I’ll concede point #2. Yes, they were not really great analogies. Your doctor/lawyer one is better.

I’m somewhat confused by point #3. My understanding is that doctors are free to not provide abortions if that’s what they wish to do. In an emergency, good samaritan laws require them to render emergency aid to the best of their ability, but I think that’s the extent of their compulsion to serve.

Lawyers, too I think are able to pick and choose their clients that they accept in most cases. There is a number of rules where they can’t accept clients, like they are already a lawyer for someone’s opponent, but by and large if you walked in to a lawyers office and waved a bunch of cash around, I don’t think they would be required to offer legal aid (unlikely as that is to happen in real life). If they do agree to provide legal services, they must, as you say, do so in an impartial manner.

Under this analogy, a pharmacist would be required, if he chose to fill the prescription, (take the case, treat the patient) to count those pills out to the best of his ability. And I’m sure it would be a breach of professional ethics, as well as a spectacular trial, if a pharmacist were to dispense sugar pills where birth control or emergency contraceptives were indicated on the script.

1. Yes, gas stations are licensed by the state, but the pharmacist class is entirely a creation of the state. I am sure that you have noticed what happens to people who are caught dispensing drugs without the blessing of the state’s pharmacist-licensing apparatus. The precise purpose of the drugs being sold may well vary, but you can’t deny that one of this country’s greatest priorities — right up there with catching Osama Bin Laden — is to make sure that drugs are only dispensed by physicians and official pharmacists.

2. The comparison to office and gas-station hours is particularly inapt. Nobody is saying that the pharmacy fails its customers by not dispensing morning-after pills at 2 a.m. on a Sunday. And gas stations that owe their existence to the state to the degree that the pharmacist class does — I am thinking here of the gas stations on turnpikes — generally *are* required as a condition of their franchise there to sell gas 24 hours a day.

3. Pharmacists hold themselves out as ‘professionals’, though they are admittedly on one of the bottom rungs of that ladder. Physicians and lawyers also have their personal codes of ethics, but their *professional* codes hold that they should provide medical care or legal services in an impartial manner regardless of their personal feelings (though obviously one would prefer to have a lawyer who is genuinely sympathetic to one’s cause).

This not only results in the public having greater access to these services, but it protects the professionals against reprisals and scorn from the community for treating or representing an unpopular client. Thus the medical and bar associations can at least say that their members are leaving the ultimate disposition of one’s life or liberty up to God or the law, respectively. If physicians and lawyers had more ethical latitude in whom they were willing to treat or represent, they could legitimately be held more responsible for the outcome of cases.

If pharmacists want to be able to pick and choose which prescriptions they will fill, they will find themselves in a bad position: not only will their decisions then be individually subject to the judgement of the community, but they’ll also probably find themselves legally liable for any bad effects of the drugs they *do* dispense.

Although “plan B” is mildly controversial, I’ve never known any chain or bigbox to not dispense birth control pills. If Mall-Wart, Bullseye/Red Dot, J-mart. CVS tree, Mallgreens, or any of the other big chains refused to dispense birth control, I’m sure they would quickly have a boycott on their hands.

Remember, amoral corporations just want to make as much money as possible. They have the right to cater to the majority to seek that money. If they refuse to serve a market, someone else usually comes along to fill that need. This is someplace where letting the free market work things out is a good idea.

As a person hiring for a pharmacists position in one of the big chains, I’d want to see if there was any reason why the person seeking the position would not dispense anything on religious grounds, but it would be a question that would be illegal to ask. Perhaps you could ask them if there was any reason why they would not dispense any legal drug, assuming they were presented with a valid prescription. Let them bring up religious grounds.

I don’t think the government should get involved, but I wish more pharmacy chains would make it a condition of employment for their pharmacists that they must fill all birth control prescriptions. If they have a moral problem with dispensing medications then they should choose a different career.