Protection of Conscience
Project
Media Commentary: October
- December, 2001
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Protection of Conscience
Project |
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PROTECTION OF CONSCIENCE PROJECT www.consciencelaws.org |
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| ADVISORY BOARD J. Budziszewski, Ph.d Dr. John Fleming, Dr. Henk Jochemsen, Ph.d David Novak, Lynn D. Wardle, J.D. PROJECT TEAM Michael Markwick
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The Editor, Dear Sir/Madam: Michael Valpy quotes Janet Cooper to the effect that 4,600 prescriptions for the ‘morning-after-pill’ in BC are believed to have prevented 300 pregnancies. (The Long Morning After, 15 December, 2001). This is consistent with a study Cooper cited last year in the Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal.1 Doing the math, one finds that only about 6% of these women might have been pregnant. One might ask whose interests are best served when women are convinced that they absolutely must buy a product that 94% of them won’t actually need. This does not mean that the ‘morning after pill’ could not be made more widely available. But it does underline the reasonableness of pharmacists like Maria Bizecki, who ask only that they not be forced to assist in dispensing a drug that they know may cause the destruction of an early human embryo. Mr. Valpy is, in fact, much more tolerant than most Canadian authorities and professional associations. Manitoba is the only province where a protective policy exists. In British Columbia, conscientious objectors have even been the target of completely unsubstantiated imputations of dishonesty aimed at them in a bulletin from their own College. Nor do objectors ask too much, as Mr. Valpy asserts, when they refuse to make referrals. What is at work here, perhaps, is a notion that one can keep one’s hands clean by having someone else do something thought to be morally objectionable. This was the reasoning of a Newsweek columnist who recently suggested that the U.S. could avoid a conflict of conscience about torture by handing unco-operative terrorist suspects over to "less squeamish allies." 2 Alternatively, Mr. Valpy might think that the ‘morning-after-pill’ is clearly a good thing, and that people who don’t agree are wrong and should be forced to assist in its delivery by mandatory referral. In that case, he should explain why he is a better judge of morality than those whose conscientious judgement he would overrule. Ultimately, he may find it much more productive to use his imagination to find ways to distribute the ‘morning-after-pill’ without suppressing freedom of conscience in pharmacy or other professions. Sincerely, Sean Murphy, Notes 1. "In 16 months of ECP services, pharmacists provided almost 12,000 ECP prescriptions, which is estimated to have prevented about 700 unintended pregnancies." Cooper, Janet, Brenda Osmond and Melanie Rantucci, "Emergency Contraceptive Pills- Questions and Answers". Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal, June 2000, Vol. 133, No. 5, at p. 28. [Back] 2. Alter, Jonathon, "Time to Think About Torture". Newsweek, 5 November, 2001, p. 45. [Back] __________________________ |
| Media | July-Sept 2001 |