That's Fit

I don't have a problem with the pill, but I do have a problem with the government telling me how I have to run my business (what I have to sell.) Let them give their business to another pharmacist.

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A pharmacist's personal beliefs should not get in the way of what drugs he or she provides for the good of people's health. That isn't the place to play politics.

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This isn't a question of playing politics. Its a question of morals and ethics. The government has no business trying to force people to violate their morals or ethics. I agree with Chris in that if someone wants the morning after pill (or anything else), they can take their business elsewhere.

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And pharmacists have no business telling me what drugs they can and cannot supply me with. They don't seem to have any trouble supplying people with Viagra or any drugs meant to facilitate or support males having sex. A pharmacy is there to supply people with medications they need. Period. If people don't like that, they can choose another profession.

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I don't think it is really even an issue of morals. To me, it is an issue of someone having the choice of what they want to sell, the reason they choose to sell it or not is irrelevant. I don't like the government getting involved. If a pharmacist wants to stay in business though, he better fill all the prescriptions his customers ask for!

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If it's the law that a pharmacy must carry all common prescription medications, then pharmacists are in the wrong for nitpicking about which drugs they dispense. However, it seems that requiring some business to sell some product seems a little out of the ordinary: I can't think of any other law on the books that requires a business to carry or sell a certain product. Moral issues aside- when's the last time any business had to sell a certain product?

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It is mind-boggling that in this ostensibly enlightened age, women are being denied their right to control their reproductive lives by some holy-roller, sanctimonious, misguided pharmacists who blindly believe that imposing their religious beliefs on their customers is perfectly acceptable and even defensible. That practice is even more outrageous than the local Eckerd drug store peddling self-help books by their pharmacy pick-up counter that espouse Jesus as the only answer. (Let's hope that now that Eckerd has been taken over by Rite Aid, it adopts a more egalitarian approach.) I often wonder what Jews, Muslims and other religious denominations in town make of this blatant affront to their religious beliefs. All this in a country that was founded in large part to escape religious persecution. Go figure. If a pharmacist has a problem distributing an FDA-approved legal medication, I have news for him/her: this isn't about you. It's about your customers. If you don't like it, find another profession. Period.

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Elise, I am with you. It's ignorant and shameful and embarrassing. The Lancet had a good editorial about this (http://www.healthbolt.net/2007/07/26/sex-commute-obesity-bunnies/)

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And what if the pharmacist happens to be a racist... should he be allowed to refuse to sell medications to black people?

Pharmacists are supposed to be professionals. No one is trying to force them to use the pill themselves. They have no right to judge their customers.

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