Thursday, December 12, 2013

Survey to be published on abortifacients in Pharmacies


Human Life International (Ireland) (HLII) have announced  in a press release that an unprecedented survey will arrive in EVERY pharmacy in Ireland North and South on Thursday December 12th.
The morning after pill and abortifacients are chemical warfare on unborn children and this survey aims to map which pharmacies do not dispense these deadly drugs.
Of the 14,000 supporters on Human Life International’s database, many have pledged to travel long distances to patron pharmacies which do not deal in these drugs.  HLII are constantly asked if they know of even one pharmacy in the country which doesn’t deal in these abortifacients so they decided to do something about it.
The pharmacy mailing, funded by supporters of HLII  includes the testimonies of three pharmacists who ceased dispensing these drugs on consciencious grounds.
According to the statement HLII are inviting pharmacists who have ethical qualms about dispensing abortifacients to contact them – confidentially if they wish.
HLII Executive Director, Patrick McCrystal, is a pharmacist who paid a heavy price of unemployment for 3 years for refusing to dispense them.
We plan to inform our supporters of the results of this survey for THEIR local area.
Pharmacists and other healthcare professional are invited to  view a special dedicated website www.positivepharmacy.org for scientific and ethical perspectives.
More information:  Rep of Ireland 094 93 75993     N. Ireland 02890 90923357
Human Life International (Ireland), Guadalupe Centre, Main Street, Knock. Co. Mayo.Upholding and defending Life, Faith and Family


TESTIMONIES
Pharmacist stops dispensing abortifacients
By Patrick McCrystal  M.P.S.I/ BSc Pharmacy (QUB)
I ceased dispensing  contraceptive pills and so-called “morning-after” pills in 1993. How could I as a healthcare professional  promote health and prolong life with integrity whilst dispensing drugs that terminated human life?  When a woman who has conceived presented in my pharmacy, I had a duty of care to two patients, not one.

I knew human life was sacred from the moment of conception.  I knew that if I consented to dispensing a drug with an implicit abortifacient mechanism, I was complicit on an attack on a fellow human being.  

It was a very difficult decision-making time, with very few I could really talk to.  Then I discovered “Pharmacists For Life International” based in U.S.A.  What a relief to discover that somewhere in the world there were pharmacists defending human life in this manner.   When I eventually ceased dispensing contraceptive products in 1993, I was subsequently unemployed for three years, despite attending about 30 interviews in North and South Ireland.
 The pharmacy magazine “Chemist and Druggist” carried my two page article “What Kind of Prescription?”   highlighting the pharmacists ethical dilemma of dispensing abortifacients in 1994. The Scottish Pharmacist Association invited me to debate the MAP at their annual conference in 1995, a debate I won. 
It wasn’t good enough when people said to me: “You can’t impose your morality on others.”   By continuing to dispense these drugs against my increasingly uneasy conscience, I was letting others morality be imposed on me.
In a statement to Catholic Italian pharmacists, Pope John Paul II said: “One cannot accept being party to attacks on life…or on procreation.”(1993).   
In 1995, he made the dramatic statement “Whoever attacks human life in some way attacks God himself (Evangelium Vitae ; The Gospel of Life)
The idea of coming before God at the judgment at the end of my life and discovering that through my dispensing of abortifacients I had in some way attacked God was something I simply couldn’t do.   It was then I wrote my first book: Contraception and Evangelium Vitae, highlighting the clinical evidence for the abortifacient nature of contraceptive pills and drugs.
About the same time I discovered the statistics revealing that the distribution of contraception actually increases the abortion rate not reduces it.  Even Family Planning Agencies know that.  As someone deeply opposed to abortion, by my dispensing contraception as a pharmacist, I now realised I was party to fuelling the abortion crisis, not reducing it.
Now I am working with to inform the general public of ALL the facts before they make up their mind on contraception.  My most recent book “Who’s at the Centre of your marriage…the Pill or Jesus Christ?” highlights contraception’s disintegrating effect on marital harmony.
We have all been shocked by the reports of chemical attacks on children in Syria.  Abortifacient products are nothing less that chemical attack on children in the womb.
A expanded version of Patrick’s testimony is at www.positivepharmacy.org


Caroline Hubert, Pharmacist testimony
In 1988 I registered as a pharmacist in the UK. In 1994, I became uneasy about supplying what I then understood to be ‘abortifacient’ contraceptive devices and medications. At the time I believed that the ‘morning after pill’ and IUD were the only such ‘culprits’.
As I prayerfully considered the spiritual implications of supplying these products, I became increasingly convicted that my role in authorising their supply was a significant compromise of my own moral integrity.
My personal research into the actions of these products revealed to me that even before the implantation of the early embryo, human life is well under-way. What implants in the womb days after conception is not simply one ‘fertilised egg-cell’ but a developing ‘blastocyst’ consisting already of many cells.
Discovering that somehow impacted me. At that point I made a decision to stop supplying the MAP and IUD as I could no longer in conscience provide a product which I understood would destroy a human life – even at the earliest stage of development. Scripture is clear - ‘Thou shalt not kill’.
On that same day I came accross an article written by Patrick McCrystal in our UK trade magazine ‘The Chemist and Druggist’. This article exposed some uncomfortable new information. This researcher concluded that in fact all oral ‘contraceptive’ drugs and devices have an intrinsic abortifacient potential. One particular quote particularly challenged me. It is apparent that with COC pills which are least likely to have an abortifacient action, there was a possibility in one year in the USA for 12 million users to have up to 5 million chemical abortions!
I then realised the enormity of the decision which lay before me.
As a pharmacist I liked to provide a good service and to give customers satisfaction. Taking a decision to refuse to supply such prescription items could invite much hostility. I prayed at length about my response feeling very fearful of the potential consequences. After 3 months of wrestling with the issue I finally stopped supplying any products with an intrinsic abortifacient potential.  I was employed as a pharmacy manager by a chain of pharmacies in the south of England.
My company accepted my position as a conviction of conscience and I continued to work at this branch for the next 10 years until I left to accommodate the needs of my own growing family of 8 children. Interestingly and unexpectedly the prescription business prospered during this time.