The religious pill

Some of you may remember the case of Neil T. Noesen, the pharmacist in Wisconsin who not only refused to fill a prescription for birth control for a woman, but also refused to forward the prescription to another pharmacy that would help her. His denial was based on his religious beliefs as a Roman Catholic.

Today, a court has issued a ruling in his case, recommending a state reprimand and limiting his pharmacist license:

[Administrative Law Judge Colleen M.] Baird found that Noesen "fell far short of satisfying the standard of care" outlined in the code of ethics for pharmacists, and he hadn't done enough to ensure that the patient had another way to have her prescription filled.

"(Noesen's) testimony gave the distinct impression that satisfying his own moral code was his only concern," Baird wrote.

Here's the response from the President of an organization that protects "refusal rights" for people like Noeson:

"This is a real problem," Brauer said. "We've got judges practicing medicine without a license."

Of course, that's not what we have at all. We have doctors practicing medicine by diagnosing and prescribing pills for a patient, and then having pharmacists denying the doctor's request based on religious beliefs. The judge is simply determining how the rule of law applies to these cases. Judges are not sitting at their benches passing out Nitro, Xanax or birth control to anyone who wonders in.

The problem here is not Noesen's religious beliefs, but his imposition of said beliefs on his customers. I don't want to deny Noesen a job, but certainly he realized when he took started working at the pharmacy counter that he may have to give out pills that would be against his religious beliefs. He should have made this views known to whoever was in charge, and in turn the pharmacy could make it known to it's customers that Noesen will not fill certain requests. Noesen, if asked, should make his rejection known to his customer and pass along the request to someone else or to another pharmacy that would be able to help.

However, Noesen, or anyone else for that matter, should not have the ultimate ability to keep a patient from their prescribed medicine. That would be a case of a pharmacist practicing medicine without a license. In essence, they are overruling the doctor's decision and deciding what is best for the patient, something I'm reasonably sure they do not have the power to do.