The General Pharmaceutical Council, shortly to take over the regulation of pharmacists, has issued a revised code of conduct that permits pharmacists to refuse the sale of the contraceptive and morning–after pills to customers.
It is one of those seemingly innocuous decisions that helps crystallise the confusing and often acrimonious debate about liberty and equality in a plural society.
On the one hand, which often means “in the red corner”, are those who decry such “exemptions”. They denounce the “right” that some “minority” groups “demand” to choose “arbitrarily” who they do and do not serve. In their more lurid and emotional moments they imaginatively recreate the utter shame and humiliation inflicted on the innocent consumer who unwittingly asks for the offending item. For them the title “Should pharmacists be allowed to choose who they serve?” not only frames the debate but answers it too.
In the blue corner, are those who see in the equality agenda that seeks to make such exemptions history, an aggressive and unprincipled attempt to banish freedom of conscience, or rather the freedom of those consciences that differ too far from their own. In their more dramatic moments, they see spectres of “state–sponsored” morality looming over a once free society, bullying and intimidating Christians into silence or submission. For them a title like “Should equality trump freedom?” would be better.
The reason why this debate is so acrimonious (other than the fact that it usually revolves around those sexual issues that seem uniquely able to generate fury) is that both sides have a valid point.
Customers have rights. If the law permits a certain purchase (indeed pays for certain purchases), why should someone who has freely chosen to work in a certain role be able to deny customers that purchase? Who (now) would defend the refusal to serve someone because she had a different skin colour?
On the other hand, all shop owners and service providers should have the right to serve whom they choose. Indeed some, such as landlords, are legally obliged to exercise that right. Try telling the owner of a newsagents shop that he has no right to refuse to serve a certain schoolchild?
The question is not whether pharmacists or shop owners should have the right to refuse service but whether the criteria that determine how they exercise it are legitimate.
The case of refusing schoolchildren is a clear one. If a certain child is known to be disruptive, to have been caught attempting to steal goods for example, no–one can deny the proprietors right to deny him service.
On the other side, the case of refusing to serve someone because of her skin colour is equally straightforward. It is impossible to mount a moral defence of choosing who to serve according to their skin colour, because skin colour has no bearing whatsoever on the fact of being a customer.
In the middle ground is the example of the contraceptive pill. Some people believe contraception is morally wrong, and more believe the same of the morning after pill. Such qualms are entirely reasonable according to certain the legitimate moral presuppositions concerning the start and sanctity of life. The fact that they are incomprehensible to those who do not share them is irrelevant. We do not have to comprehend, still less share, someone’s moral convictions in order to respect them in modern society, and so it would seem that the pharmacist’s right to refuse service is reasonable.
But the contraceptive example is slightly different as it is not so much about whether to serve someone as whether to serve something. The pharmacist is not refusing to serve the customer; she is refusing to serve her with that product. Hence, the (quite legitimate) response, “No one forced you to become a pharmacist. If you don’t like the terms, get out of the profession.”
Legitimate perhaps, but singularly ungenerous and ungracious. Ultimately, little is gained by forcing those who hold a legitimately different moral view out of certain professions and public roles. The more violently secularist may welcome the ejection of all Catholics from the health service, of all Christians from any job that demands Sunday working, etc. but most people recognise this as being a malign and mean–spirited attitude.
Better, surely, to moderate the whole situation with a little grace, by permitting pharmacists to continue to practice with this conscience clause in place, but asking (and if necessary compelling) them to make this fact known, to avoid a customer’s embarrassment, and to direct her to another shop that will serve the product.
That appears to be where the General Pharmaceutical Council stands at the moment but in a landscape of genuine and seemingly increasing moral plurality, and among a population that is unpractised in dealing with such plurality, it is impossible to guarantee that it will remain so.
Nick Spencer is Director of Studies at Theos.
