A Third Victory For Sanity By The Supreme Court This Week

(Image was found at the Progressive Secular Humanist.)

This has been a good week for progressives regarding Supreme Court decisions. First, we had the 5 to 3 vote killing the odious law in Texas that closed many women's clinics. The cam the 6 to 2 vote that upheld the ban on possessing firearms by those convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence. Now we learn of another victory for women's health.

The case involved a pharmacist and two of his employees in the state of Washington. That pharmacy refused to even carry the "morning after pill", or other contraceptives they considered to cause abortions. They claimed they had a religious right to do that.

The state of Washington disagreed. They passed a law mandating that all pharmacies must carry and sell those contraceptives. The pharmacist went to court to protect his "religious rights", and was able to convince a federal judge that he was right. But that verdict was overturned by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, who ruled that the Washington law was constitutional and did not violate religious rights. It simply mandated that pharmacists do their job.

He appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But this week, on a 5 to 3 vote, the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal. That left the appeals court decision as the law of the land. The five justices voting to refuse the case were Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, Ginsberg, and Kennedy. Roberts, Alito, and Thomas wanted to take the case.

The Supreme Court did the right thing. Refusing to sell legal medications to the public is not only a violation of the law, but a breach of ethics for a pharmacist. If they don't want to do their job, then they should quit and find a job they can do properly.

Pope Puts Religion Over Women's Rights

The Nazi Pope, Benedict XVI, has again shown his disdain for women and their rights. He told a gathering of pharmacists that they should have the right to force their religious views on their customers, especially the female customers.

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

In plain language, pharmacists should have the right to force their own weird religious beliefs on their customers. He thinks if a pharmacist has a "moral" objection to filling a prescription, then they should not have to do it. They should have the right to refuse to follow a doctor's orders or a patient's wishes.

I could not disagree more. I don't care how many years a pharmacist went to school, or how much money they spent doing it. They knew what the job entailed before they entered the profession. If they cannot "ethically" fulfill their duties, then they should find a new profession where their religion would not interfere with their duties.

No profession should have the right to impose their own religious views on those who disagree with them. Would you want a policeman who was morally opposed to hurting a criminal that was trying to kill you? Of course not. That policeman would be asked to find a profession that did not interfere with the rights and safety of the general public.

The same should be true of pharmacists. They are being paid to dispense prescriptions, not force their religious views on those who do not accept those views. If they want to further their religion, they should become a priest or minister. But if they want to be a pharmacist, they should dispense any legal medication they are asked to dispense.

The Pope has the right to any weird religious belief he wants, but he is stepping over the line when he asks others to interfere with the rights and safety of the public by refusing to do their duty.

Pharmacists Sue To Deny Prescriptions

Washington State recently passed a law that says that a pharmacy cannot refuse to fill a patient's legal prescription. If a doctor write's a prescription, then a pharmacy must fill the prescription. An individual pharmacist may ask another pharmacist to fill the prescription as long as the prescription is filled by the pharmacy that same day.

This seems like a very reasonable law to me. It is simply asking pharmacists to do their job (i.e., fill prescriptions). The law just went into effect yesterday, and already, a couple of pharmacists are suing the state. Evidently, they believe their pharmacist degree gives them the right to second-guess a doctor's treatment, and impose their own weird morality on their customers.

Of course, the prescriptions in question concern the so-called "morning-after" pill. These nuts say the law forces them to administer medical treatments they consider immoral. That's just stupid. They don't have the right to administer medical treatment in the first place. That's a doctor's job. Their job is simply to fill prescriptions issued by the doctor (and putting pills in a bottle is not "administering medical treatment").

Frankly, I have no sympathy for these people. All patients should have the right to promptly receive any medication their doctor prescribes for them. If these pharmacists feel they cannot do their job as the state requires, they should resign and find a job or profession that they can do.

Neither their politics nor their religion should interfere with a doctor's treatment or a patient's rights.