CVS now has "conscience" or "refusal" clauses for their pharmacists that allow health care providers to refuse to provide certain services or information against their own narrow belief system. Most often, pharmacists use refusal clauses to justify refusing to fill women's birth-control pill prescriptions. But a new federal version is working its way toward a House-Senate conference committee, and it would allow all health care entitities to refuse to even provide information about abortion to women who ask.
During the past legislative session, 13 states introduced or considered refusal clauses that would allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense certain prescriptions based on personal “moral” objections. The majority of those bills would permit a pharmacist to refuse to fill a prescription for simple contraception. South Dakota, Arkansas and Mississippi already have refusal clauses on the books. The South Dakota law goes so far as to specify that pharmacists may refuse to fill prescriptions for any medication they think will cause an abortion, regardless of the scientific facts.
Posted by bluprnt at October 8, 2004 02:20 PM