“Baloney.
Any law that forces people to engage in commerce against their will is a farce.
The state of New Jersey may as well pass legislation forcing Toyota dealers to sell Fords.”
That would seemingly be true if the pharmacy itself made the decision to carry the lethal drugs, and then dealt with the dissenting pharmacist in an employer-employee relationship. However, it appears here that the State of New Jersey has stepped in to strip both the employer (the pharmacy) and the employee (the pharmacist) of their proper role in exercising the due diligence required by any kind of medical ethics, i.e. to ensure that medicines are truly therapeutic; in other words, to ensure that both the type of medicine and the dosage will do no harm to life and health.
A pharmacist is not a vending machine and is not even some kind of glorified sales clerk. A pharmacist has a professional duty to employ his or her specialized knowledge and training to cure disease, heal injury, provide relief from pain and other symptomatic distress, and not to apply drugs to actually cause disorders, suffering or death.
FTA: “Discussion of morals and matters of conscience is admirable, [as long as nobody actually acts on it] but should not come into play when subjective beliefs objective ethical obligations conflict with objective profitable medical decisions,” said state Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, a bill sponsor."
There. Fixed it.
Oh, and check out my tagline, a quote from Thomas Jefferson.
That's between the salespeople and their employer. It's none of the government's business.
Neither is this.
Pharmacists have the right to refuse to dispense anything
that will cause harm to any human, at any stage of life.
If the store wants to dispense the medications, let the manager do it,
or another pharmacist who has no compunctions. If that
cannot be done, create a caveat to the law which lets the
physician dispense the medication.
(p.s. physicians can’t normally dispense meds except for
small trial regimens due to the possibility of
their own bias, mistakes, poor knowledge of other drugs
the patient is taking and its side effects, poor knowledge,
of drug interactions, and pharmacokinetic profiles, the
possibility of prescribing to get kickbacks from drug companies
, etc....but in this case, let them dispense the meds.
That way the blood of the child will be on their heads.
>I wonder how many of their office nurses will have objections to
dispensing abortifacients)
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?
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.
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.