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Pharmacists that refuse to fill contraceptive prescriptions should have to raise the kid

Submitted by Prometheus 6 on December 13, 2005 - 12:00pm.
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Quote of note:

The more relevant finding was that about 39 percent of the pharmacists felt they should be able to refuse to fill a legal prescription, apart from another 37 percent who felt they should be able to refuse with a referral to a more cooperative pharmacist. (Only 23 percent said that a patient's legal rights should prevail over the pharmacist's misgivings.)

So at least when it comes to emergency contraception, almost 4 out of 10 pharmacists would consider it appropriate to brush off a woman's legal request for services. I would have expected to see a larger portion of the pharmacist population putting the welfare of their patients before their own moral judgments. If nothing else, there seems to be a vast difference of opinion between pharmacists and physicians--a previous survey of doctors by HCD Research found that 78 percent of physicians thought that pharmacists should be obliged to provide emergency contraception.

Pharmacists, Plan B and Patients' Rights

In the October 2005 issue, the SA Perspectives commented on the brewing conflict over pharmacists who declined to fill prescriptions for "morning-after pill" emergency contraceptives because of their moral objections to them, notwithstanding the added risks for their female patients. Now there is a bit more concrete information about how widespread sympathy for those pharmacists' view might be within the profession: rather disturbingly widespread, I'd say.

Here are the results of a survey conducted by HCD Research. To quote from that company's press release:

Pharmacists Believe They Should Have Authority to Refuse

FLEMINGTON, NJ, December 9, 2005 - A new national survey of 859 American pharmacists revealed that a clear majority of pharmacists believe that they should have the authority to refuse to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception.
The national survey was conducted by HCD Research during December 3-4, to obtain the views of pharmacists in response to recent media reports that four pharmacists were suspended by the Walgreen Co. in Illinois for refusing to fill emergency contraception prescriptions.
Among the findings:

  • 69% of the pharmacists indicated that pharmacists should have the authority to refuse filling prescriptions for emergency contraception such as the morning after pill.
  • While 39% of pharmacists indicated that state laws should not require them to fill certain prescriptions, a significantly smaller percentage of pharmacists (23%) believe that the patient's rights should prevail if a legal drug is prescribed by a doctor.
  • 37% of pharmacists feel that although they should have the right to refuse, they should also be required to refer patients to another pharmacist who will fill the prescription.

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Too bad we can't get a grip
Submitted by GDAWG on December 13, 2005 - 12:11pm.

Too bad we can't get a grip on where these phamarcist are located who are refusing to fill EC prescription. You want to take a bet on where they are, or are not located? (Hint: They ain't in the hood to a sigificant degree. That's where my money is.)

Maybe if they don't think of
Submitted by janinsanfran on December 13, 2005 - 5:34pm.

Maybe if they don't think of themselves as having professional responsibilities they should be paid minimum wage like other retail clerks?

This behavior on the part of
Submitted by ptcruiser on December 16, 2005 - 11:25am.

This behavior on the part of pharmacists is more widespread than I had reason to believe as I recently discovered as a result of some personal experience. The Rite-Aid drug store chain, which has two stores in the college town where I live, recently had to terminate a weekend fill-in pharmacist when it was discovered that he was avoiding filling prescriptions for controlled substances for black customers. (BTW, there are oodles and oodles of controlled substances and most of them are not narcotics.)

When I suspected what he had been doing I, of course, confronted him about it and he responded by upping the the ante and, believe it or not, actually calling the police on me. He did so despite the fact that I hadn't called him a racist motherfucker or even threatened his life despite the fact that he had prevented me from filling a necessary prescription for one of my children. When I walked to the front of the store and told the manager that his pharmacist had called the police on me he nearly freaked out. Apparently, they were already building a dossier against the guy but his calling the police on me was too bizarre.