Moral Agency as Public Menace

The battle over the ability of individuals to exercise moral agency in their professional decision-making appears to be heating up, especially when it comes to pharmacists.  Planned Parenthood organized a protest rally in Chicago yesterday to target a pharmacist who refuses to fill prescriptions for birth-control pills.  The pharmacist is following company policy by referring customers to another pharmacist on duty or another pharmacy.  Nevertheless, according to protesters, "women are shamed and humiliated when a pharmacist refuses to fill their prescription."

UPDATE: If you're interested in this issue, you might want to read my article, Heretics in the Temple of Law: The Promise and Peril of the Religious Lawyering Movement (posted in the right-hand column under my name), in which I take on the contention that lawyers should not take moral responsibility for their professional conduct.

Rob