In my Dallas Morning News columntoday, Gene Herr, one of the three
Dallas-area pharmacists who refused to fill the morning-after pill
prescription for a rape victim, goes public to say that Eckerds fired them.
Two of the pharmacists claim that they could not in good conscience fill the
prescription because they believe life begins at conception, and this
medication is intended directly to end the life of an innocent child who may
have been conceived in the rape. This is a real bite-the-bullet case for
pro-lifers, but the pharmacists correctly reasoned that if life really
begins at conception, then the agonizing circumstances of the conception
does not justify ending the life of an innocent human being. Planned
Parenthood and many others are pummeling these pharmacists (and now that
I’ve written a column siding with them, me; but that comes with the
territory).
This story is becoming a big issue here, and is prompting pro-life activists
to consider lobbying the Texas legislature — which has a Republican
majority, and is reliably pro-life — to extend conscience-clause protection
now covering doctors and nurses to pharmacists. In Texas, no doctor, nurse
or hospital worker can be compelled to participate in an abortion. With
abortion, or its moral equivalent, now possible to achieve with medication
obtained at a pharmacy, it is time that pro-life pharmacists receive the
same right of refusal that doctors and others have. South Dakota is the only
state in the nation that does this.