Personally, if they’re the owner of the cab, sure. It’s their own money their losing. If they’re in the employ of a company, then that’s between them and their boss, but I’d sure as hell fire them immediately.

I feel the same way about a pharmacy. If some religious person owns the pharmacy and doesn’t want to fill prescriptions for this and that, then fine, it’s their joint.

Chad, the problem with this sentiment is that both the pharmacist and the cab driver (usually) are licensed by the government to provide a service. They both exercise monopoly power enforced by the state. Only a pharmacist can store and dispense scheduled substances. Only the holder of a cab medallion can generally pick up fares.

It would be different if anyone with an interest could dispense prescription medications. Or if anyone with a car could legally pick up fares. Then you might reasonably say “their money, their decisions.” But so long as pharmacists and (to a lesser logical extent) cab drivers are quasi-agents of the state, and unlicensed others cannot step in, no amount of discrimination against any legal activity standard to the profession is acceptable.

If a cabby doesn’t want to carry fares with alcohol, he should give up his medallion and go “gypsy.” If a pharmacist doesn’t want to dispense legal medication, he should give up on pharmacy and sell crystals.

I recently learned, much to my amusement, that if the symptoms of another syndrome get bad this winter, Viagra may be prescribed. I”m very female. Apparently it does have other uses than just for men.

Thank you for noting that a pharmacist does NOT have a license to practice medicine. If her doctor has prescribed it for her, the pharmacist should fill the prescription. Anything beyond checking for the legitimacy of the doctor’s order constitutes an ethical breach by the pharmacist.

It never ceases to amaze me, how the “pro-life” folks can commit any ethical violation they want, and still lecture the rest of us on morality. Then-Senator Frist’s barging in on Terry Schiavo’s medical treatment violated two ethical precepts: he was not her doctor, and he was a transplant surgeon — the very type of doctor absolutely forbidden to judge the condition of a comatose patient, for obvious reasons. Why Frist wasn’t hauled before a medical ethics board and publicly humiliated, I cannot say.

It’s a strange place, where loggers and legislators and (very) leftist Evergreen students collide. I organized their first Queer Pride march, in ’92. A lot of people stayed home, thinking we’d get shot at. But around 500 showed, and despite the protesters holding placards that said “Die, Fags” and such, it was awesome.

But anyway, my point. A good source for info on the EC issue, in terms of how local activists are addressing it, would be Works in Progress. Found a great abundance of articles, would not link all of them in this comment (I’d be in the mod queue for years, presumably), so interested parties may simply go to their search page and type in emergency contraception.

I had an outbreak of shingles recently. I was promptly prescribed the appropriate anti-viral, which is most commonly used for treatment of genital herpes. For the only time in my life, my diagnosis (Herpes Zoster) was written in large, clear handwriting beside the medication information. Why? Because pharmacists have been known to harrass people (though no refusals to provide that I know of), for being horrible enough to have an STD.

I swear if it happens again, I’m going to request the clarification be left off. If some twit is harrassing people over getting a needed medication, they deserve to have their ass nailed to a wall, and I’d love to have the chance to do it.

Your heroin example is flawed. Prescribing a controlled substance for *recreational* use is not equivalent to selling an OTC drug which has a medical indication (pregnancy prevention).

More to the point, refusing to fill a prescription/sell an OTC drug because you object to the indication for use is wrong. Contrast that with refusing to fill a rx because of a dosage mistake, contraindication, drug interactions, etc.