The New Jersey legislature has passed a law that forces pharmacists to fill any prescription, even if they morally object to such medication. Obviously the main points of contention with such legislation are birth-control and morning-after pills. While I don’t personally object to women taking birth-control pills, this type of thinking worries and angers me, as it should any purported defender of freedom.
At the root of this type of “morality” is a fundamental lack of understanding of basic human rights. Ask a liberal state-worshipper why a patient (or a doctor) can force his values on a pharmacist but the pharmacist can’t simply refrain from participating in what he considers an immoral act, and the statist will stare at you like a deer in headlights, or spout some nonsense about the doctor’s prescription superseding the pharmacist’s beliefs or the pharmacist’s obligation to society, or some such. Note that the refusal by a pharmacist to fill a birth-control prescription involves no coercion and no pushing of his beliefs on anyone; he simply refuses to participate in it and lets the customer go elsewhere. (That many such people have often tried and still try to force their religious beliefs on others through government is another issue that often needs talking about, but not here.)
Assemblyman Michael Panter says, “They should have gone into the priesthood and not the pharmacy.” Maybe in addition to the state forcing people out of their vocation of choice, the government should in fact select and train everybody for every profession in the economy!
Assemblywoman Linda Stender says this bill “protects [women’s] freedom. Under no circumstances should a pharmacist’s personal beliefs impede a patient’s ability to obtain their prescribed medicines.” Well, we went pretty quickly from freedom (rights) to ability. I guess since I have the right to free speech but no one will hire me as a talk-radio show host because my beliefs and opinions conflict with theirs, they should be forced to hire me and broadcast me for the same length of time as anyone else.
A pharmacist’s refraining from filling a prescription is not impeding anyone’s doing anything. Human rights are said to be negative, not positive. This means you have a right for no one to force you to do anything you don’t want; it doesn’t mean you can force someone to accommodate you in exercising your rights (real or imagined).
Since pharmacists’ beliefs are apparently subordinate to those of the doctors who write the prescriptions, and pharmacists apparently have an obligation to violate their beliefs in the interests of “society” (the majority), maybe the feminists and other leftists would apply this principle to other political issues. As they love government and put their faith in the professional criminal class to effect positive change in society, they would certainly agree that the decisions of the Congress and the president supersede the antisocial beliefs of maverick individualists who reject the unjust governance of the majority and just want to live in peace. Therefore, when the state decides that another country or terrorist group is a dire threat to the livelihood of all Americans, this decision must render contrary opinions irrelevant. Then, when the state decides that 18–22-year-olds have an obligation to society to kill or be killed by these malicious foreigners, it must represent perfect justice and morality to force them to go fight in a war even though it violates their beliefs and everything they stand for in life.
Oh, you mean these people support coercion and violation of others’ rights only when it serves their political agenda? Well, I am just shocked and appalled!
I could go on and on about the state gaining ever more control over the health-care industries, and in the future more and more sectors of society, and how soon nearly everyone will be considered a servant of the state, with an obligation to carry out its commands, but it would be treading old ground with LRC readers.
June 14, 2007
