The Emerging Democratic Majority WebLog - DonkeyRising: "The Appalling Elitism behind the Pharmacists' 'Right of Conscience' Campaign
The current debate regarding whether individual pharmacists should have a 'right of conscience' to refuse to sell birth control medications has been almost entirely composed of either straightforward arguments in support or opposition to the proposed 'right' or the discussion of some compromise position that attempts to bridge the gap between customers' rights to buy legally prescribed medication and pharmacists' personal ethical views.
Yet, when one steps back for a moment to look beyond these limited terms of debate, an extraordinary fact quickly becomes apparent -- the proposed extensions of earlier 'conscience' laws to cover pharmacists are profoundly and, in fact, grotesquely elitist. They actually propose nothing less then endowing a small group of Americans with a special class of new legal rights and privileges regarding moral/religious issues -- based essentially on their education -- while denying those same rights to everyone else. As a result, the proposed laws are not only basically unconstitutional in intent but also un-American in spirit and contrary to the egalitarian tenets of sincere Christian faith.
To see why this is so, it is only necessary to compare the proposed extension of the 'right of conscience' to pharmacists with the purpose of the original 'conscience' laws which were designed with doctors and operating room nurses in mind. It was not because doctors or nurses had advanced medical education or knowledge that special provisions were enacted for them, but because the nature of their work might obligate them to personally perform medical procedures they considered immoral, such as abortions or sterilizations, or to personally prescribe and administer abortion-inducing drugs. Granting a doctor or nurse with moral objections to these procedures the legal right to refuse t"
