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New Jersey Forces Pharmacists to Dispense Abortifacient Drugs Regardless of Conscience

By Hilary White
 
TRENTON, New Jersey, November 5, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The state of New Jersey has passed a law denying the conscientious objection right of pharmacists, won in other states through lengthy court battles, to refrain from dispensing abortifacient and contraceptive drugs.
 
“Discussions of morals and matters of conscience are admirable, but should not come into play when subjective beliefs conflict with objective medical decisions,” said state Sen. Joseph Vitale, D-Middlesex, a bill sponsor.
 
The decision comes just days after Pope Benedict XVI gave his support to pharmacists worldwide who reject the culture of death in their profession. “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,” the Pope said on Monday.
 
He called the right of conscientious objection, “a right that must be recognized for people exercising this profession, so as to enable them not to collaborate directly or indirectly in supplying products that have clearly immoral purposes such as, for example, abortion or euthanasia.”
 
The New Jersey law was passed in the context of numerous battles in courts and legislatures between pro-abortion governors and pharmacists fighting for conscience rights currently raging across the US.
 
Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich was forced by courts to back down on a law similar to that passed last week in New Jersey. The order which attempted to force pharmacists in Illinois to dispense death-dealing drugs, was recently obliged by the courts to back down. The decision followed a long-running dispute between four pharmacist employees of Walgreens stores who were fired when they refused to dispense abortifacient drugs.
 
The American Center for Law and Justice, a public interest law firm, sued Walgreens on behalf of their former employees, saying the company had violated the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, which makes it illegal for any employer “to discriminate against any person in any manner ... because of such person’s conscientious refusal ... to participate in any way in any form of health care services contrary to his or her conscience.”
 
In 2005, Janet Napolitano, Arizona’s aggressively pro-abortion governor vetoed legislation that attempted to recognize the rights of conscience of pharmacists. Napolitano said, “Pharmacies and other health care service providers have no right to interfere in the lawful personal medical decisions made by patients and their doctors.”
 
In Wisconsin, when pharmacist Neil Noesen refused in 2002 to dispense oral contraceptives he was reprimanded and fined by his pharmacy board and limits were set on his license to practice as a pharmacist.
 
Currently Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and South Dakota have laws protecting the rights of pharmacists to refuse to dispense drugs according to their conscience and Florida, Illinois, Maine and Tennessee have some legislation that could be so applied.
 
New Jersey joins California where pharmacists must fill all prescriptions and may only refuse with the approval of their employer and ensure that the customer can get the drugs elsewhere. In Washington state pharmacists are challenging a similar law.
 
See related LifeSiteNews.com articles:

US Pharmacists Battle over Forced Dispensation of Abortion Drugs
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/apr/05041504.html
 
Illinois Court Rules Pharmacists May Reject Plan B
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/aug/07080308.html

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