Pharmacy asked to withhold judgment

Saturday, May 6, 2006 | 7:43 a.m.

CARSON CITY - Nevada pharmacists are on notice: They will be disciplined if they refuse to fill a prescription for birth control pills because of religious or moral beliefs.

Louis Ling, general counsel for the state Pharmacy Board, says a pharmacist who tries to sidestep a new regulation by not filling a birth control prescription based on a conscientious objection will answer to the board.

Ling's statement came Thursday as a legislative committee discussed and then approved a regulation that permits a pharmacist to refuse to fill a prescription because it is not correct and could put the patient in danger or the prescription was fraudulent.

Larry Pinson, executive director of the Pharmacy Board, said doctors sometimes make mistakes writing prescriptions. And this gives the pharmacist a chance to call the doctor to make sure the physician wants the prescription filled.

If the physician insists, the pharmacist can refuse if, based on his professional training, he feels the drug would be dangerous to the client.

Pinson said the regulation does not have a "conscience clause" that would permit the pharmacist to decline to fill a prescription because of religious or other objections.

It's up to the Legislature, Pinson said, to decide whether there should be a law to allow pharmacists to object based on religious or conscientious objections, not the pharmacy board.

Ling told the committee there has not been a complaint filed with the board in 19 years about a pharmacist who declined to fill a prescription based on a conscientious objection.

Sen. Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, said people don't file complaints because they fear making their complaint public.

At the hearing, Lisa L. Chapman, a student at UNLV Boyd School of Law, told the committee that when she was 18, a pharmacist refused to fill a contraceptive drug prescription unless she got permission from her parents.

"He treated me as a bad person" for seeking birth control pills, she told the committee. She said she got angry and went to another pharmacy.

Chapman supported the regulation but said it only went "halfway" in requiring pharmacists to fill birth control prescriptions.

Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, said she didn't want this regulation to be used by pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control pills because of a conscientious objection. She said she would be "greatly" offended if this regulation gave pharmacists a way out .

But Ling said if somebody tried to use the regulation that way, that would be "a potential disciplinary case."

He said a pharmacist must use his "reasonable belief" and "professional judgment" in refusing to fill a prescription, not any religious objection. The regulation "could not be used to morally object," Ling said.