Cristina Alarcon is a Vancouver pharmacist and writer. She holds a Masters in Bioethics.
A Canadian euthanasia trail-blazer has openly admitted that pain is not behind most requests for death.
Date posted: 2016-03-26
Last month a small group of Washington State pharmacists celebrated a ground-breaking victory after a five-year lawsuit against their regulator, the Washington State Board of Pharmacy. The lawsuit was launched in 2007 by two pharmacists and a retailer just a day after the board, under pressure from the state governor, Planned Parenthood and the Northwest Women's Law Centre, enacted new, seemingly neutral regulations about stocking drugs and filling prescriptions.
Date posted: 2012-03-31
An Illinois court has struck down a 2005 measure that would force pharmacists to provide the morning after pill.
Date posted: 2011-06-23
In a world increasingly preoccupied with conserving nature and singing the virtues of naturalness, this is an anomaly, to say the least. To continue along the path of promoting risky and polluting contraceptives while ignoring a wholesome alternative would look very like an ideological or commercial commitment, and nothing to do with women's reproductive health at all. Or care for the planet, for that matter.
Date posted: 2010-11-23
Humans are notably inconsistent beings, which may account for the contradictory attitudes we currently see to the phenomenon of suicide. On the one hand, every effort is made to prevent people taking their own lives; there are safety barriers on bridges, crisis hotlines, suicide prevention programmes in schools. At the same time there are organised campaigns for assisted suicide and other forms of euthanasia to be sanctioned by law.
Date posted: 2010-11-08
Pharmacists who refuse to dispense products they believe to be harmful are putting the health of the patient first. A pharmacist who will not sell the morning after pill, for example, chooses not to stock it because he believes that life is precious from the moment of conception. This is not a religious feeling or belief, but an ethical opinion that is just as worthy of respect as any other.
Date posted: 2010-08-27
I was thrilled to learn that Washington State will be creating new rules for pharmacists who have conscientious objections to providing services or products they find morally objectionable. The new regulations would give plaintiffs in a Washington lawsuit -- the owners of Ralph's Thriftway pharmacy and two pharmacists -- the right to refuse to stock or dispense Plan B "morning after pill" based on their belief that life is sacred from the moment of conception.
Date posted: 2010-07-27