An interesting letter from the Rapid City Journal today on the debate about pharmacists who exercises their right of conscience in dispensing contraceptives and abortifacients.
In moral conviction vs. the law you can’t have it both ways
David Rooks’ Jesuit-like circumlocution about the Broadus, Mont., pharmacist brings him around to precisely where he didn’t intend to be.
He quotes the final words of Sir Thomas More just before his head was lopped off for high treason: “I am the king’s good servant (most scholars say ‘faithful’), but God’s first.”
More, a lawyer and public servant who swore in a public oath to uphold the law whether he liked it or not, chose personal conscience over public loyalty with the full knowledge that whichever choice he made he would suffer.
He knew he couldn’t have it both ways. There are consequences to a personal moral stand which conflicts with the law, though now it is rarely beheading. Lawyers, doctors and clergy face and wrestle with these moral dilemmas every day.
A pharmacist is licensed by the state, upon administration of an oath, to serve the public through the profession as constituted under the law.
If one is unable to do that in good conscience, surrender the license. No one would deny anyone’s right to take a moral stand, but trying to weasel out of the dilemma and have it both ways is dishonorable, unconscionable and in the end, unfaithful.
GRAHAM THATCHER
Rapid City
What is most striking to me about this letter is that the tone throughout this letter indicates Thatcher believes someone SHOULD suffer for making a moral choice.
While suffering is sometimes necessary for making a moral choice, that is not to say this is the natural order, or should be the natural order.
Incidentally, though Thatcher says, "A pharmacist is licensed by the state, upon administration of an oath, to serve the public through the profession as constituted under the law," he seems to be missing the fact that some states have passed laws protecting this exercise of conscience, so the issue falls not only within the bounds of what's moral, but also what's "constituted under the law."
But by making the argument that he does, is Thatcher saying it is good and proper and a part of how things should be that Thomas More was punished for his beliefs? I doubt Thatcher truly believes this, yet this is exactly what Thatcher's letter is saying.
The Europeans who settled American 400 years ago left their homelands because they wanted to be free to make moral decisions...without being punished for it. Was it wrong for the Pilgrims to want the freedom to make moral choices without punishment?
Is Thatcher also saying that people who see an aspect of law which interferes with making the moral decision should just "get out" of their line of work, rather than work to make it more possible to make the moral decision?
For those in government back in the days when slavery was legal in much of the United States, should they have continued to work to end slavery...or should they have just surrendered their office because they "couldn't have it both ways?"
How about those officials who saw segregation as wrong? Should they have just surrendered their positions in the school system and other government positions, rather than working to right a wrong?
Thatcher seriously needs to rethink his position. For if he wants his life to be consistent with what he wrote, then he is expecting, perhaps even asking, to be punished for every decision he makes affirmatively for moral reasons.
Does he really want to live this way? I think it is Thatcher who has brought himself around to a place he doesn't want to be.
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