Conscientious objection and abortifacient drugs.

Full Abstract

The legal right to assert a conscientious objection is reviewed, using as an example the dispensing of abortifacient drugs by pharmacists. The three areas of law that most significantly concern the right to assert a conscientious refusal are employment law, conscience clauses, and religious discrimination law. Each of these is reviewed, with descriptions of recent cases. It is concluded that employment law protects refusals that are consistent with public policy, but does not permit an employee's personal policy to determine how a business will be run; that conscience clauses appear to provide protection for pharmacists who object to dispensing abortifacients, but that the precise meanings of critical words and phrases in some clauses need to be defined; and that even though laws of religious discrimination require that employers accommodate religious beliefs, they may not protect a pharmacist who objects to dispensing abortifacients if the accommodation becomes unreasonably burdensome.

Author information

Author/s: Brushwood, D B (DB);

Affiliation: University of Florida, Gainesville.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article

Journal: Clinical therapeutics (Clin Ther), published in UNITED STATES. (Language: eng)

Reference: -1993 Jan-Feb; vol 15 (issue 1) : pp 204-12; discussion 168

Dates: Created 1993/04/23; Completed 1993/04/23; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 8458050, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

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