Walgreen Co. said it has put four Illinois pharmacists in the St. Louis area on unpaid leave for refusing to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception in violation of a state rule.

The four cited religious or moral objections to filling prescriptions for the morning-after pill and "have said they would like to maintain their right to refuse to dispense, and in Illinois that is not an option," Walgreen spokeswoman Tiffani Bruce said.

Good for Walgreen's and good for Illinois. If you have a "religious or moral" reason for not doing your job, that means you're doing the wrong job.

[ Precisely. Those pharmacists have every right to refuse to dispense contraceptives. If, in high school, I had been a strict Straightedge, and, on the basis of my morality, refused to sell people alcohol or cigarettes in my job as a grocery store cashier, that would have been my right too. And I'd have gotten fired for it. And that would have been correct. Every employee has the *right* to refuse to do their job for any reason whatsoever, but they certainly don't have the right to keep their job after doing so. -k]

Ill. Pharmacists Withhold Emergency Pill - Yahoo! News