VANCOUVER, Dec 1 (LSN.ca) – As of December 1st, B.C. women of all ages will be obtaining their emergency contraception directly from pharmacists. For the first time in history, a politician, Premier Ujjal Dosanjh changed the pharmacy bylaws so pharmacists can now “prescribe” a product directly to patients without their having to see a physician. Some B.C. pharmacists are petitioning the government to reverse this risky project.
“It is not only pro-life pharmacists who are protesting,” says Vancouver pharmacist Cristina Alarcon, who represents B.C. Pharmacists for Conscience. “Our protest is not against choice per se, but against the fact that women are being denied informed consent As one of my pro-choice colleagues said ’ …we should be calling this product a contra-implantation agent, not contra-ception, and women should know that there may be risks to repeated use’.
Michael Izzotti, Coordinator of Pharmacists for Life International/Canada said “Involvement of the profession in this death causing service would be placing pharmacists in greater demand to provide chemicals for other death causing practices.” He recalled that the B.C. College of Pharmacists bulletin of Mar/Apr 2000 states that “In the future these services might expand to include preparation of drugs to assist voluntary or involuntary suicide, cloning, genetic manipulation or even execution.” Izzotti continued: “These would be unacceptable practices for a professional pharmacist to participate in since each of these procedures involve causing death of human beings, no matter how small or vulnerable.” He further requests that “We ask the government of B.C. to reconsider their promotion of pharmacists of that province from being both the prescriber and dispenser of the means to end human lives through Post-coital Interception chemicals (embyonic poisons).”