In today’s increasingly polarized world, it surprises me that the separation of church and state keeps threatening to shrink.

Speaking before the 25th International Congress of Catholic Pharmacists in Vatican City, Pope Benedict XVI told pharmacists this month that they should demand a right to use “conscientious objection” in regards to dispensing drugs.

This objection would "enable them not to collaborate directly or indirectly in supplying products that have clearly immoral purposes such as, for example, abortion or euthanasia,” said Benedict.

Is it just me, or is anyone else experiencing deja vu? In 2005, amid large controversy, California passed AB 21, a bill that required pharmacies to process prescriptions speedily and without obstruction. It allowed a pharmacist to deny drugs that he or she deemed immoral, but only if there was another pharmacist on hand who did not have a similar objection.

Wait... “objection”? No, a better word would be “obstruction.” Pharmacists who believe that ignoring doctors’ instructions and refusing prescriptions to patients are, in fact, obstructing a patient’s health.

The pope may be entitled to his opinions, but pharmacists should keep in mind whose needs they agreed to tend to when they enrolled in pharmacy school.

In January, a 21-year-old student in Florida made headlines after she was raped and refused emergency contraception. She had called the police for help who, after picking her up, found that she had an outstanding warrant for a burglary charge when she was 17 and they threw her in jail for two days. Even though the student received a prescription from a rape crisis center, a jail worker refused to give her the drug, citing religious objections.

In 2004, a large protest started in Texas after three pharmacists refused emergency contraception to a woman who had been raped, even though their company’s employment manual said they were prohibited from denying drugs on moral, religious, or ethical grounds. Fortunately, these pharmacists were subsequently fired.

The same year that California passed AB 21, allowing pharmacists to deny drugs, Arizona governor Janet Napolitano did the opposite: she vetoed a bill that would have allowed pharmacists to refuse drugs to patients on moral or ethical grounds.

This might seem like small potatoes to those who say that patients can just drive up to the next available pharmacy, but in many areas of the country, pharmacies can be fewer and far between, screwing over the folks who need these drugs.

This week, New Jersey joined California in having legislation regarding pharmacists' conscientious objection, but the New Jersey law goes one step further: it bans all pharmacists from denying prescribed drugs to patients. These states are paving the way for pharmacies to put medicine over so-called morals. Representatives from New York and West Virginia are currently pushing for legislation to do the same.

Other countries have grappled with the same issue. Chile allows whole chains of pharmacies to deny emergency contraceptive drugs, while Italy completely bars pharmacists from objecting to dispense drugs for moral or religious reasons.

As a Catholic, I may seem to be on the wrong side of the fence, but I believe that pharmacists should listen to their patients, and not the pope.