Religion In The Pharmacy?
NEW YORK, Nov. 23, 2004


After Idalia and Jose Moran's son was born by C-section, Idalia Moran's doctor advised her not to get pregnant again for two to three years, and prescribed the pill.

But as CBS News correspondent Byron Pitts reports, when she went to the pharmacy, the cashier said, "You know what? I cannot refill them because the pharmacist says it's against his religion because it's abortion."

Moran told CBS she was stunned and ashamed.

"I felt really bad, because I thought maybe these are for abortion," Moran said. "I don't know."

Across the country, more and more pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions for religious reasons.

South Dakota, Arkansas and Mississippi even have refusal clauses on the books. And 13 other states are considering mixing medicine with morality.

At Lloyd's Pharmacy in Gray, La., Lloyd Duplantis believes in prayer.



And he believes birth control is tantamount to abortion. So, he stocks his shelves accordingly.

"I don’t sell condoms. I don't sell foams. I don't sell creams," Duplantis said. "I don't sell anything to do with contraception."

He said, even if a woman who was the victim of incestuous rape walked in his door after having been prescribed the pill, he wouldn't change his policy.

"I would tell her that I can't prescribe this," Duplantis said.

Few question a pharmacist's right to make a moral choice. But doesn't one have a distinct responsibility as a pharmacist?

"That's right, and that's what I'm doing," Duplantis said. "There's science supporting my moral decision."

Four out of five Americans disagree with Duplantis. In a CBS poll, 80 percent of respondents said even if pharmacists have religious hang ups about contraceptives, they should not let it interfere with their job.

Just 16 percent think pharmacists should refuse to dispense birth control pills on religious grounds if they choose.

Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood, believes the surge in these cases is as much about politics as it is about religion.

"It's a very ominous trend," Feldt said. "I think the anti-choice right extremists have become emboldened by the current administration in Washington and they feel they are in the political ascendancy."

But Duplantis says he's no extremist, just a Christian businessman.

"I want everyone to have freedom of choice to help them achieve what they want," he said.

In his pharmacy, he advocates "natural" family planning. He convinced one woman, Stephanie Melacon, to no longer takes birth control pills. She made the decision based on what Duplantis told her about the side effects.

As for Idalia Moran, she eventually got her birth control pills. But she had to drive 30 miles to a different pharmacist.

"Being a pharmacist…you should leave your religion or whatever aside," Moran said.

It's one debate that will not be put aside quietly.



©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

My religion advocates getting rid of idiots!

My religion tells me a lot of things, I don't force them ON YOU!

Oprah's next book: Lysistrata.

miriamc (who feels that the more publicity this sort of thing gets the better)

So, obviously this person is also for the rampant spread of S.T.Ds since condoms are the number ONE barrier when trying to stop transmission.

We had a local problem like this one, in that this was a young girl who had been raped and tried to get the morning after pill.....turns out, she had been raped by her father, so again, these people must also condone rape, and incest?

This is bordering on lunacy. I find it outrageous. This gives pharmacist control over our health and well being. Any pharmacist can refuse to sell any prescription drug by stating their refusal is for religous purposes. What's next? Will it be illegal for doctors to perform vasectomies, tube ties, etc. Will doctors be unable to perform necessary hysterectomies on women of childbearing years.

I hope that any pharmacy that refuses to sell birth control is put on a list--and that list published where anyone who opposes this luncacy will boycott that pharmacy.

Sweet


I wonder if the pharmacist would actually start using the brain G-d gave him and his scientific training if his wife, sister, daughter or niece suffered from a molar pregnancy, invasive mole, metastatic mole and gestational choriocarcinoma? Women with these conditions need to take contraceptives to prevent pregnancy for at least 6 months after their last positive HCG (the same test used to determine pregnancy is also an indicator for these diseases related to pregnancy).

i think its pretty assumptive on the part of the pharmacist as well as him just being insane. i was placed on birth control when i was 14, not for sex reasons, but because i have womanly problems that have been fixed by being on it. i think its wrong to deny women something they need, even if they only just want it, and you never know someone's situation. birth control, along with tampons, are a godsend.

and as for condoms...INSANE once again. not only does he want people to get knocked up and brainwash them but he's hoping them a long life of diseases, some which cant be cured, and if you get hiv, he probably thinks you deserved it.

its people like him who need to be ran over with a car. and i wouldnt doubt it if he practices incest in his family..hence not helping victims of incestual rape

I think like anything else the owner of the business can choose what he wants to sell or not. You wouldn't expect a Jewish Kosher deli to sell pork chops. This is nothing new. It's just that now more people are starting to express their beliefs by exercising their own rights in this way.

I do not however think that a pharmacist should be allowed to refuse to fill out prescriptions against store policy. So it's all up to the owner really, as it should be.

Your analogy is wrong, A Jewish Kosher deli would not be a place someone would look

for a pork chop.

A pharmacy is a place where drugs are sold. The pill is a drug. So if I said any life

extending drug such as high blood pressure or heart pills interfered with Gods time

line on you it would be OK not to sell them because of my reilgious views,

Same with condoms, I won't sell cough syrup because it was God's will for you to get

the flu?

The analogy is correct because its his business. The law is on his side. If you don't want to think of it as a real pharmacy then don't. Think of it as a Christian pharmacy, call it whatever you want, but he still has the right to remain in business. The burden is on the consumer to find what they need elsewhere. That's just the way the economy works.

No, when I goto a pharmacy I do not ask what kind of Pharmacy

He should have to wear or hang a cross outside his business showing is a bigot

When you look at a deli sign in New York - Jewish Kosher Deli it also may say

Glatt Kosher or whatever type it is. There is no deception on the business owners

signage. You know you can't order ham in a kosher deli!

You can't tell from the oustside of the pharmacy whether it is a free trade or

nut owner business

Next thing they will put up signs whites only, no colored served!

Oh they did that

Funny enough, a similar incident occured at my pharmacy to a young girl in front of me waiting for birrth control pills. The pharmacist proceded to lecture her on the dangers of sex. The girl looked very embarrassed, and then her mother erupted into a rage about how the pills were actually proscribed by their doctor to stop menstral cramping.

You know, whether it's religion or not, people need to get off their high horses and just do their freaking jobs.

Amen, Amen , AMEN

This is the real danger of pharmacist refusing to sell birth control. There are many women with PCOS who require birth control to prevent uterine cancer. It should be criminal for a licensed pharmacist to refuse to sell a woman birth control--and it would be an invasion of privacy for a woman to have to explain her reasons for needing the prescription.

This isn't stopping with Pharmacists, OBGYN's are also getting onto this...what really nags at me is that the Pill may cut the risk of ovarian cancer by up to 80 percent.

Here is an excellent article that has an indepth look at the problem, and the raging question of when does this begin to undermine human health....

http://www.prevention.com/article/0%2C5778...0-1-P%2C00.html


Here is a partial excerpt...that scares me, almost more than the Supreme Court Appointees... :o

"....Bush also appointed three antiabortion doctors to the FDA Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee: W. David Hager, MD, Susan Crockett, MD, and Stanford. When their committee and the FDA's Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee met jointly last December, the group voted 23 to 4 in favor of giving over-the-counter status to emergency contraceptives. Dissenters included Hager, Crockett, and Stanford. In May, the FDA decided not to grant the drug OTC status.

While Hager and Crockett have gone on record saying they do not believe standard birth control pills cause abortions, their colleague Stanford says he has never prescribed them. "I found out in medical school that they may prevent fertilized eggs from implanting, and I decided then that I wasn't ever going to prescribe them," he says. A paper of Stanford's, published in the February 2000 issue of Archives of Family Medicine, in which he discusses the post-fertilization effect of the Pill, is often cited by anti-Pill groups.

Federal and state legislators are quietly adopting similar views. US Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), for example, does not support use of the Pill to prevent pregnancy, his staffers told Prevention. In March 2003, during a debate on the Senate floor that touched on emergency contraception, Santorum said, "I will not be supportive of covering medications that would lead to a fertilized egg not [being] implanted in the uterus. I believe life begins at conception. I would not support drugs that would prevent a conceived embryo [from being] implanted."

You realize this is the tip of the ice berg. Honestly if you can use your beliefs

to not fulfill a prescription for birth control. What is next? Aids medicines

cancer treatments? It would be the survival of the fittest

No what this is is a perfect opportunity for someone else to open a pharmacy that makes no refusals to write out prescriptions and drive the Christian pharmacy out of business by having a huge competitive edge on them, particularly among women.

Being a business owner and involved in the financial software industry.
When I sell a business a system I do not turn them into the IRS or State
for tax evasion. There method of operation goes against my morals and operate 100%
above board and legit. If I were to act as these Pharmacist it would destroy how many
lives in the process? All the employee's of these businesses? I can educate them and
try to get them to change. Which is what the pharmacy should do!

Again what if this principle is pushed farther than just birth control?

What I had thought I was saying was that the marketplace should take care of itself. If there is a demand for a product soon enough there will be someone there to fulfill the demand. If this Christian business owner so to speak wants to weaken and jeopordize his own business for his religious principles I say let him. A new pharmacy will open up somewhere else.

This shows how the right has corrupted many people we must get them out of office before Bush gets back in again!!

Here are a couple of excerpts from articles that go into this troubling trend by pharmacists:

In July, the El Paso Times wrote that a pharmacist in Fabens, Texas refused to sell birth control because it was against his religion after hearing a radio program that explained the pill as an abortifacient, something that destroys the ability of a fertilized egg to survive. The pharmacist does fill some prescriptions for the pill, as long as they are used for other medical reasons besides birth control. He also refuses to carry the morning-after pill. This is the only pharmacy in Fabens. The closest birth control carrying pharmacy is all the way in El Paso, Texas.

http://www.csulb.edu/~d49er/archives/2004/...armacists.shtml

If you have to paint me as a hypocrite, that's OK,” Robert Hay says.

He's so polite — I suspect he secretly wants the embarrassment. Then he would have to face his conflict.

Mr. Hay is a Boone County commissioner, a pharmacist and a board member of the Northern Kentucky Independent District Health Department.

On the health board, he's pushing to ban birth-control pills from public clinics in five counties. He's close to prevailing: Such a motion died last year on a vote of 11-11.

But at the Florence Walgreens where he works, Mr. Hay regularly fills prescriptions for the same pills. They appear to be OK for his customers, but not for the low-income women who use the clinics.

Mr. Hay objects to birth-control pills because he's afraid they prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus. He considers this tantamount to abortion, which he strongly opposes.

And yet he dispenses such pills for a living — up to 60 prescriptions per weekend.

“I'm increasingly under a burden here,” he says quietly. “It's a hard place to be. Every day I go in and every time I dispense one, you just wonder, "What's going to happen here?'”

In addition to his pill concerns, Mr. Hay thinks premarital sex shouldn't be subsidized with public money. But refusing the unmarried while prescribing for the married would be discriminatory.

So it's best to refuse everyone at the public health clinics, he concludes. Those who can afford better ... well, they can afford better.

http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2001/04/0...ples_birth.html

I would imagine that if they get away with this that the Aids Pills would be a logical next step....As far as insurance companies go, they don't like pharmacies...I wonder if places like Walgreens would be so lienent if Premera/Aetna/Kaiser pulled their business....

What about getting the insurance companies involved?

Have them send letters that if they won't fill all of the scripts they wont't fill

any

This kidn of thing is infuriating.

People who don't want to dispense medicine should not work in a pharmacy.

If I ever hear a pharmacist jumping on someone for a prescription the pharmacist and the store manager and the governor will get an earful.

BTW, Wal-Mart nationwide is refusing to dispense the morning after pill. Wal-Mart says too bad we could care less about you to rape victims.

True enough because, as you said, the consumer will ultimately decide where to take his/her business. However, in a small/rural area, there is less of a chance for another chain or independent operator to open shop. My home town has one pharmacy ... to take my business elsewhere would cost me time (which is money) and, well, money.

I would guess that if you owned a business, you can't be forced to sell a product. It probably is a right of business to pick your items to sell. The religious have rights too. The answer is shop somewhere else. The truth is you can boycott all business to that particular store. Its not as if your forced to go there. We can't be seriously telling people what they must sell or do. WHATS NEXT REQUIRING ALL DR.S TO PERFORM ABORTIONS? Its just not right. Freedom for all means just that. your free to sell what you want, and the customers free to shop anywhere else.

I think Wal-Mart is really saying is they care about public relations. I can assure you that is a business, not ideological decision.

I think you can actually shop online pharmacies if your in one horse town, so even that argument maybe incorrect.

I guess all these civil rights experts do not realize even religious republicans have rights. Since this is the case, I truly cannot blame religious people for not respecting or seeing their rights. Turnabout is fair play I guess,,,,,,

My town has two horses ... and the other one doesn't know how to type!

I have to say I am amazed at this discussion

The big picture is if you can say I won't give you this pill because I am a nut

and refuse to honor my oath then I can now say I won't give this other pill

that saves your life because I do not want because I am religious.

Such BS, such crap about market freedom. I am appalled this is why Dems

can't win! Too much ok if this ok if that!

Well they lost my business over their hypocritical pr.

The more I think about this being "business"" the mader I get, I'm gonna ignore, grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Maybe you're right the more I think about it. I wasn't thinking of all the possibilities probably because I don't know that much about women's health.

You can't really believe this.
This is the exact same argument bigots have used to deny service based on race. "It's my establishment, and I'm free to do what I want." Utter crap, and undefensible. Please keep in mind the following:
As a public establishment, you and I are supporting said "Christian pharmacy" with police and fire protection, as well as public utilities, and the umbrella of integration within a society founded on (supposedly) free and democratic institutions. If a licensed pharacist is allowed to deny conventional, legal, and well established service based on religious grounds, then there is nothing to stop society from unraveling completely. How would you feel if you weren't served in a restaurant because because you do the devil's bidding? Fine, go somewhere else? How about if someone refused to rent to you because you weren't "Chrstian" enough? Those battles were already fought. People died fighting for the right to be treated equal, and if you remember, the civil rights movement of the 60's didn't just say "regardless of color". They added RELIGION, gender, and national origin.
To become an apologist for unethical professionals who refuse people service on religious grounds is unAmerican. I would tell them to their face. If Martin Luther King were alive he'd warn us against falling for the self righteous.

You've gone way too far. This situation is not analagous to only allowing some people in his restaurant. He's allowing everyone to enter his restaurant; he's just not serving certain dishes that some people like.

I still say public establishments aren't allowed to create their own religious rules. On another thread I added the following:
If the trend continues...
Phone service can be legally be cut to Planned Parenthood, because the local phone service provider disagrees with what they do
Snow removal personnel can bypass clinics and pharmacies engaged in the work of the devil
Garbage haulers will leave trash from establishments they consider offensive
Medical and office supply houses will hold orders to placate high profile religious groups
Firefighters won't have to respond to calls from homes and businesses they consider at odds with their politics.
Forget the restaurant analogy. Licensed professionals have a job to do, which doesn't involve religious discrimination.

I showed my girlfriend this article and she became enraged. She said she would kick that guy's butt from one end of his pharmacy's floor to the other and then she'd have a long talk with him about women's health issues. And then she became angry at ME for sort of defending him a little bit. I guess contraception for some women is like a bone to a dog.

Very narrow to look at this as a contraception issue. As I've made it clear above, it's a freedom of religion issue. When licensed professionals can stop doing their jobs on religious grounds, our society has changed. Ignore the righteous pharmacist, and you have to ignore every other professional we depend on for our life and health.
I would say to the pharmacist: Yes, you can be pious. This is America, after all. Now, surrender your license and go open a pharamacy in Saudi Arabia.
I have nothing more to say on this issue. (until next thread---this one seems to get repeated a lot)

Ummm, no. Your rights do not include the right to infringe on the rights of another. That kind of rhetoric has no place in this sort of discussion. Going to a pharmacy to fill a prescription for something these "religious" people find offensive is not being disrespectful to their beliefs or disregarding their right not to approve of sex outside marriage, contraception or abortion. Preventing me from filling that valid and legal prescription is in violation of my rights. If you want your right to believe as you do respected, you must respect the right of others to form and voice dissenting opinions.

That is correct, if he owns the business he does not have to stock contraceptives of any sort and therefor does not have to sell them. If the pharmacy stocks a drug that needs a prescription to be obtained legally and someone presents him with a valid prescription the pharmacist is obligated to fill and dispense that prescription unless there is a legitimate, objective reason not to do so (in this case it would be if he received info from the insurance company indicating the prescription shouldn't be filled because it had just been filled; there appears to be an error in the dose regimen/instructions that must be clarified with the physician who wrote the prescription and the clarification of dosing instructions is completely inconsistent with formulary or and could increase the pharmacy's liability). He can not refuse to fill the prescription because he does not approve of the indication for which the medication was prescribed.

Wow, what is it with the "I don't like it at all and so if you want anyone to do it, you're gonna force all of us to" "logic"?#1 Not all doctors are qualified to perform abortions, so we definitely don't want them to give it a whirl (IMO abortion, surgical or medical, should really be the domain of OB/GYNs) #2 Attending physicians are not forced to write a prescription or perform a procedure when (s)he (based on clinical judgment) does not think it is in the patient's best interests. In most specialties, when one goes through training, one is not allowed to refuse to get trained on procedures because they don't approve of them; in OB/GYN rotations you must learn to perform D&Cs and D&Es but not to perform them as part of a surgical abortion.

There isn't as much freedom in prescription medications as other items, but you are right that the owner of a store does not have to sell items they find objectionable. In these instances, they should not stock those items. They do not have the right to infringe on someone's right to privacy or require additional protected health information from that individual that they don't need to fill a prescription.

This issue poses quite a dilemma. How can a person satisfy the needs of the public and practice their religious beliefs at the same time if those beleifs infrige upon the rights or needs of others? I think the pharmacist should be able to not hand out the contraceptives or whatever on religious grounds. However, what to heck are they doing in the pharacy business if they don't want to hand out certain perscriptions to the public?

One solution would be to open a private practice without recieving tax dollars.

Agreed!

Pharmicies are licensed. It is not up to the business owner to pick and choose what legal medicines to dispense. If the holy rollers or the right wing wackos or whatever group want to start their own businesses and see if they can get licensed while clearly labelling the businesses as "limited pharmacy" or something, then fine. You don't go to the Christian Science Reading Room looking for mdical journals. But when a well-known chain starts letting the person behind the counter decide on his or her own volition, that is wrong. In my opinion, ANY chain that allows that ANYWHERE should be boycotted. Period.

There is no dilemma for the pharmacist. If he doesn't want to be in a position to dispense contraceptives for the purposes of birth control to which his is opposed, he should work at a pharmacy that's part of a Catholic hospital or open his own pharmacy with a policy not to stock or fill prescriptions for contraceptives. If he chose the latter, all he needs to do if presented with a prescription is say that the pharmacy does not stock or dispense contraceptives and return the prescription to the person who asked to have it filled. For him to attempt any other option is unnaccceptable. While hormonal contraceptives are approved for other medical indications, a patient is not obligated to tell the pharmacist what a drug is prescribed for (and the pharmacist has no cause to ask).


By this I mean you assume that federally/locally funded prescription plans should not be honored if he were to open his own pharmacy. There is no conflict if this sort of pharmacy accepts these prescription plans, but doesn't dispense contraceptives at all, so it's a moot point (it's a pharmacy not a public health clinic).