Excellent post.

“The reason for exercising a right is irrelevant. The right stands on its own.” I wish I had said that.

The problem here is that the state requires that the woman go to a pharmacist. This problem is simply solved by repealing the laws that create a special class of people who are granted a monopoly on the manufacture and sale of certain medicines.

Just as the state has no business compelling people to take part in immoral behavior, the state has no business in preventing people from morally OK activities. If you want to mix up liver damaging doses of motrin, and use it yourself/sell it to your neighbors, you should not be prevented from doing so.

The trend has opened a new front in the nation’s battle over reproductive rights, sparking an intense debate over a pharmacist’s right to refuse to participate in something he or she considers repugnant, versus a woman’s right to get medications her doctor has prescribed.

Acting from principle is almost always laudable. However, one’s principles ought not to abrogate the rights of another. So, the refusal to fill a prescription on principle is morally justifiable, if and only if, the ‘patient’ is not then prohibited from being served by a more sympathetic pharmacist.

Of course, in both cases, the variable is the employer, which could mitigate the problem by either providing an alternative employee for a particular transaction or simply terminating the obstinate employee. If, on the other hand, the employer is the one that impedes the lawful acquisition of the ‘meds’, then the state has an obligation to protect the Constitution (i.e. individual liberty).

I understand that there are people who would like to consider a single egg cell to be a complete human being simply because it’s fertilized, but anyone who hesitates to accept that view would be wrong to condemn emergency contraception.