A Pharmacist’s Right To Choose

Divine Mercy Pharmacy in Chantilly, Virginia, will not distribute any form of contraception (including condoms, birth control pills, or emergency contraceptive pills) when it opens this summer. It’s part of a recent trend of pro-life pharmacies that tout health-care workers’ “right to conscience.” Noting that there are a number of places where women can receive contraception, Robert Semler (pictured), who will run DMC Pharmacy, believes that the practice is “not threatening anybody,” and that he is “just trying to serve a niche market of like-minded individuals.” Maybe he’s something of a conscientious objector. Then again, as Catherine Price writes on Salon’s broadsheet:

The point of being a pharmacist isn’t, as these people seem to think, to play God. It’s to fill prescriptions. (In an ironic twist, some of the very same pharmacies that won’t dispense birth control have no moral qualms about Viagra.) A garbage collector can’t refuse to pick up beer bottles for recycling because he or she believes that drinking is wrong, just as toll collectors can’t block people from getting on the highway because they’re morally opposed to driving—at least not if they want to keep their jobs.