Italy:Pharmacists in Ireland have a constitutional right to refuse to dispense the morning-after pill on grounds of religious or personal beliefs, a spokeswoman for the Irish Pharmaceutical Union (IPU) has said, following Pope Benedict's comments on the subject in Rome.
On Monday the pope appealed for pharmacists to refuse to dispense drugs such as the morning-after pill if they objected on moral grounds. The comments ignited controversy in Italy.
The IPU's spokeswoman said that the union was in favour of pharmacists being enabled to dispense the morning-after pill (emergency hormonal contraception) to patients without a prescription. "However, this should only be done following a consultation with a pharmacist and would require appropriate protocols to be put in place," she said.
The pope was speaking to a group from the 25th international congress of Catholic pharmacists in Rome. He spoke of their role in educating patients on "the correct use of medications" and on "the ethical implications of the use of particular drugs".
He said: "We cannot anaesthetise consciences as regards, for example, the effect of certain molecules that have the goal of preventing the implantation of the embryo or shortening a person's life. Pharmacists must seek to raise people's awareness so that all human beings are protected from conception to natural death, and so that medicines truly play a therapeutic role."
He also said pharmacists were "called to face the question of conscientious objection, which is a right that must be recognised for people exercising this profession, so as to enable them not to collaborate directly or indirectly in supplying products that have clearly immoral purposes such as, for example, abortion or euthanasia".
Italy's health minister, Livia Turco, said the pope could not tell professionals such as pharmacists what to do. "I don't think his warning to pharmacists to be conscientious objectors to the morning-after pill should be taken into consideration," she told the newspaper Corriere della Sera.