Pharmacists’ issue reaches U.S. Senate

April 28, 2005

Can anyone remember the last time a seemingly-obscure policy issue went from isolated regional dust-ups to national policy debate as quickly as the “pharmacists’ rights” issue has?

One month ago today, the Washington Post ran a front-page article on the issue of pharmacists, in an unknown number of cases, refusing to fill prescriptions when medications violate their “personal moral or religious beliefs.” Since then, it’s led to two new statewide conflicts (in Illinois and Arizona) and proposed legislation in the House of Representatives with bi-partisan support.

Yesterday, the issue reached the Senate.

During an outdoor rally today on Capitol Hill, United States Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Debbie Wasserman-Schwartz (D-FL) and other lawmakers and supporters introduced legislation to STOP pharmacies from denying the sale of physician prescribed prescription medications because of their employees religious beliefs.

A number of women around the country have recently been denied important family planning prescriptions by individual pharmacists who were personally against them. Representatives from NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood of America and the National Women’s Law Center also spoke during the event.

For those interested in the details, the bill is S. 809 and is being co-sponsored by Lautenberg, Barbara Boxer, and Jon Corzine. The companion bill in the House is H. R. 1652 and has already picked up 43 sponsors. The bill is pretty straightforward: all pharmacies (though not necessarily all pharmacists) would be required to fill all prescriptions or refer customers to an outlet who will.

Substance aside, I’m stunned to see the speed with which this issue has worked its way up the policy ladder. It usually takes more than a month for a controversy to go from the newspaper to proposed legislation in both chambers of Congress. The issue clearly touched a nerve.

Post Script: As long as we’re on the topic, I wanted to add that “Pharmacists for Life” is a group that gets a lot of attention whenever this issue is discussed in the media. It’s worth noting, therefore, that the group doesn’t appear to exist beyond one radical spokesperson who’s been hitting the talk-show circuit lately. Media Matters recently explained:

Though CNN apparently considered Pharmacists for Life a significant enough organization to invite its president to appear on American Morning unopposed, the organization is rather obscure. Pharmacists for Life’s most recent IRS filings indicate that the organization has no paid employees and raised and spent less than $30,000 in 2003 (the most recent year for which figures are available), with more than half going for “VIT, GLOVES, SUPPLIES.”

For that matter, Pharmacists for Life president Karen Brauer — who recently told CNN that those who want pharmacists to do their jobs are going to “force women to kill their children” — was fired from a previous job after she lied to a patient about prescribed medication. Something to keep in mind when considering her credibility the next time she’s on TV.

I would still like to see someone — anyone! — come up with numbers indicating just how pervasive this problem is. We continually hear that “a number of women around the country” have been denied family planning prescriptions. How many is that?

  • It seems to me that Republicans don’t think small. They find a small issue, then use that as a precedent for some far more titanic horror. For instance, ending the filibuster is meant to lead to overturning Marbury v. Madison. Putting private accounts into Social Security is meant to lead to the ending of Social Security entirely. So here’s what I think the deal is with Republican’s wanting to establish a pharmacist’s right to not dispense a medicine he considers morally objectionable.

    If a pharmacist can choose not to dispense a medicine for one reason, pressure can be put on him to not dispense a medicine for other reasons. For example, how many pharmacies are in tiny Red State towns in America’s outback? One? Perhaps a handful in a whole county? I see pro-life advocates immediately picketing the pharmacies and putting social pressure (such as through ostracization, demonization, and bullying), economic pressure (boycotts) and political pressure (such as through town boards) on those pharmacists to “come to their senses” and see “the moral wrong” in dispensing any form of birth control whatsoever, whether pharmaceutical or prophylactic. It won’t matter what the pharmacists actually believe. They now have the right to not dispense the birth control, and the local zealots will make sure they exercise that right, if only for their own social and economic well-being.

  • I’m finding several contradictions in all this.
    One, with the influence of the drug companies in the country I can’t see how they are going to let this fly, a recent example was when several states tried to outlaw the sales of ephedrine – a key ingredient in the manufacture of methamphetamine – the drug company lobbyists were able to get the proposed laws defeated in several states. Remember corporate profits above all else.
    Another corporate related issue, there are more and more chain pharmacies, do you think that they will let their employees do anything that will cost them a profit.
    I’m not sure how this will all shake out, but if Wal-Mart has any influence all prescriptions will be sold, regardless of how the pharmacists feel about it.
    I would love the hear what Oxy-Contin boy Rush has to say about this.

  • A pharmacist who refuses to fill a prescription should be dismissed from his position and his license revoked. Period. A pharmacy is no more a moral pulpit than an emergency room. There is a job to be done that affects the health of the recipient of those services and a failure to meet the professional standards required by that profession is cause for censure or dismissal.
    I feel this also opens the pharmacist as well as his emplpoyer and quite possibly the organization to which he/she is pandering to legal action that could include hefty monetary fines and quite possibly imprisonment in a case where they actually cause damage to an individual by this lack of service.

    Health professionals in particular are subject to very high standards by both their own professional organizations and by their emploters. When they refuse to meet their obligations they should be stripped of their rank and privelidges and face professional censure and possible criminal charges. It’s time to stop coddling the abominable actions of these activists just because they hide behind the facade of moral values.

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