Quote of note:
The pharmacist who refuses emergency contraception is not just following his moral code, he's trumping the moral beliefs of the doctor and the patient.
"If you open the door to this, I don't see any place to draw a line," says Anita Allen, law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of "The New Ethics." If the pharmacist is officially sanctioned as the moral arbiter of the drugstore, does he then ask the customer whether the pills are for cramps or contraception? If he's parsing his conscience with each prescription, can he ask if the morning-after pill is for carelessness or rape? Can his conscience be the guide to second-guessing Ritalin as well as Viagra?
How much further do we want to expand the reach of the individual conscience? Does the person at the checkout counter have a right to refuse to sell condoms? Does the bus driver have a right to refuse to let off customers in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic?
Whose conscience rules?
By Ellen Goodman | April 10, 2005
TO BEGIN with, I don't believe that anyone should be compelled to do work they regard as unethical. History is full of heroes who rebelliously followed their consciences. It's also full of people who shamefully followed orders.
For that matter, I believe that companies and institutions should have a code of ethics. What is the alternative to corporate responsibility and public morality? Enron?
So I approach the subject of conscience clauses rather gingerly.
Just thinking aloud:
When I used to subscribe to The Economist, I noticed a paradox in the way the editors appraoched the matter of ethics on the part of corporations: OT1H, they believed that firms were in the business of making a profit for the investors, so individual moral judgments by the firm management (such as, for instance, over-complying with emissions standards because the management knew the standards were inadequately rigorous) were bad decisions. OTO, they would consistantly invoke the Coase Theorem or some version of it whenever public ethics came up.
(The Coase Theorem is explained here; it is usually advanced to support the claim that environmental protection is unnecessary but can be applied to nearly all situations)
Yes, I do think people have an obligation to use their ethical judgment in their choice of a job. However, in this case I think the pharmacists are using an invalid notion of ethics. By refusing to fill prescriptions, they aren't attempting to behave ethically, they're attempting to regulate public behavior on their own.
Here's the problem with Goodman's essay: she makes this seem like an ethical conflict, when it's not. It's a conflict over people attempting to regulate the behavior of their neighbors. These guys want to be little Tom DeLays.