We need a law to do what is right
Rome, Oct. 30, 2007 (CWNews.com) -
Italy's health minister has denounced a call by Pope Benedict XVI (bio
- news) for pharmacists to refrain from dispensing abortifacient pills.
"I don't think his warning to pharmacists, to be conscientious
objectors to the morning-after pill, should be taken into
consideration," the health minister, Livia Turco, told the daily
Corriere della Sera. Turco was responding to the statement made by the
Pontiff on October 29, in a meeting with members of the International
Federation of Catholic Pharmacists. The Pope had said that pharmacists
should never "collaborate directly or indirectly in supplying products
that have clearly immoral purposes." If the laws allow for sales of
such products, Pope Benedict said, pharmacists must "face the question
of conscientious objection."
Spokesmen for Italian pharmacists remarked that the country's laws do
not provide a "conscience clause" allowing them to refuse dispensing
such pills. "The law obliges us to sell pharmaceuticals, whatever their
nature, if there is a doctor's prescription," Giacomo Leopardi told the
ANSA news service.
Another spokesman for a pharmacist's group, Franco Caprino, said: "We
can't be conscientious objectors unless the law is changed." (Caprino
may have mistaken the meaning of the Pope's statement, since
conscientious objection usually implies that an individual challenges
an existing regulation, accepting the legal consequences.)
What is sad though is the response of the spokesman for the Italian pharmacists is that this issue had to be brought out by the Pope, when it should have been something they should have been fighting for from the time such a law came into place. Using a phrase like "whatever their nature" is rather scary when you think about it.
"It is not possible to anaesthetise the conscience, for example, when it comes to molecules whose aim is to stop an embryo implanting or to cut short someone's life," the Pope said.
I just love the way Pope Benedict puts things into words. Unfortunately so many go beyond just anaesthetising the conscience to having a consciencectomy to remove it entirely.Some have seen this as a shot across the bow for the Connecticut Bishop Conference for their latest decision to allow Plan B in Catholic hospitals. I suspect that the Pope has a much larger context for his statements since this applies across the world. Though it certainly undermines the bishops decision that has been pretty much universally condemned or called into question.
American Papist, as usual, has a good and expansive posts on this subject.
Known as 
I have posted before: I am a pharmacist with a conscience clause in place and I am most happy with what the Holy Father says and for others such as Fr. Peter Fehlner and Fr. Thomas Euteneuer who have spoken in defense of life even at the very beginning after fertilization. I have never and will never dispense Plan B. I used to dispense birth control pills, we were not taught that they were abortifacients. When I learned of this fact, even though it is not the primary way they act, I ended up leaving my retail position for a number of years. And yet I had a number of priests tell me it was okay for me to dispense them. My conscience told me otherwise and finally a priest confirmed what I knew was the right course of action for me. What the Connecticut bishops did was a sorry thing and if others in the episcopate follow suit, we might see our conscience clause go by the wayside. Then I am finished as a retail pharmacist. I know that other 'catholic' hosptitals do this sort of thing under the radar as does our own local one--and the bishop knows too. But the public stance is where we really can be brought down.
Excellent commentary, Jeff. I would, however, suggest that "universally condemned or called into question" is a bit of an overstatement. For example, the leading Catholic bioethics organization in this country, the National Catholic Bioethics Committee, has supported the Connecticut bishops on this.
All the same, it would be helpful to individual bishops and to the bishops of particular states if the Church could address the issue of emergency contraception on a more definitive, global level, such that we're agreed on a minimal protocol to be followed--presumably some version of the so-called Peoria protocol (i.e., one that includes ovulation testing)--that would be morally required of all Catholic hospitals. Then we can draw a line in the sand on this. Some bishops' conferences, even without a heavy-handed legislature imposing its will, have adopted the less exacting pregnancy-test only approach, which undermined the Connecticut bishops' efforts.