I can understand why someone might feel that his conscience would be violated by filling a particular prescription. But this guy seems to have gone a bit beyond refusing to fill the prescription for birth control pills. An Associated Press story from the March 25, 2008 Idaho Statesman:
WAUSAU, Wis. — A state appeals court upheld sanctions Tuesday against a pharmacist who refused to dispense birth control pills to a woman and wouldn't transfer her prescription elsewhere.
The 3rd District Court of Appeals ruled that the punishment the state Pharmacy Examining Board handed down against pharmacist Neil Noesen did not violate his state constitutional rights, specifically his "right of conscience" to religiously oppose birth control.
...
According to court records, Noesen was working as a substitute pharmacist at a Menomonie Kmart in 2002 when a University of Wisconsin-Stout student sought to refill her birth control prescription.
Noesen testified he advised the woman of his objection to the use of contraception and refused to fill the prescription or tell her how or where she could get it refilled.
The woman was able to get the prescription filled two days later but missed the first dose of the medication, court records said. [emphasis added]
If Noesen ran his own pharmacy, I might be a bit more tolerant of his unwillingness to help her get her prescription filled. But he was working for someone else, and has an obligation to perform the duties set out by his employer. (And yes, that would include cases like this one, where as much as I sympathize with Mr. Peterson, there are consequences to refusing to obey company rules. No one said that following your conscience was guaranteed to be painless.) If those obligations are morally repugnant, then he needs to quit, or not take the job.
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