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Home  / News & Publications /  Michigan Catholic News / 2008 /  Catholic pharmacists may face moral dilemma

by Joe Kohn of The Michigan Catholic
May 23, 2008

Detroit — Legislation soon to be before the Michigan House of Representatives may create a moral dilemma for Catholic pharmacists.

House Bill 6049, which passed the house judiciary committee last week, would prohibit pharmacists from using ethical, moral or religious standards to decide whether to dispense a prescription. If passed into law, pharmacists would be forced to dispense drugs that their consciences and ethical standards dictate they should not distribute — such as pills that cause abortion.

"We are asking for Catholics to contact their state representative to oppose legislation that would violate an individual's right to conscience as well as the religious freedom clauses of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution," said David Maluchnik, spokesman for the Michigan Catholic Conference, the Church's public policy voice in Michigan.

"Individuals enter the health care profession to heal," he added, "not to be forced by law to disperse controversial and unproven medications that fail to promote the dignity of life and respect for women."

The legislation, which was part of a three-bill package addressing emergency contraceptives, is being pushed by proponents of abortion, including Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union. The Catholic Church is standing with pro-life leaders and organizations in the state to oppose the bill.

The Church also is hoping to add language to another bill in the same package. House Bill 6048 would require all hospitals and health care facilities that provide emergency treatment to dispense emergency contraceptives to victims of rape.

The MCC is urging lawmakers to add language to the bill that would allow Catholic institutions to test for pregnancy before dispensing emergency contraceptives. While emergency contraceptives meant to prevent pregnancy for rape victims are morally permissible, any drug that ends the life of an already-conceived child is not.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops spelled out such guidelines in its Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, updated in 2001.

"A female who has been raped should be able to defend herself against a potential conception from the sexual assault," the document states in directive No. 36. "If, after appropriate testing, there is no evidence that conception has occurred already, she may be treated with medications that would prevent ovulation, sperm capacitation or fertilization. It is not permissible, however, to initiate or to recommend treatments that have as their purpose or direct effect the removal, destruction, or interference with the implantation of a fertilized ovum."

If passed as-is, House Bill 6048 would not allow the "appropriate testing" required by the bishops' directive. Without such testing, the result — if a woman's egg already is fertilized before emergency contraceptives are given — could be an abortion.

In the treatment of rape victims, the Church wouldn't necessarily consider "emergency contraceptives" to be means of contraception at all, says Mark Latkovic, Ph.D., professor of moral theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary.

"A woman who is given care after rape is trying to prevent the further violence being done from the rapist," said Latkovic. "She's protecting the ovum, a part of her body, from the sperm, a part of rapist's body. So she's preventing the continuation of the act of rape."

The situation is different, he explained, from consenting adults who choose to use contraceptives for the sake of convenience — which is "impeding a new human life that could begin from a freely chosen genital act of sexual intercourse."

Many Catholics might also be surprised to learn, he added, that in situations where there is a danger of rape — such as in the military, or when rape is used as an act of terrorism in warfare — it's morally justifiable for Catholic women to carry means of contraception as a precaution.

"In both cases, what's really going on is not contraception, per se," Latkovic said. "The act is not to prevent conception, it's to prevent the result of the rapist's act from being completed. What she's doing is protecting herself from further violence from the rapists."