Before this gets too far away

The item is from four days ago, a generation in blog time, but I think it still deserves mention.

A new drug store at a Virginia strip mall is putting its faith in an unconventional business plan: No candy. No sodas. And no birth control. Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy is among at least seven pharmacies across the nation that are refusing as a matter of faith to sell contraceptives of any kind, even if a person has a prescription. ...

In Virginia ... pharmacists can turn away any prescription for any reason.

And the "reason" here is that they just don't like birth control. Oh, and in case you think this has nothing to do with the desire of conservative religious groups, specifically in this case including the Catholic Church, to dictate private behavior, especially sexual behavior, consider first that birth control appears to be the only area where this is an issue. Then consider that

[o]n Tuesday, the pharmacy celebrated a blessing from Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde. While Divine Mercy Care is not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, it is guided by church teachings on sexuality, which forbid any form of artificial contraception, including morning-after pills, condoms and birth control pills, a common prescription used by millions of women in the U.S.

"This pharmacy is a vibrant example of our Holy Father's charge to all of us to wear our faith in the public square," said Loverde, who sprinkled holy water on the shelves stocked with painkillers and acne treatments. "It will allow families to shop in an environment where their faith is not compromised."

The anti-freedom group Pharmacists for Life International says this is the seventh pharmacy to be "certified" as refusing to deal in birth control. The group also claims that hundreds of other pharmacies have similar policies. That, however, may well be the typical inflation of their own support in which anti-choicers routinely engage.

Virginia is one of four states that allow pharmacists to refuse on their own accord to fill prescriptions; at least seven other states have laws requiring pharmacists to fill prescriptions for birth control.

I originally wrote something about this back in May of 2004, warning then that it was foolish to believe the anti-rights brigade was only about abortion and not about birth control in general. At that time I quoted medical ethicist Linda Rankin as saying "When people take on the life of a pharmacist, they have to realize what might be asked of them."

They need to realize[, I said] - and damn well should realize - that filling prescriptions that might violate personal beliefs comes with the territory.

That is, it's part of the job. If you can't do it, you can't do the job and should find another line of work. I suppose that an argument could be made that a physician can pick and choose what prescriptions they are willing to write (although I don't actually see how in the absence of a specific medical reason that ability could apply to birth control) - but in any event the pharmacist did not write the prescription, they are filling it. And I say that unless there is a direct health-related reason (such as, for example, a potentially harmful interaction with another med the person is on) for doing so, they have no right to simply refuse.

A pharmacist who can pick and choose what prescriptions they will fill is like a soldier who can pick and choose when and where they will fight.

Let me be clear: I do believe in the right of individual conscience. I believe in it very strongly; in fact it is probably my most core belief. And I do believe in the right of what's called "selective objection" to war, that is, the right to regard a given war as unacceptably immoral without regarding all war as such. The point here is that if you are a soldier and such a war starts, you can't in good conscience continue to be a soldier and must leave the military.

Note well that I'm talking ethics here, not legalities: The military does not recognize selective conscientious objection and wouldn't allow you to leave for that reason and you would have to make the choice of how much to resist. But that restriction doesn't apply to a civilian job like pharmacist. Simply put and again, if you can't in conscience fill the prescriptions presented to you, you can't be a pharmacist.

Again, I do believe in the right of individual conscience. What I do not believe in is the right to impose that individual conscience on others in the expectation, indeed in the demand - and make no mistake, this is what outfits like Pharmacists for Life and the Catholic Church are demanding - that there will be, can be, no consequences to you for doing so.