Text 12066, 85 rader
Skriven 2005-04-22 12:59:08 av Alan Hess
Ärende: pharmacists and conscience
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One columnist's opinion.
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http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-op.page22apr22,1,5054402.story?co
ll=bal-pe-opinion
Prescription politics hard to swallow


By Clarence Page

April 22, 2005

WASHINGTON - I respect the feelings of pharmacists who, as a matter of
conscience, refuse to sell the new "morning-after" emergency contraception
pill. I also respectfully disagree with them. In fact, I wonder how many
druggists who object to dispensing the morning-after pill have no objection to
selling erectile-dysfunction drugs.

The issue of "conscientious objections," as the Ohio-based group Pharmacists
for Life International calls them, has bubbled up in recent months with more
than 100 reports of pharmacists who are just saying no to dispensing the
morning-after pill, also known as Plan B.

Unlike the French drug RU-486, Plan B is not an abortion drug. Best taken
within 24 hours of unprotected intercourse, the morning-after pill prevents
ovulation or fertilization or blocks a fertilized egg from becoming implanted
in the uterus.

About two dozen states have responded with a patchwork of legal and political
actions.

For example, Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich recently made national headlines
by ordering pharmacies, although not all pharmacists, in Illinois to fill Plan
B prescriptions after an incident in which a pharmacist at a downtown Chicago
drugstore refused to fill two. The Massachusetts legislature is considering a
bill to let pharmacists dispense the pill without a doctor's prescription and
require all hospitals to make it available to all rape victims. A bill in
California would require objecting pharmacists to be prepared to make referrals
to other drugstores.

Arkansas, South Dakota, Mississippi and Georgia have conscience-clause laws
that allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense any drugs related to contraception
or abortion on moral grounds. Legislatures in about a dozen other states are
considering similar bills.

Who knows how many women and teen girls in distress already have been turned
away and been too pained or embarrassed by the experience to go public. How
many even would have the fortitude, in such circumstances, to object when a
zealous pharmacist refuses, in an act of conscience, to refer them to another
pharmacy or even to give them back their prescription?

Yes, that's the sort of control-freak action that Karen Brauer, president of
Pharmacists for Life International, favors.

In interviews, Ms. Brauer has said that a pharmacist should not only refuse to
dispense medication that offends her but also block all future access by that
patient to that medication. Referrals, she says, would be like saying, "I don't
kill people myself but let me tell you about the guy down the street who does."
Is this the sort of information that major drugstores want their customers to
hear when they come in with serious medical questions?

Of course, much of this Plan B dispute would become moot if the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration were to approve the morning-after pill for over-the-counter
sale. The agency's scientists and review panels support that move, but abortion
politics are blocking it in Washington.

While we wait for common sense to invade the capital again, here's my
suggestion: If druggists want to argue that they have the right to pick and
choose which prescriptions to sell, they should be required to post their
choices at the front door.

And, as a matter of gender equity, stores that refuse to sell Plan B on moral
grounds, for example, should be prohibited from selling male-oriented sex aids.
After all, selling sex-enhancement drugs to men while denying morning-after
pills to women dodges moral responsibility too. It's sort of like sowing your
wild oats on Saturday night, then praying on Sunday morning for crop failure.

Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune Publishing
newspaper. His column appears Tuesdays and Fridays in The Sun.

Copyright + 2005, The Baltimore Sun

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