I don’t think I’ve ever gotten as much email as I did from my Corner post of Friday on Washington State’s compulsory-sale law for pharmacies, requiring them to stock and sell the morning-after pill. Unfortunately I had to skip town at 6 pm, so I’m just climbing out of the hole this morning, responding to as much of it as possible.

I don’t necessarily think that I made the best arguments for my point, but a piece may come later as the court case moves along. In the meantime, a reader suggests one way to argue for freedom of business association, without opening the door to racial discrimination:

In the case of racial discrimination by a store owner, you have a store advertising the availability of certain goods, but then refusing to sell those goods to a potential customer on the basis of race…One could argue that the acts of putting a sign on your business, putting price tags on the items for sale, printing a menu, etc. constitute an affirmative offer to sell that the owner has to honor. Demanding that a pharmacy stock certain goods, however, runs into involuntary servitude issues. [And] … If we can impose the duty to sell this drug on pharmacists, why can’t we impose it on anyone I choose?

Okay, that’s something to work with. Of course, the email above does not address the licensing issue that came up prominently on Friday — the idea that, in order to be a pharmacist in the first place, there are strings attached, and so it’s okay for compulsory sales to be one of them. After considering this over the weekend, I think more and more that the licensing issue is a cop-out, and the above email is correct in citing the 13th Amendment.

Medical licenses are meant to prove you’re going to give people drugs that won’t turn their hair green — to show that you’re not a quack and guarantee that you’re not peddling fake drugs, you’re handling them in a manner that won’t dilute them or make people sick, you’re making sure that patients don’t take two drugs that will combine in their bellies to give them liver problems. This is a medical license. It should not be confused with a license for the government to force you to do whatever it wants.

Otherwise, we could just as easily require that all liquor stores, as a condition of their liquor licenses, carry Jameson’s (I would certainly like that, but it doesn’t sound like good law). We could even license liquor stores only on the condition that they agree to sell the morning-after pill — after all, the use of their product usually precedes the perceived need for such a sale. It would be a silly law, sure, but only slightly more silly than the same compulsory-sale law for pharmacists.

At the core of the debate is the notion of government compulsion, always a worse form of tyranny than mere prohibition. (Sunday’s first reading at mass provided an apt, if extreme, example of government compulsion from the book of Maccabees.) Compulsion is an extremely dangerous thing that should be avoided whenever possible, even when it could reasonably be considered legitimate. An example: we hate the military draft in this country, and rightly so. Even when the draft is in effect, we let draftees attain status as conscientious objectors.

So why, then, on arguably the most contentious political issue in America (abortion), would we even consider compelling people on either side to actively violate their consciences? Even if the nearest pharmacist is on Mars, why would we use such a horrible tool as compulsion for the sake of a completely imaginary “right” to purchase a particular product? Even when there is no conscience aspect involved, can we ever compel sales of any particular product without trampling on fundamental personal rights?

A final note: The cops nearly tossed me from Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday afternoon for lighting up a cigarette in the concourse at halftime (smoking is not allowed anywhere in the stadium, and there is no re-entry if you leave). The officer was enforcing a bad law, but not nearly as bad as a (theoretical) law requiring everyone to smoke if they want to come in to the game, even if they oppose smoking in principle. (In retrospect, I would have done much better to make a scene and get myself tossed from that game.)

Update: Another excellent point from a reader:

What about a pharmacist who is closed on Sunday – and you can’t get the pill the morning after? Or what if the pharmacist is a Jew and closes on Saturday or a Muslim and closes during Ramadan? If a lass had one of those nights she’d rather take back the night before, she would not be satisfuied to know the pharmacy could accomodate her needs next week. If this is so important – why let the pharmacies close at all?