One is capable of ordering perscription medicine via the internet, fax and through the mail. This lessens the impact of the local pharmacy saying no to a perscription.

I have never heard of anyone being assigned a pharmacy. My family used at least four different pharmacies within the last year. I take anti-cholesterol medicine everyday and I get that medicine through the mail. My wife gets her birth control medicine from Wal-Mart. When we get sick and need medicine for a shor time we go to a Walgreen’s or CVS within walking distance of our home. We could also take our perscription to any number of local grocery stores without an additional hardship. We probably have seven easy to get to locations to get perscriptions filled.

There are already laws on the books to deal with a pharmacist that refuses to release a perscription. these are laws against theft. The perscription is the property of the patient and one cannot take another one’s property without permission. If a pharmacist held a perscription he or she would be theif. I have never heard of this happening and it was not in the original post so I think this is a red-herring argument.

As far as holding a perscription

A Pharmacy is not like a convenience store that can buy and sell products as it sees fit to whoever wants them. Pharmacies are part of the health-care profession, so they don’t function quite like typical private businesses, even though they are privately owned. Only customers with prescriptions can make purchases, and the pharmacy is required to fill those prescriptions, as part of their role as a health-care provider. So if a customer brings in a prescription, and the pharmacist refuses to fill or to release the prescription, then that creates a serious problem that cannot be solved by just “going somewhere else.” In addition, patients often have particular pharmacies assigned to them. Further, no one is forced to become a pharmacist. The profession entails providing the health services required of them, and if they have a problem with that, they can find another job.
But we do agree that the law should be amended at least. If a pharmacy as a whole will refuse to provide birth control, then I would say that they must release any prescriptions for it that come to them from unwitting customers.

Hank, the discrimination against blacks that you discuss was not simply business owners deciding not to serve blacks. That discrimination was a set of laws that are referred to as “Jim Crow Laws”, “Anti-miscegenation Laws” or “Segregation Laws”. It wasn’t the business owners who were denying blacks, it was the state governments, with the backing of the US Supreme Court by virtue of its 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson that did so. The modern civil rights protests began only when the Court reversed itself in 1954′s Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

The problem isn’t the ridiculous prejudices of the business owners, it is the involvement of the government into areas where it does not belong. I am sure that there were business owners who would have been happy to serve blacks-but the government PROHIBITED it. This is because the money that blacks used was just as good as the money that whites used to pay debts. This brings me to my next point.

To answer all of the “What would prevent the business owners from refusing to sell to blacks, gays, women, etc..? it is GREED. A Pharmacist that refuses to sell birth control, soda and candy is losing out on a lot of business and not just from these items. For example: suppose, a woman from Chantilly, VA wants to have her birth control prescription filled but the pharmacist refuses to fill it because of the pharmacist

For example, would it be acceptable for a pharmacy, operating as a private business, to offer services to whites only? Why not? It is a private business and it is their right to decide who they serve based on their personal beliefs about race. If you think that is wrong switch “race” with “religion” and you then understand why this is a problem.

If you become a doctor or pharmacist, you are obligated to meet the needs of your patients, regardless of your personal superstition. If you can’t do that, you are simply a bigot… no more, no less. For that reason, you should be forced to surrender your license to practice… unless it’s to practice witchcraft. There’s no room for that kind of narrowmindedness in today’s multicultural society.