Not an issue
Apparently, there is a small but not insignificant group of pharmacies that are refusing to sell contraceptives or (perhaps more troublingly) prescription medications such as birth control. According to The Washington Post, one such pharmacy is opening this summer in Chantilly, VA, near my old (as well as my sister's current) stomping grounds. I remember reading about this trend a while back and being really pissed off. Now, perhaps in deference to my ever-increasing libertarian tendencies, I just laugh.
This will all sort itself out. In my opinion, pharmacies should have every right to refuse sale of any product they deem objectionable. Patients rights? Not violated. They can just go to another pharmacy, the glories of a free market. If this were a widespread phenomenon, I might be concerned. If the entire corporation of CVS or Walgreen's were to stop offering customers these products, maybe there would be mild cause for concern. But it would still be their right. Ultimately, the market will weed these companies out. There are plenty of pro-life people who use condoms, for crying out loud.
(It should be perfectly clear: the decision is that of the pharmacy, not its employees. That would be a clear violation of an employee's obligation to his/her employer. But, similarly to patients, they can go find themselves another pharmacy.)
If a medical worker were choosing to deny a patient a necessary medical procedure, that's a problem (and a huge moral one at that). Otherwise, as Billie Joe Armstrong might say, it's a "free-for-all, fuck 'em all". Which, due to laziness, I will make my Song Lyric of the Day and call it done.
This will all sort itself out. In my opinion, pharmacies should have every right to refuse sale of any product they deem objectionable. Patients rights? Not violated. They can just go to another pharmacy, the glories of a free market. If this were a widespread phenomenon, I might be concerned. If the entire corporation of CVS or Walgreen's were to stop offering customers these products, maybe there would be mild cause for concern. But it would still be their right. Ultimately, the market will weed these companies out. There are plenty of pro-life people who use condoms, for crying out loud.
(It should be perfectly clear: the decision is that of the pharmacy, not its employees. That would be a clear violation of an employee's obligation to his/her employer. But, similarly to patients, they can go find themselves another pharmacy.)
If a medical worker were choosing to deny a patient a necessary medical procedure, that's a problem (and a huge moral one at that). Otherwise, as Billie Joe Armstrong might say, it's a "free-for-all, fuck 'em all". Which, due to laziness, I will make my Song Lyric of the Day and call it done.
2 Comments:
I like this post. When it comes to things like free exercise of religion, I'm certainly inclined to think the government should keep their hands off. Not from a market perspective, but from a fundamental rights perspective. Still, this made me think a little more about how those can synch up at times. I'm not comfortable with Libertarianism, but I'm willing to conceed that it gets to the right result at least some of the time.
I'd also say that so long as the employer is ok with the employee refusing to provide birth control (or whatever else) on a religious basis, then that's also acceptable.
That's five minutes from Mom's house... there's a CVS right up the street, for those of us heathens who still want birth control.
I agree, in part. The difficulty, as I understood it in the past, is that the pharmacists' professional association has a requirement that all licensed pharmacists dispense prescribed medication, regardless of their own ideology. If that's true, the pharmacists' association ought to have the right to set the ethics for its own profession.
That may have changed though, and if it has, then yeah, the best course of action is to let it work itself out.
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