EDITORIAL – Pharmacists for life betraying Hippocratic oath

While having sex with her husband, the condom broke, so a married mother of four in Wisconsin… While having sex with her husband, the condom broke, so a married mother of four in Wisconsin went to her local Walgreens to obtain the morning-after pill.

Her pharmacist refused to fill her prescription, and, according to the American Pharmacists Association, was well within his or her rights to do so.

A recent movement within the pharmaceutical profession has made it harder for women to have prescriptions filled for birth control and the morning-after pill. This movement, spearheaded by the 1,600-member Pharmacists for Life International, claims that these medical professionals don’t have to dispense medications that conflict with their religious or moral values.

But where do we draw the line between people protecting their individual rights and failing to do their jobs?

The pharmacist who refused the Wisconsin woman asserted his or her beliefs, effectively trumping the patient’s decision not to have a fifth child, and, hypocritically, breaking the Hippocratic oath to first do no harm. Neither birth control nor emergency contraception kill — they prevent implantation, so that the life is never begun. In refusing to fill prescriptions that doctors have written, pharmacists are going against the most basic tenet of their trade.

While patients don’t get to diagnose their own problems, under U.S. law, they do get to determine the number of children they want to have, be that four or none. More than that, if having a child would be harmful to a patient — for health or economic reasons — pharmacists who refuse to fill these prescriptions are actively hurting their patients. For instance, if a pharmacist denied a diabetic woman the morning-after pill, her pregnancy might endanger her life.

Moreover, who are pharmacists to judge their patients’ reasons for choosing not to have children?

Part of doing any job in the health profession is dealing with people who make choices that the professional may not like. While doctors may not want their patients to smoke, they cannot physically deny them cigarettes, just as drugstore clerks can’t refuse to sell them.

But the analogy stops there — these pharmacists aren’t just refusing patients; they’re not doing their jobs. As professionals, they have a responsibility to be the link between patients and doctors. Breaking that link counts as failure, and the ones who refuse women treatment that their doctors prescribe should be fired.

Currently, many employers trying to balance pharmacists’ wishes with patients’ needs are introducing “conscience clauses” that would allow pharmacists to refuse patients their prescriptions, so long as they could refer them to another pharmacist or pharmacy that will fill the prescription. While that solution might look good on paper — and it would prevent pharmacists from holding patients’ prescriptions hostage, as some now do — it is not so good in practice.

Here on Pitt’s campus, we’re a hop, skip and one-block walk from the next drugstore. But in rural areas, going to another pharmacy might require an hour-long drive, hardly something that a woman pressed for time — since she must take the morning-after pill within 72 hours of having unprotected sex — should have to do.

In short, pharmacists should do their jobs or find new ones. Sometimes, it really is that simple.