MEDICALLY IMPAIRED
Government official leads fight against “moral” pharmacists. Perhaps the free market should take over.
BY LEWIS WHITTEN

A Nevada Pharmacy Board proposal that would allow a pharmacist to refuse to fill a prescription because it violates a “genuine principle or tenet of conscience” has gained national attention. The board voted to continue the debate at their Dec. 8 meeting in Reno.

Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani (D-Las Vegas) sponsored bills during the 2003 and 2005 legislative sessions that would have made the Board’s proposal a moot discussion. If passed, her bills would have kept pharmacists from letting their conscience guide them in the workplace.

“This is about access to healthcare, not one’s values or morals,” Giunchigliani said. “If pharmacists don’t feel they can fill certain prescriptions, they shouldn’t be in that business.” 

Giunchigliani represents many women’s groups that are concerned about access to birth control.

Currently many pharmacists have legitimate concerns and are fearful of distributing drugs like Plan B, which they believe causes a woman to abort a fetus.

“Nobody tells a physician he has to perform an abortion,” board general counsel Louis Ling told the Reno Gazette-Journal. “No other healthcare professional is forced to do something over her beliefs.”

But nobody in Nevada is forced to work for a specific company and there are pharmacies that “moral” pharmacists can work at that do not sell Plan B. Perhaps that debate is best kept between a pharmacist and the pharmacy they work for.

A provision in the proposal states all prescriptions must be filled “without delay,” which means a pharmacist must be on hand at all times to distribute every available medication.

This provision would be unrealistic for small rural towns where only one pharmacy and pharmacist is available. That provision is, however, a reasonable idea, assuming without delay means less than a minute.

Currently in Nevada there are already pharmacists denying patients the medication their doctors prescribe them. According to Giunchigliani, she knows a woman who was denied diabetic medicine because the pharmacist didn’t like the way she looked.

During the Nevada Pharmacy Board’s discussion, Lisa Lynn Chapman described an incident when she was 18 years old and was denied birth control pills because a pharmacist demanded she get a note from her parents.

“As I was driving to a different pharmacy I was furious, I was frustrated,” she said. “It’s not a pharmacist’s job to pass judgment on me.”

Had the “without delay” proposal been in place, Chapman could have demanded another pharmacist fill her prescription immediately.

Another provision in the proposal states that a pharmacist must alert a pharmacy about their beliefs. This could help with the hiring process, since a pharmacy has a monetary interest in employing pharmacists willing to distribute all available drugs.

Finally, another provision in the proposal states that a pharmacist must remain silent on the reason for refusing a prescription. Of course, that won’t stop them from knocking on your front door to save you after work.

Perhaps the best solution is to the leave the lawmakers out of this and see how “moral” pharmacies survive in the free market. LW