The Answers To Questions Nobody Asked

I don't know how big a movement it is, but it appears that a growing number of pharmacists want the right to refuse to serve patients whose prescriptions conflict with their religious beliefs.

"We are not dispensing machines," Rod Shafer, executive director of the Washington State Pharmacy Association, said, "We are professionals who have as many rights as anybody else."

No, they're not machines, but by refusing to provide medicines to people who legitimately need them, it seems to me that they're behaving unprofessionally. Maybe it's part of our pundit-infused culture, but we have a lot of people walking the Earth assuming that the demand for their opinions is brisker than it really is. (At this point, your friend and humble blogger eyes himself uncomfortably.) A pharmacist is free to publish his opinions about birth control or biotechnology or physician-assisted suicide in any newspaper, magazine, or bathroom wall that will accept them. If he feels so conflicted about what he's doing that he's uncomfortable in the job, this signals a moment for a career change. The clergy, I hear, takes people who enjoy dispensing religious advice.

Imagine if other professions started pulling this crap. Suppose you go to the drug store to pick up some cold medicine and a pack of condoms, but the only cashier on duty, a Christian Scientist, refuses to ring up either? Or how about a waiter at a restaurant who refuses to serve you a glass of wine or Coca-Cola because he's a Mormon? We could run things that way, I guess, but it would make life a much bigger pain in the neck than it really needs to be, and could prompt a good deal more religious resentment than a healthy society wants.

I don't deny that many people feel they have religious responsibilities, but they also have the duties associated with their jobs. If the devout find that their religious duties conflict with their work, they should seek what they regard as a more righteous way of turning a buck.