill the prescription as obviously they are being filled and dispensed.
CVS drug counter here plainly states that plan B is not available at this location/pick up the phone and dial to get the nearest location.
Apparently I got you and Alberta’s Child reversed in my post # 31. I intended to reply to your question asked in # 11 but it seems that I somehow thought that you were replying to DUMBGRUNT, and not that you are DUMBGRUNT.
When the Pharmacist is licensed by the state, it IS the business of the state. The prescription drugs in question are legal drugs, and legal for sale in that state, therefore, the state licensed pharmacists have no compelling legal argument against filling the prescriptions.
“Discussions of morals and matters of conscience are admirable, but....”
Pretty much sums up the Democratic party doesn’t it?
What is more important: to act legally, or to act justly? The latter.
True, the law should be overturned. But until then, conscientious pharmacists must resist.
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