(CNSNews) – A family-owned pharmacy and two individual pharmacists petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to stop a state law that compels pharmacies and individual pharmacists in Washington State to provide abortion-inducing drugs despite conscience objections.
The 2007 Washington law requires pharmacists to dispense all drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a “timely manner consistent with reasonable expectations,” with no exceptions for conscience-based referrals for abortion inducing drugs.
Washington is the only state that currently makes conscience-based referrals illegal.
The petition to the Supreme Court comes after a long battle with Washington over this law which, according to the Becket Fund, “was passed in a cloud of controversy, with then-Governor Christine Gregoire threatening to terminate the State Pharmacy Commission and replacing commission members with new ones recommended by abortion-rights activists.”
The Stormans family owns Ralph’s Thriftway, a grocery store that includes a small pharmacy. The family, in keeping with their Christian beliefs, “cannot stock or dispense the morning-after or week-after pills (collectively, “Plan B”),” according to the petition, “For Petitioners, dispensing these drugs would make them guilty of destroying human life.”
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19 comments:
It's the pharmacists job to dispense medication as prescribed by a doctor. Let the doctor decide what the patient needs, not the pharmacist.
Time to find a new career. No ones is making the pharmacist take a medicine against their will. Giving it out to customers is your obligation and none of your business.
Pharmacists, just like everybody else, have the right to follow their conscience.
If somebody wants to buy the chemistry to destroy a fetus, they can find it in plenty of other drug stores. There is no need to force individual pharmacists to violate their sincere beliefs, as if they were the only ones who could provide it.
To insist on them doing so is 'forcing your beliefs down their throats'.
Isn't that what you accuse Christians of doing?
What's next, refusal to fill Viagra (heaven forbid), birth control pills, HIV meds, COPD meds for smokers?
So lets say this pharmacist is Muslim and has a problem dispensing heparin because it's made with pork... These dumb a@@ pharmacists need to realize they arent doctors . They don't need to know what you're getting a medication for (walgreens won't fill unless they stick their noses in your medical histor) all they need to do is confirm that the script is legit and put pills in a damm bottle... So easy a caveman can do it. They don't like it that way I heard McDonald's is hiring
This drug KILLS babies, don't you see the difference between that and Viagra, birth control pills (no actual babies harmed) HIV meds etc.
I am so sick and tired of people not being allowed their own beliefs at their own business that they built!
This country sure doesn't have the "freedoms" we used to have!
If it's the pharmacists shop, I.E. he/she owns the shop, they can choose what to stock and sell.
No one can force them to stock the drugs.
If the pharmacist works at a shop that stocks these products, unfortunately they have to do their job and dispense the products. If they don't like it, they can open their own shop, or find a new job.
Seems pretty cut and dry to me.
They are allowed to have whatever beliefs they want, they just can't insist someone else abide by their beliefs.
Well put.
So, when Caitlyn comes bouncing into the pharmacy to fill a prescription for female hormones, some holier-than-thou pill-filler has the "right" to refuse, because that would be "against his conscience"?
Does a Catholic have the "right"' to refuse to dispense birth control?
Does a pharmacist have the right to refuse to fill a prescription for fertility pills to someone who is obviously dumber than a box of rocks?
Or to prescribe Viagra to an 80 year old man, because he and his 75 year old wife would be having sinful "non-procreative" intercourse?
If the pharmacist isn't the one using the medication, then there is no conscience being offended, as he does not have the right to dictate someone else's conscience.
Not only that, but he doesn't have the person's medical history...he doesn't necessarily know exactly what the prescription is really being used to treat. He can assume, ant that's all.
Should medical professionals have to perform abortions? Same thing.
3:02
Yes.
Any more questions?
Anonymous Ricky said...
So lets say this pharmacist is Muslim and has a problem dispensing heparin because it's made with pork... These dumb a@@ pharmacists need to realize they arent doctors . They don't need to know what you're getting a medication for (walgreens won't fill unless they stick their noses in your medical histor) all they need to do is confirm that the script is legit and put pills in a damm bottle... So easy a caveman can do it. They don't like it that way I heard McDonald's is hiring
Actually Ricky, some Pharmacists are Doctors...you get a Doctorate of Pharmacy. Also, they do have the right to refuse to fill any prescription they want at any time.
Ricky said...
So lets say this pharmacist is Muslim and has a problem dispensing heparin because it's made with pork... These dumb a@@ pharmacists need to realize they arent doctors . They don't need to know what you're getting a medication for (walgreens won't fill unless they stick their noses in your medical histor) all they need to do is confirm that the script is legit and put pills in a damm bottle... So easy a caveman can do it. They don't like it that way I heard McDonald's is hiring
Also, I bet you would be the first person to sue a Pharmacist if they filled a prescription without checking your medical history and list of medications and it caused a life altering issue. There is a reason that they ask you questions and "stick their nose in your medical history" and that is because believe it or not Doctors are not always correct...they do not always have the knowledge about medications that Pharmacists do because that is what a Pharmacist studies in school. A medical doctor studies a multitude of things. But it sounds as if you many not be intelligent enough to understand this as you would think a Pharmacist who does their job correctly should work at McDonalds...so no they should not just 'stick the pills in a bottle" because they actually were trained on the subject of medications. Which means they know what they are talking about and are not just trying to give you a hard time.
As long as you are able to have script filled in a nearby pharmacy, they can reject any script they want. Period. That's like saying a doctor has to prescribe you a medication because you want it.
If you cannot treat everyone equally get out of the medical profession.
So, will auto repair places, gas stations and car washes refuse to serve those with bumper stickers they find offensive?
It sounds as if they are trying to treat everyone equally, they are asking to not have to sell products to anyone not certain individuals.
Bake me a cake...
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