Pope: Don't Dispense Drugs For Immoral Use

Urges Catholic Pharmacists To Refuse Prescriptions Used For Abortion, Euthanasia

(AP)  Pope Benedict XVI urged Catholic pharmacists on Monday to use conscientious objection to avoid dispensing drugs with "immoral purposes such as, for example, abortion or euthanasia."

In a speech to participants at the 25th International Congress of Catholic Pharmacists, Benedict said that conscientious objection was a right that must be recognized by the pharmaceutical profession.

Such objector status, he said, would "enable them not to collaborate directly or indirectly in supplying products that have clearly immoral purposes such as, for example, abortion or euthanasia."

In his speech, the pope also said that pharmacists have an educational role toward patients so that drugs are used in a morally and ethically correct way.

"We cannot anesthetize consciences as regards, for example, the effect of certain molecules that have the goal of preventing the implantation of the embryo or shortening a person's life," he said.

Emergency contraception pills, which can be taken up to 72 hours after unprotected sex, work by preventing ovulation or by preventing the embryo from being implanted into the womb.

The pope said pharmacists should raise people's awareness so that "all human beings are protected from conception to natural death, and so that medicines truly play a therapeutic role."

The issue has been debated extensively in the United States.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich introduced the rule more than two years ago requiring pharmacists to fill all prescriptions. Pharmacists challenged the rule, and a legal settlement earlier this month allowed pharmacists who object to dispensing emergency birth control to step aside while someone else fills the prescription.

In Washington state, pharmacists have filed a federal lawsuit over a regulation requiring them to sell emergency contraception, saying it violates their civil rights by forcing them into choosing between "their livelihoods and their deeply held religious and moral beliefs."

A few states in the U.S. have passed laws that specifically allow pharmacists or pharmacies to refuse to provide health care due to religious or moral objections, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights think tank based in New York.

Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Dakota have legislation that explicitly permits pharmacists to refuse to dispense contraceptives, according to the Institute, and Florida, Illinois, Maine and Tennessee have broadly worded legislation that may apply to pharmacists.

In California, on the other hand, pharmacists are required to fill all valid prescriptions and can only refuse with employer approval and if the customer can still access the prescription in a timely manner.

In Britain, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has a code of ethics allowing pharmacists who have religious objections to refuse dispensing certain drugs, such as emergency contraception. But their objection must be stated to their employer before they start working, and they must refer patients to other pharmacists who can provide the requested drugs.

[michellem99-2009]

I went thru the adult program years ago..It is a lovely faith..I use to make rosaries.Gramma my stand on abortion is this if the lady must have it for health reasons only..It is not birth control..The Pope, the holy father must get them predators out.. Stop worrying about this/that for meds..We have a saying back home..Clean out yer church sir before yer clean out my back yard.And leave the doctoring to them...

[grammawhamma]

klingon69: The way the catholic hospital here got around that situation was the ob/gyn docs have their office off hospital property. They can prescribe birth control from the office. As far as tubal ligations and abortions...they will refer you to another hospital to have it done.

[klingon69]

Scenario is that you live in a very small town and the only hospital you have access to is a Catholic hosptial. You get terminal cancer. One day the pope decides that morphine and all pain killers need to be with held from terminally ill cancer patients because it might hasten their death. Your choices now are to die a painful death or move your pain wracked dying body to another town that has a non catholic hospital.
Posted by GrammaWhamma at 07:00 PM : Oct 29, 2007

We had two hospitasls in our town for years, one was Catholic. The Catholic hospital as far as I know never had a maternity ward, because the law required if they handled births, that they would also have to provide family-planning services such as abortion & contraceptives.

[klingon69]

Posted by psk123 at 05:12 PM : Oct 29, 2007

I actually had a Hindu doctor tell me once in the emrgency room, that he didn''t believe in giving narcotics for pain, said that meditaion would take care of it.

[klingon69]

Who runs America? Us, or the Pope?
Posted by ibsteve2u at 05:00 PM : Oct 29, 2007
Well, let''s see. Over 1 billion Catholics world-wide, and over 64 million in the US alone, one could see how Catholicism affects our political arena.

[readbetween]

The pope is an idiot what gives him the right to practice medicine. He needs to stick to wearing dresses and acting like a drag queen.

[andor3]

===Rafterman, the pharmacist IS following the rules of medicine. The pharmacist believes that life begins at conception and that by administering that drug, he/she would be ending a life......in violation of the Hippocratic Oath.===
Posted by blazercoach1

Really have to twist the facts to try to make any argument here eh? First, pharmacists do not administer drugs. second equating contraception with ending of life is nonsense. third a pharmicist who refuses to honor a doctors order is in violation of the oath, not upholding it. fourth, if you look into it, pharmacists are being fired, fined, facing criminal charges, and censure from licensing boards and professional organizations--as they should be.

[andor3]

===You mean that a person who had to leave work prior to work on friday before sun down as Orthodox Jews do or work on Saturday should be forced into fields that don''t have working hours.===
posted by alanrobisch2

what is the point here? yes of course, if you have moral objection to doing X, you should not enter a field where X is required. If you cannot work on Saturday you should not take a job requiring Saturday work. If you can''t fill prescriptions as written, you have no business being a pharmacist. No one if "forcing" anyone into or out of any field--we are talking about choice.

[grammawhamma]

brianbwb: Excellent post.

[brianbwb-2009]

Brianbwb....please inform your opinions. Posted by blazercoach1

Simple enough, anyone positing that their interpretation of religion is the only "correct" one, is automatically and obviously mistaken, hence the betrayal of the concept of infallibility. To apply the concept of infallibility to one circumstance and not others (as indicated by your statement that it has so far only applied to the concept of "Mary") is basically saying "the guy can be wrong, except for this instance, when we say he cannot be wrong".

In short, exceptions logically must negate absolutes, thus, my opinion that there is no such thing as human infallibility, and since the Pope is all too human, he can, and has, made mistakes, he has been wrong, as have most probably all Popes before him.

Regardless, however of my opinions, many see shortcomings in the operation of the Catholic church, such as reluctance to protect children from abusive priests, the expenditures of vast sums of money for expensive material trappings rather than on the best efforts to help the needy, and the endorsement of anti humanistic and illogical political positions, and these sights are causing many to leave the church.