Conscientious objection: A pharmacist’s right or professional negligence?

Extract

In Texas, three pharmacists are fired for refusing to fill a rape victim’s prescription for emergency contraception because it “violated [their] morals.”¹ A Wisconsin pharmacist refuses to fill, or transfer out, a similar prescription and is put on trial for violating the state’s regulation and licensing department’s standards of care. He stated that he “did not want to commit a sin.”² A group of Illinois pharmacists sue their employer for religious discrimination after they were each disciplined for refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception.³

These are just a few examples of the controversy surrounding a pharmacist’s right to refuse to fill a prescription. Though this issue has recently gained public attention because of situations involving emergency contraception, it is not a new issue to the pharmacy profession. Many pharmacists also have strong feelings about dispensing drugs used for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and capital punishment, and ethical questions regarding the dispensing of erectile dysfunction drugs for convicted sex offenders and HIV-positive patients have emerged.^4,–6 Delegates at a meeting of the American Medical Association have even claimed that pharmacists have refused to fill prescriptions for psychotropic and pain medications because of moral objections,⁷ although no documented cases of pharmacists refusing to fill a legitimate prescription for these agents have been reported in the literature or news sites.