AMA targets Catholic, pro-life pharmacists

AMA targets Catholic, pro-life pharmacists

Chicago, Jun. 23
(LifesiteNews.com/CWN)

The American Medical Association is backing a proposal that would force pharmacists to dispense abortifacients such as the "morning-after" abortion pill and birth control pill or to refer the woman to another pharmacist to have the prescriptions filled.


A resolution passed Monday by the AMA's House of Delegates states that pharmacists who oppose abortifacients on moral grounds should provide an "immediate referral to an appropriate alternative dispensing pharmacy without interference," according to a Chicago Tribune report.


"Our position is on behalf of the patient," claimed AMA board member Dr. Peter Carmel. "The AMA strongly believes patients have to have access to their medications. It's the obligation on behalf of the pharmacist ... to tell them where to go."


The Pharmacists for Life International (PFLI) web site describes their view of the abortifacient "morning-after" pill: "Any medically educated person should be given to understand that this regimen works primarily by preventing the implantation of an already fertilized egg. This is not contraception."


"A pharmacist by virtue of properly understood conscience cannot be licitly compelled to cooperate in such a fashion with what he knows will result in a chemical abortion and, hence, a dead baby," the PFLI said. "Such activity is called material cooperation. Further, it is not an inconvenience to refuse to refer such a client since the pharmacist is doing the woman and her preborn child a favor in terms of physical and spiritual health."


"Material cooperation with such an evil can never be licit even if it may be lawful, as it is in today's society," the pharmacists' group continued. "In fact, pharmacists aware of the evil nature of such a scenario would have a duty as a pharmacist and a person not to cooperate in such an evil even under pain of serious adverse ramifications."


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