Daniel Lewis For House 26

LifeNews.com reported this week that Neil Noesen, a Wisconsin pro-life pharmacist, is being legally challenged for refusing to refill a prescription for birth control pills. Neil Noesen believes that such pills can sometimes cause abortions. The complaint against Noesen arose when he refused to transfer the prescription to another pharmacy and was filed Friday with the Wisconsin Pharmacy Examining Board by the state Department of Regulation and Licensing.
Before Noesen was hired as temporary pharmacist at a K-Mart store in Menomonie during the summer of 2002, he made it clear that he would not fill orders for birth control drugs he believed to be abortifacient. The managing pharmacist assured Noesen that he would not have to fill such prescriptions.
However, Noesen was the only pharmacist on duty when a customer came in with a prescription request. He asked the female customer, a University of Wisconsin-Stout student, whether she intended to use the drugs for birth control or for another reason.
When she confirmed they were for birth control, he refused to fill the order and would not tell her where she could go to get the order filled. Chris Klein, executive assistant in the state Department of Regulation and Licensing, said Noesen "apparently was willing to provide it if it was for regulating her period. "Later that day, a Wal-Mart pharmacy called to transfer the prescription request and Noesen again refused.
Eventually the managing pharmacist filled the prescription and no actions against Noesen by police. The woman complained to the Pharmacy Examining Board in July 2002. The Department of Regulation and Licensing offered Noesen a deal that would require him to pay a $250 fine, according to the Capital Times newspaper. Noesen declined to settle.
The Pharmacy Examining Board's policy allows pharmacists to opt out of filling prescriptions that violate their conscience, though state law doesn't. However, the policy requires pharmacists to transfer the prescription. A similar case arose in Texas where a pharmacist refused to fill a prescription for a morning after pill.
The events described above show one of the fundamental flaws with government healthcare regulation. Regulations such as those that are being applied in Wisconsin violate the rights of healthcare providers to hold certain moral positions. Any time someone is forced to do something that is against their basic moral code this is wrong. For example it is wrong to require pro-life taxpayers to support government funded abortions. Healthcare should be deregulated so that patients may make their own moral choices.
I have previously advocated that the approval and regulation of medications and healthcare providers, including pharmacists and doctors, be handled by a private body rather than the government. Using the free market to make healthcare safe would allow for the existence of both a pro-life and a pro-choice approval body. In this way consumers could know by a healthcare provider’s approving body if the provider was pro-choice or pro-life. The public would be free to decide which healthcare providers they would support and which ones they would not support based on the morality of the healthcare provider and the morality of the consumer.
If such a system were in place, the student would have been able to go to a pharmacist that would not have had a moral objection to filling her prescription. The pharmacist would be able to be employed at a pharmacy that holds to the same moral views as he holds. Getting the government out of healthcare and putting it in the free market would even allow healthcare providers to work on making abortion obsolete. The Wisconsin and Texas case prove that it is time to get the government out of healthcare.