Published: June 20, 2008 10:10 pm         

Pro-life pharmacy debate is really free speech debate

The Back Porch

Convenience store owners can choose to not sell cigarettes or alcoholic beverages. With the sharp increase in gasoline prices, some are closing their pumps for good.

Rational people would agree it’s the owners’ choice. They can do without the profits or hassle based on the marketplace of products that forms the philosophy of a free-market economy in this country.

But when a few pharmacies decide to not stock birth control medications or aids, suddenly the health of all women is at risk and religious beliefs are intruding into other people’s lives.

Early this week, The Washington Post ran a story about a pro-life pharmacy that will open in northern Virginia later this summer. The pharmacy is owned by Divine Mercy Care in Fairfax, Va., a health care organization that operates based on teachings of the Catholic Church, the Post reported.

Pharmacists for Life International, a group reaching out to the entire world to encourage pro-life pharmaceutical practices, is also mentioned in the story.

The point of the story is women will be traumatized, victimized and otherwise mistreated at these pharmacies that will not fill their prescriptions for birth control pills or the Plan B emergency contraceptive, commonly known as the “morning after” pill.

The third paragraph of the story practically warns of this apocalypse by stating the proposed pharmacy in northern Virginia “is one of a small but growing number of drugstores around the country” that is refusing to provide products or services based on a right of conscience.

Pharmacists for Life’s Web site reports just six owners have signed pledges. The list includes two in Florida and one each in Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan and Nebraska. That’s not much of a trend, but the Post’s story may make it one.

The story reports California, New Jersey, Illinois and Washington are requiring pharmacies to fill all prescriptions or help women fill them elsewhere and purports another 10 states are considering requirements.

Is this a tempest in a teapot? Is it even legal?

First, the cry of mayhem is rooted in owners’ religious motivations to not participate in activities they feel conflict with their faith. Now remember that this country will let a child die if parents ascribe to religious beliefs that prohibit seeking medical help. That’s fine and protected under the First Amendment, but it’s a national problem that a woman can’t get a morning after pill at one drugstore because she, well, met this guy in a bar and one thing led to another and, well, she just needs it pronto.

The logic just doesn’t compute. The American beliefs on freedom of religion and speech are rooted in the notions of a marketplace of ideas, freedom of thought and the importance of openly expressing all ideas as espoused by English philosophers John Milton, John Stuart Mill and John Locke.

From them and others, James Madison developed the notion of freedom of conscience when drafting the Bill of Rights to the Constitution.

Interestingly enough, it was a Virginia case that established First Amendment protection for commercial speech. The 1976 case before the U.S. Supreme Court was about whether pharmacists should be allowed to advertise prescription drug prices. The high court found the Virginia law unconstitutional and lifted the advertising prohibition.

Justice Harry Blackmun equated the commercial marketplace to the marketplace of ideas, adding that commercial speech is part of the democratic process. “So long as we preserve a predominantly free enterprise economy, the allocation of our resources in large measure will be made through numerous private economic decisions. It is a matter of public interest that those decisions in the aggregate be intelligent and well informed. To this end, the free flow of commercial information is indispensable.”

Following his logic, a pharmacist’s decision to not sell or advertise a product is a First Amendment expression, and informed consumers have a choice, through their private economic decisions, to shop at another pharmacy.

States should stay out of this one. If the demand for such products continues, the free marketplace will provide locations to buy them.

— Young is a Register-Herald columnist.

E-mail: ynerissa@verizon.net.

© 2008 by Nerissa Young