Alarming Birth Rates and Pharmacists
I found an article on MSNBC titled “Nearly 4 in 10 U.S. babies born out of wedlock� (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15835429/). This article addressed the soaring number of pregnancies out of wedlock and attributed it to the increasing rates of people living together before marriage, not to teen pregnancies. The article actually said that teen pregnancies are continuing their decline since the 1990s. However, there are still an alarming number of teenage pregnancies in America every year – more than in any other industrialized country.
This leads me to the issue discussed in class on Tuesday about pharmacists refusing to sell drugs to people based on their own personal morals. Specifically, the issue of refusing to disperse contraceptives and the “morning-after pill� is not helping the problem of pregnancies out of wedlock. With the high numbers of pregnancies, we need to be promoting birth control. Regardless of the pharmacist’s personal morals, I think he/she should be required to fill prescriptions for whatever the customer wants (unless there’s suspicion of misuse involved or it is something that could be considered hazardous to the customer’s health). If the customer is willing and able to pay for the drug, whatever it is, the pharmacist should fill it.