Repeal Arizona’s ridiculous ‘conscience clause’ measure
An Arizona law that allows an unrelated third party to get between a patient and a doctor’s orders should be repealed.
The so-called “conscience clause” is an invitation to interference by pharmacists into medical decisions they know nothing about — and should not be questioning.
This law is ostensibly designed to be sensitive to the moral and religious objections any pharmacist may have to abortion.
It allows pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions if doing so would violate their beliefs.
But the law creates cruel and painful problems for patients.
Two cases recently in the news show how.
In June, Nicole Arteaga went to a Walgreens pharmacy in Peoria and was denied the prescription her doctor ordered in connection with a wanted — repeat: wanted — pregnancy.
The Walgreens pharmacist could not know the denied prescription was about managing a miscarriage, not about inducing an abortion.
What’s more to the point, the pharmacist had no business asking.
Arteaga very much wanted her baby, and she was no doubt in fragile emotional state as she went to fill a prescription that would trigger a miscarriage after her doctor determined the baby had no heartbeat.
“I stood at the mercy of this pharmacist explaining my situation in front of my 7-year-old, and five customers behind only to be denied because of his ethic(al) beliefs,” she wrote in a Facebook post that went viral.
In April, Hilde Hall was refused her hormone prescription by a CVS pharmacist in Fountain Hills.
She recently went public with a blog describing an experience that left her “embarrassed and distressed” after a CVS pharmacist in Fountain Hills refused to fill her prescription for hormone therapy.
“He did not give me a clear reason for the refusal,” Hall wrote in her July 19 blog. “He just kept asking, loudly and in front of other CVS staff and customers, why I was given the prescriptions . ... I felt like the pharmacist was trying to out me as transgender in front of strangers.”
The pharmacist also rejected requests to transfer the prescription to another location. He is reportedly no longer working for CVS.
We can’t know how many other people have suffered, but are reluctant to step forward with stories that are intensely personal.
Both women have made complaints to the Arizona Board of Pharmacy, which is reviewing Arteaga’s complaint and could do the same with Hall’s. But this isn’t enough. Arizona’s so-called “conscience clause” empowers pharmacists to interfere with people’s health care without regard for the fact that a pharmacist does not — and should not — know all the confidential doctor-patient discussions that went into a physician’s decision to authorize medication.
These cases show the law can also be used to publicly humiliate people about their medical condition.
Arizona’s provision was enacted in 2009 as part of a larger bill dealing with abortion, an issue where the debate has become so toxic that reason often gets lost. The current makeup of the Legislature will make repeal politically challenging.
But regardless how lawmakers feel about a woman’s reproductive rights, they should be able to see that it is not reasonable to allow a pharmacist to step between a patient and a doctor’s orders.
These two cases — which did not involve abortion — show the pain this unconscionable clause creates.
It should be repealed.