Right to privacy vs. right to refuse

Posted by Genevieve Parker on ContraceptionBlog.com

A panel of professionals discussed the contraversial point of a pharmacist's right to refuse filling emergency contraception prescriptions on the basis of conscience. Here's the write-up in a Harvard Law School newspaper.

I find it interesting that those panelists who would disregard the conscience exception immediately point out that birth control is on the line here; if a pharmacist can deny Plan B to a client for moral reasons, why wouldn't he, likewise, be able to deny contraceptive dispensation on a moral basis?

This becomes a question of whether contraception & abortion rights (basically, privacy rights) trump the refusal rights of the pharmacist. If so, then one person's right to privacy limits the freedom of religion/morality of another. In the end, it seems that privacy rights aren't really confined to the private sphere of one's individual reality, especially when they coerce others to facilitate another's personal choice at the expense of his own moral character. Freedom of choice becomes freedom of choice for a very specific interest group, i.e. contraception and abortion proponents, at the expense of everyone else.

What I think is important about this discussion - outside of the question of rights - is the fact that the continuum between contraception and abortion can no longer be blurred in the public mind, and we're faced with the real question of whether contraception is fundamentally anti-life, anti-love, and anti-woman.