Today’s St. Louis Post Dispatch is reporting that a public interest group founded by Pat Robertson has filed a lawsuit challenging the Illinois law that requires pharmacists to fill prescriptions for the “morning after” pill. The group claims that the rule violates the pharmacists’ constitutional right to refuse to fill such prescriptions on religious or moral grounds. The suit was filed on behalf of the pharmacists that were suspended by Walgreens last month. The governor says they will defend it.
Abby Ottenhoff, a Blagojevich spokeswoman, called the rule “a clear and common sense way to ensure that women have access to the medication their doctors prescribe for them.”
“If a pharmacist objects (to the rule), he or she is free to work in a pharmacy that doesn’t stock and dispense” emergency contraception, she said. “A pharmacist is not free to stand in the way of a woman’s access to the medicine her doctor says she needs.
Susan Hofer, a spokeswoman for the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, said that “we certainly agree with the intentions of the rule-making and look forward to vigorously enforcing the law on behalf of the governor and the people of Illinois.”
Let’s hope so.
Monday’s lawsuit alleges the Illinois rule violates the pharmacists’ rights under the First Amendment’s religious liberty provisions, the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act and the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The rule “renders pharmacists such as these plaintiffs virtual second-class citizens” by interfering with their attempts to obtaining and keeping employment, the lawsuit claims.
I’m not familiar with either of the two Illinois Acts that are named and I’m not going to get into the first amendment here. But really. “Second Class Citizens?” This no more makes them “second class citizens” than it makes baptist fundamentalist bartenders second class citizens for making them serve alcohol if they want to be a bartender. Give me a break.
