Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

This is retarded:

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2007/10/11/illinois-pharmacists-can-skip-plan-b-store-owners-cant

>>
Illinois Pharmacists Can Skip
Plan B, but Store Owners Can’t

October 11, 2007
by Scott Hensley

Pharmacists with moral objections to “morning after” pills won’t have to fill women’s prescriptions for them in Illinois, under a legal settlement reached late last week.

But pharmacies must dispense prescriptions for Plan B (sold by Barr Laboratories) and other emergency contraceptive pills “without delay,” as Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich stipulated in 2005, the Chicago Tribune reports.

How will it work? Under rule changes outlined in the settlement, individual pharmacists who believe dispensing the pills would violate their religious beliefs don’t have to be the ones to process the order. But owners of the pharmacies are obligated to find a way to fulfill each woman’s prescription. One way: the pharmacy owner or another employee could hand over the medicine after an off-site pharmacist approves the prescription by phone or fax, the Tribune writes.

The settlement was reached through mediation among the pharmacists, the state and Walgreen. Melanie Antuma, a pharmacist for CVS/Caremark and one of the plaintiffs, told the Tribune of the settlement: “I’m OK with it. I know they’re trying to balance the two interests. But I think they could do better.”

The settlement fails to answer a central question: Do pharmacists have a legal right to withhold services that violate their beliefs? “We’re circumventing that issue without really solving it,” said Michael Patton of the Illinois Pharmacists Association
<<