Submission to the Alberta College of Pharmacists
Re: Draft Code of Ethics
27 February, 2009
Full Text
ABSTRACT
The Draft Code of Ethics does not address the
situation of a pharmacist who, for reasons of
conscience, refuses to fill a prescription for
assisted suicide, euthanasia or post-coital
interception. Further, it fails to define key terms,
thus complicating its application in such a case.
The failure to define or limit key terms strongly
suggests that pharmacists will be expected to
enhance access to assisted suicide or euthanasia,
even if they object to the procedures for reasons of
conscience. At the least, a limitless obligation to
"enhance access" provides limitless opportunities to
prosecute objectors for professional misconduct.
This is particularly troubling because references
to accommodation of freedom of conscience in the
current Code have been removed from the Draft Code.
It is not unreasonable to believe that deletion of
reference to accommodation of freedom of conscience
and the construction of the Draft Code are intended
to force objecting pharmacists to enhance access to
euthanasia, assisted suicide, post-coital
interception, etc., and to compel them to assist the
patient to obtain such services in a timeframe
acceptable to the patient.
To impose this requirement would effectively
close the profession of pharmacy to anyone who finds
such conduct morally unacceptable. It would present
current members who would refuse to facilitate
assisted suicide, euthanasia or post-coital
interception with the choice of compromising their
personal integrity or leaving the profession.
Arguments commonly advanced to support the notion
that pharmacists should be forced to refer services
to which they object for reasons of conscience are
faulty or inadequate, in that they fail to fully
address the issue of complicity in wrongdoing and
the nature of the human person.
A long philosophical tradition, stretching from
at least Immanuel Kant to R. vs. Morgentaler
and beyond, insists that the nature of the human
person is such that no one should be exploited by
another by being reduced to the status of a tool or
thing: that it is reprehensible to use a human
person for ends chosen by others. Within this
tradition, self-sacrifice has never been understood
to include the sacrifice of one's integrity. To
abandon one's moral or ethical convictions in order
to serve others is prostitution, not
professionalism: servitude, not service.
In the tradition of Kant, C.S. Lewis, Martin
Luther King, Cyril Joad and Karol Wojtyla, and
following Madame Justice Wilson in R. vs.
Morgentaler, to demand that pharmacists provide
or assist in the provision of procedures or services
that they believe to be wrong is to treat them as
means to an end and deprive them of their "essential
humanity."
A pharmacist's conscientious refusal to refer
patients or assist them in obtaining euthanasia,
assisted suicide, post-coital interception, etc.
should not constitute professional misconduct. The
College of Pharmacists of Alberta should not demand
that a pharmacist actively facilitate a service or
procedure he believes to be wrong. The Draft Code
of Ethics should be revised to ensure that the
document cannot be used for this purpose.
The College of Pharmacists of Alberta should
include in its Code of Ethics a unambiguous
policy of accommodating freedom of conscience
through systemic cooperation that does not require
active participation by an objecting pharmacist in
conduct he believes to be wrong. The policy should
not apply to pharmacists who own, manage or are
employed in pharmacies that clearly and publicly
identify the scope of their practice to exclude
certain services.
In any case, neither the ambiguous provisions of
the Draft Code nor its silence on freedom of
conscience can be construed to restrict the exercise
of fundamental freedoms acknowledged and guaranteed
by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
While even fundamental rights and freedoms are not
unlimited, the Charter requires that their
limitation by state authorities (like the College of
Pharmacists of Alberta) be "demonstrably justified"
and be "prescribed by law." The Draft Code
attempts nothing by way of demonstration, and it
would strain credulity to argue that mere silence
and ambiguity constitute a valid legal prescription
for the suppression of freedom of conscience.
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