Rome, Oct. 30, 2007 (CWNews.com) –
\nItaly’s health minister has denounced a call by Pope Benedict XVI (bio
\n– news) for pharmacists to refrain from dispensing abortifacient pills.
\n“I don’t think his warning to pharmacists, to be conscientious
\nobjectors to the morning-after pill, should be taken into
\nconsideration,” the health minister, Livia Turco, told the daily
\nCorriere della Sera. Turco was responding to the statement made by the
\nPontiff on October 29, in a meeting with members of the International
\nFederation of Catholic Pharmacists. The Pope had said that pharmacists
\nshould never “collaborate directly or indirectly in supplying products
\nthat have clearly immoral purposes.” If the laws allow for sales of
\nsuch products, Pope Benedict said, pharmacists must “face the question
\nof conscientious objection.”<\/p>\n
Spokesmen for Italian pharmacists remarked that the country’s laws do
\nnot provide a “conscience clause” allowing them to refuse dispensing
\nsuch pills. “The law obliges us to sell pharmaceuticals, whatever their
\nnature, if there is a doctor’s prescription,” Giacomo Leopardi told the
\nANSA news service.<\/p>\n
Another spokesman for a pharmacist’s group, Franco Caprino, said: “We
\ncan’t be conscientious objectors unless the law is changed.” (Caprino
\nmay have mistaken the meaning of the Pope’s statement, since
\nconscientious objection usually implies that an individual challenges
\nan existing regulation, accepting the legal consequences.) <\/p>\n