Currently it is completely legal for a pharmacist to refuse to dispense medicine IF it goes against their personal beliefs. In this day and age this is unacceptable.

Allowing pharmacists to decide to who they can dispense to or what they can dispense is a slippery slope that can lead to discrimination. Whether it is a woman who needs the morning after pill or a transgender person collecting their hormones. It is wrong for a pharmacist to place their personal beliefs onto the patient. It is illegal to discriminate like this elsewhere so why should pharmacists be above the law? Their responsibility is to the patient not their ego.

Just recently a mum was told she couldn’t have emergency contraception because it went against the beliefs of the only pharmacist working that Sunday.

Siani, 41, visited her local LloydsPharmacy at Sainsbury’s on Lewes Road, Brighton, when a female member of staff refused to give her the morning after pill for ‘personal reasons’.

Siani told newspapers: ‘I rang up from my car before going in to check that it was ready and the woman who answered told me that she will not dispense this type of product for “personal reasons”.’

The pharmacist told her to come back the next day or advised her to go to the nearest open branch in Newheaven – 10 miles away.

This is unacceptable.