Article Text
Abstract
Emergency hormonal contraception (EHC) has been available from pharmacies in the UK without prescription for 11 years. In the Republic of Ireland this service was made available in 2011. In both jurisdictions the respective regulators have included ‘conscience clauses’, which allow pharmacists to opt out of providing EHC on religious or moral grounds providing certain criteria are met. In effect, conscientious objectors must refer patients to other providers who are willing to supply these medicines. Inclusion of such clauses leads to a cycle of cognitive dissonance on behalf of both parties. Objectors convince themselves of the existence of a moral difference between supply of EHC and referral to another supplier, while the regulators must feign satisfaction that a form of regulation lacking universality will not lead to adverse consequences in the long term. We contend that whichever of these two parties truly believes in that which they purport to must act to end this unsatisfactory status quo. Either the regulators must compel all pharmacists to dispense emergency contraception to all suitable patients who request it, or a pharmacist must refuse either to supply EHC or to refer the patient to an alternative supplier and challenge any subsequent sanctions imposed by their regulator.
- Abortion
- Legal Aspects
- Reproductive Medicine
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Request Permissions
If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.
Copyright information:
Linked Articles
- Concise argument
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Can we reduce costs and prevent more unintended pregnancies? A cost of illness and cost - effectiveness study comparing two methods of EHC
- Young women ’s fertility knowledge: partial knowledge and implications for contraceptive risk - taking
- ▼Levonelle-2 for emergency contraception
- Improving uptake of the copper intrauterine device for emergency contraception by educating pharmacists in the community
- Ethical, religious and factual beliefs about the supply of emergency hormonal contraception by UK community pharmacists
- Chlamydia screening by community pharmacists: a qualitative study
- Provision of hormonal and long - acting reversible contraceptive services by general practices in Scotland, UK (2004–2009)
- Evaluation of a community pharmacy delivered oral contraception service
- Private conscience, public acts
- A cross-sectional study using freedom of information requests to evaluate variation in local authority commissioning of community pharmacy public health services in England