[seatrout]

—Since when does a private pharmacy have to carry every medication known to man?—

I make this reply with some apprehension, but, here goes:

It’s not a pharmacist’s job to make medical decisions. If a physician or other authorized healtch care provider writes a prescription for an FDA approved drug, it is the pharmacist’s job to fill that prescription upon receiving appropriate payment. And sure the woman needing “Plan B” could go to another pharmacy IF THERE IS ONE AVAILABLE. She might be in a rural area where there aren’t any nearby; car trouble, bad weather might all be issues, or maybe it’s the only pharmacy that accepts her drug plan. I’m sorry, but all this drug does is prevent a teeny-tiny blastocyst from implanting. Not in the same league as aborting a sentient fetus.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Here's what you've failed to consider: no person, whether a professional soldier or policeman, or a pharmacist or doctor, lawyer or politician, correctional officer, state executioner or anybody else, has a right OR a duty to kill an innocent "human life form." Nor to authorize anybody else to kill an innocent "human life form," nor to serve as accomplice or accessory to such an act of killing.

I used the prissy porcelain circumlocution "innocent life form" so that the earlier stages of human development, including zygote,bmorula, blastocyst, embryo, fetus, perinate, neonate, toddler, terrible-twosie and pre-K -through Phd and so forth, would all be included under the principle of "Equal Justice Under Law."

You can't fault that. Especially for somebody who holds to the principles of the Hippocratic Oath, which predates, and is foundational to, all other codes related to Medical Ethics.

[supercat]

It’s not a pharmacist’s job to make medical decisions.

Actually, it is. Few pharmacists are very inquisitive about all the drugs a person is taking, but if a pharmacist knows that a person is taking a drug that would interact badly with a prescription, a pharmacist is supposed to act upon that information.

Further, I see no reason that the owner of the business should not be entitled to decide what products will be sold there, and what products its employees will be required to handle. The state should not intervene to protect pharmacists who refuse to sell a legal product that their employer wants to offer, but nor should it insist that pharmacists must sell a product even if the store's owner would not so insist.