Ellen Goodman on ethics and pharmacies

[Midlodemocrat]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/10/whose_conscience_rules/

TO BEGIN with, I don't believe that anyone should be compelled to do work they regard as unethical. History is full of heroes who rebelliously followed their consciences. It's also full of people who shamefully followed orders.


For that matter, I believe that companies and institutions should have a code of ethics. What is the alternative to corporate responsibility and public morality? Enron?

So I approach the subject of conscience clauses rather gingerly.

The very first such laws offered an exemption for doctors in 47 states who don't want to perform abortions on moral grounds. That seems to me a matter of common decency. Doctors are not automatons who leave their beliefs at the operating room door. It also seems like common sense. Who would want their abortion performed by an opponent?

[realFedUp]

1. Minding one's own business...

snip-

Pharmacists don't have the same claim to refuse filling a prescription as a doctor has to refuse performing an abortion. But there are other ways to exercise a private conscience clause. Indeed, in a conflict between your job and your ethics, you can quit. It happens every day.

When Thoreau refused to pay taxes as a war protest, remember, he went to jail. What pharmacists and others are asking for is conscience without consequence. The plea to protect their conscience is a thinly veiled ploy for conquest.

This is not easy stuff. But in the culture wars we have become enamored of moral stances. Have we forgotten that what holds us together is the other lowly virtue: minding your own business?

To each his own conscience. But the drugstore is not an altar. The last time I looked, the pharmacist's license did not include the right to dispense morality.