Family News in Focus - Planned Parenthood Strong-Arms Pharmacists

January 15, 2007 
by Josh Montez, Family News in Focus

The abortion provider wants Washington States Board of Pharmacy to modify its conscience clause.

Planned Parenthood wants to make sure pharmacists wont intimidate or harass a patient by opting out of dispensing a controversial drug. Karen Brauer with Pharmacists for Life International says that language would apply to pharmacists who explain to customers that the morning-after pill sometimes acts as an abortifacient, and they wont distribute it on moral grounds.

The purpose of this set of regulations is to make it impossible for a pharmacist to refuse to dispense this, or any other drug, that could be used to kill a human early in development.

Brauer says Planned Parenthood wants pharmacists who take a stand for life to dispense or quit. That puts all pharmacists between a rock and a hard place.

It makes the entire practice of pharmacy untenable. It removes the pharmacists ability to help the patient to have appropriate drug therapy.

Frank Manion with the American Center for Law and Justice doesnt want pharmacists treated like machines.

Part of the insidious nature of whats going on here is the fact that they are completely removing the professional, the judgment area of a pharmacists role, from the pharmacist, in effect turning them into robots just saying, here you are. You have this license you must dispense anything that anybody asks for.

According to Brauer, Washington pharmacists arent in favor of Planned Parenthoods changes.