Yes, you read that right. Anna forced me to rethink my position, and I think that she was on firmer ground. Recap: Anna posted on the question whether pharmacists should be able to refuse to dispense legal medical products (birth control) to which they have conscientious objections. I replied, arguing that pharmacists should indeed have the right to so refuse, and I thought that Anna's position was that pharmacists should be legally compelled to fill all legal prescriptions, or leave the profession. It turns out I was wrong, and that Anna and I were much closer to one another than at first appeared. Funny how that usually happens. My post drew my pal out of her self-imposed retirement, as I suspected it would.
Oh, how I have missed Ken Blanchard, who responded to my last post about the conscience clause in South Dakota for pharmacists.
I miss you too, Anna. Our encounters always force me to think, and I flatter the two of us, perhaps, in believing that they may inform or at least entertain our readers. I said this in my recent post, in reference to a story about Muslim cashiers at Target who refused to handle pork.
Target's willingness to find other work for conscientiously objecting Muslims, rather than simply let them go, is gracious precisely because it is not obligatory. Target would be equally with its rights if it insisted that the pharmacists it employs be willing to dispense any legal product carried by its pharmacy.
Anna bloodied my nose with this reply:
Incorrect, Ken. South Dakota law states that pharmacists have the right to refuse to fill prescriptions to which they have a moral objection. Target in South Dakota has no right to insist that its employees "dispense any legal product carried by its pharmacy."
Now here is the point on which Anna has the better argument. I had heretofore approved of "moral objection clauses" that give pharmacists the right to refuse to fill certain prescriptions, even if it's company policy. I thought that this was a reasonable way to accommodate the religious views of employees, in much the same way as Target accommodated its Muslim employees. But it's one thing when a private corporation reassigns workers. It's another when government tells the employer what he may or may not require of his employees.
I argue that pharmacists who refuse to dispense certain prescriptions out of conscience, religious or otherwise, should be free to do business with customers who wish to patronize pharmacists who share their scruples. Laws that require pharmacists to prescribe against their conscience abridge the liberty both of such sellers and such buyers. But it works both ways, doesn't it? Shouldn't Target or Walgreens be free to do business with customers who want the full range of legal prescriptions? And if that means requiring their pharmacists to dispense birth control products, should they not be allowed to do so? The answer has to be yes. "Conscience clause" protection for pharmacists is wrong for the same reason that laws requiring pharmacists to dispense birth control are wrong. Each interferes with the freedom of contract in a way that abridges more fundamental liberties.
If I now read Anna right, she is opposed to both kinds of law. I am persuaded to join her. But I do have something else to offer in my defense. Anna tells an appalling story of how a pharmacist refused to fill her prescription and refused to refer her to someone who would do so. As it happens, I wrote a column for the American News that focused on a very similar case. Here is what I wrote:
Neil Noesen, Roman Catholic and Wisconsin Pharmacist, in that order, did two things to run afoul of the law. He refused to fill a prescription for contraceptives, and he refused to give the prescription back to his would-be customer. For one or both he was ordered to take a six hour course in pharmacy ethics, which Draconian penalty may yet make him the Rosa Parks of the freedom of conscience movement.
About the second action there is little controversy. He refused to return his client’s property, an inexcusable violation of her liberty under the law. I hope every hour of that ethics course was as mind-numbingly boring as I expect it was.
I do miss you, Anna. For two people on the opposite sides of so many questions, we think so much alike.
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