Bruce Ramsey wrote a doozy of a column yesterday supporting Judge Ronald Leighton's recent decision  to let religious pharmacists refuse to fill legal prescriptions for Plan B, the pill that prevents pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex.

Positing a hypothetical woman who tries, and fails, to fill a prescription for emergency contraception, Ramsey says he can see why she would be "infuriated" at the pharmacist for scolding her.  However, he adds, "Her anger is probably less about the inconvenience of finding another store and more about the implied censure of behavior she feels is none of the druggist's damn business."

Far be it from me to take issue with Ramsey's interpretation of a hypothetical woman's "feelings" about being turned away at the pharmacy counter. But the belief that that letting pharmacists deny EC because of their personal views might be a hardship, forcing women to drive many miles to the next-closest pharmacy and delaying their access to a drug that works best within 72 hours, seems entirely legitimate.

Next Ramsey asserts that the constitutional right to free expression of religion gives pharmacists a right to refuse to dispense medications they object to. "The Constitution offers no guarantees against a druggist's disapproval — or of 'access' to health care, whatever that means."

Like Ramsey, I'm not a lawyer, so I'll quote someone who is: That well-known radical leftist Antonin Scalia, who wrote an opinion in 1990 concluding that even if a law incidentally burdens religious practice, unless it intentionally  targets a religious practice, it is not unconstitutional.  “We have never held that an individual’s religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate," Scalia wrote .

Moving on, Ramsey argues that Plan B works by killing zygotes. "Preventing the survival of a zygote ... is what Plan B does," he asserts. That's false on two counts. While Plan B does, in rare cases, prevent a fertilized egg from implanting, the vast majority of the time, Plan B works by stopping ovulation---preventing an egg from being released by an ovary---or by preventing sperm from fertilizing an egg.

Second, the notion of "the survival of a zygote" is just silly. Ramsey says that when life begins "is not a scientific issue. It is a matter of belief." You can believe whatever you want---some people believe drug transfusions violate God's will, and are willing to die for that belief--- but if you believe that preventing the implantation of a two-celled zygote is murder, you'll have to also condemn the 30 to 60 percent of women whose zygotes fail to implant, plus the 25 percent of women who become pregnant but miscarry early in their pregnancies. (Sadly, this isn't this isn't so far-fetched)

And think about the slippery slope that argument opens up. In Ramsey's world, any pharmacist could refuse any medication for any reason, as long as they justified it by saying it was against their religion. From Antabuse for alcoholics to IVF or HIV treatments for gay couples to vaccinations for children to hormonal birth control for unmarried women---there are many, many drugs that go against the beliefs of religious conservatives of all stripes, and claiming a broad religious exemption for Plan B will lead inevitably to an even broader religious exemption for, potentially, anything at all.

Finally, Ramsey comes back to the issue of implied censure, saying that if women want to avoid pregnancy, they're just going to "have to put up with" it by submitting to moral scolding from their pharmacists. It's not far from there to Rick Santorum saying women shouldn't have access to contraception outside marriage because it's "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."