American Medical Association fights pharmacists who won't dispense contraceptives

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7507.11-b

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Janice Hopkins Tanne

New York

A battle is looming in the United States between doctors and the pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception, birth control pills, and other drugs on grounds of conscience. “The [American Medical Association] has called for a meeting with pharmacists and others to get a national consensus about how this problem is to be handled,” Peter Carmel, a paediatric neurosurgeon at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and a trustee of the association, told the BMJ.

“This is a problem of some urgency. We …