And again with the outrage ...

Via the Washington Post:

An increasing number of pharmacists around the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth-control and morning-after pills, saying that dispensing the medications violates their personal moral or religious beliefs. The trend has opened a new front in the nation's battle over reproductive rights, sparking an intense debate over a pharmacist's right to refuse to participate in something he or she considers repugnant, versus a woman's right to get medications her doctor has prescribed. ...

"More and more pharmacists are becoming aware of their right to conscientiously refuse to pass objectionable medications across the counter. We are on the very front edge of a wave that's going to break not too far down the line."

This is complete and total bullshit. Being a pharmacist is not a volunteer position, nor is it one in which you're being paid to make moral judgments of any kind. They have no "right to refuse," conscientiously or otherwise. If you have a problem dispensing birth-control, then don't be a pharmacist. It's just that simple. I find it interesting that there is such willingness on the part of the media and stage legislators to take this kind of objection seriously, to characterize it as the "front" of a new movement. Would the reaction be the same if the pharmacists were refusing to dispense codeine, on the grounds that they have a moral objection to opiates? Or refusing to dispense steroids? Hell, no: they'd be dismissed as total wackjobs and would probably lose their licenses. And that's exactly what should happen to these pharmacists.

Update: Kevin Hayden has an excellent post on this over at American Street.