Trampling or Upholding the Conscience of Pharmacists

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - November 16, 2007

On November 2, Governor Jon Corzine of New Jersey signed a bill forcing pharmacists in his state to fill prescriptions even if doing so violates their moral beliefs and contravenes their conscience. The real purpose of the bill was to ensure that pharmacists in New Jersey, like those in eleven other states, would be required to give the abortifacient Plan B morning after pill to women who request it. That New Jersey legislators wrote the bill in an even more general way only underscores that in the Garden State, pharmacists are not only not permitted to follow their conscience but to have one.

It should not come as a big surprise that supporters of abortion, like Governor Corzine and the majorities of members in both houses of the New Jersey legislature, do not give much weight to freedom of conscience. They believe, after all, that a woman should have the right to kill her child if the child does not fit into her plans; it is rather easy to see by that logic why they think the same woman should be able to trample on the consciences of others if the moral decisions that flow from such consciences do not fit into her immoral plans. Once one no longer respects the dignity of the other human being even to live, then there's no reason to think that that person will value the other's dignity to live morally.

So pro-life pharmacists in New Jersey and in eleven other states have now been forced to choose between following their conscience and keeping their job. Those who support the so-called "right to choose" have taken away their ability to choose to be a pharmacist without having to cooperate in what they think is evil: they must either be willing to cooperate in chemical abortions by dispensing Plan B or get out of the pharmaceutical profession altogether.

Because Pope Benedict has recognized that pro-life pharmacists are now among the chief targets of the pro-abortion movement, he is speaking out vigorously in their defense. In an October 29 address at the Vatican to the members of the International Congress of Catholic Pharmacists, he called them to become ever more aware of the ethical implications of their profession and the use of certain drugs. Medicines, he said, are supposed to have a "therapeutic role," not a lethal one; to help heal others rather than kill them. "The pharmacist," he declared, "must invite each person to advance humanity, so that every being may be protected from the moment of conception until natural death." Dispensing drugs that either cause abortion or euthanasia are contrary to the purpose of pharmaceuticals and to the moral law. "It is not possible to anaesthetize consciences," Benedict added, concerning the effects of a drug "whose purpose is to prevent an embryo's implantation," like the abortifacient Plan B, "or to shorten a person's life," like euthanasia cocktails.

In the face of state or corporate policies that seek to trample on the consciences of pharmacists, the pope reminded them about the right to conscientious objection. This is a right that the pharmaceutical profession "must recognize, permitting you not to collaborate either directly or indirectly by supplying products for the purpose of decisions that are clearly immoral, such as abortion or euthanasia." He called on pharmacists as a body to stick up for their legitimate right not to be compelled to dispense deadly and immoral toxins; there is strength and numbers and all pharmacists are under assault when laws totally take away their capacity to do what they think is right.

When groups of pharmacists have recently stood up in defense of their rights, many good things have happened. In the state of Washington, for example, several pharmacists filed a federal lawsuit over a new law obliging them, like their colleagues in New Jersey, to dispense abortifacient emergency contraception. On November 9, U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton signed an injunction suspending Washington's law while the lawsuit is pending. The Washington pharmacists said in their lawsuit that the policy violates their civil rights by forcing them to choose between "their livelihoods and their deeply held religious and moral beliefs." Judge Leighton found their arguments persuasive, determining that "on the issue of free exercise of religion alone, the evidence before the court convinces it that the plaintiffs… have demonstrated both a likelihood of success on the merits and the possibility of irreparable injury."

Groups of pharmacists are finding success in other areas of the country as well. Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas and South Dakota have all recently passed legislation that explicitly permit pharmacists to refuse to dispense contraceptives and Florida, Tennessee and Maine now have laws protecting the rights of pharmacists and other medical personnel from having to act their consciences. Even in Illinois, which two years ago became the first state to require pharmacists to fill all prescriptions regardless of ethical objections, pharmacists challenging the rule were recently able to achieve a legal settlement allowing those who object to dispensing emergency birth control to step aside while others with no objections fill the prescriptions.

By raising the subject of conscientious objection, however, Pope Benedict is doing more than suggesting what pharmaceutical groups may be able to achieve as professional bodies. He is also intimating what individual Catholic pharmacists may be forced to do on an individual basis to avoid breaking the moral law.

Two weeks ago, the editorial focused on Pope Benedict's reminder — after the beatification of 498 Spaniards executed during the Spanish Civil War — that all Catholics are called by their baptism to be "unbloody martyrs" in their ordinary life, precisely by "living the Gospel without compromise." When given a choice between fidelity to God's law or to an unjust civil law, the faithful Catholic is called to uphold God's law, even if it may bring about personal suffering.

In the midst of a culture of death, one of the most obvious ways that a Catholic pharmacist is called to be an unbloody martyr is to keep his or her hands free from of the blood of innocent unborn children or frail seniors or the sick.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.