 In most countries, the public relies on licensed physicians and hospitals for medical care. The medicines physicians recommend are available only from professionally trained, licensed pharmacists. In the U.S., state and federal laws have been enacted to relieve health care providers of the obligation to perform medical services that offend their philosophical, moral, or religious beliefs. Some policy-makers have argued that health care practitioners should be free to decline to provide services for which they are professionally trained if doing so genuinely violates personal conscience (Dresser 2005). Defenders of what have been called “conscience clauses” and “refusal laws” see themselves as defending the “privacy” of pharmacists and health care providers, privacy akin to liberty of thought and freedom of religion (White 1999). But opponents of such laws see themselves as the true defenders of privacy, standing up for the “right to privacy” of patients. They stress that the call for refusal laws has been tied to larger “pro life” strategies to limit access to contraceptives, medical abortifacients and surgical abortions. They say pharmacists who decline to dispense medication are placing their personal values and autonomy above the values and autonomy of patients. Furthermore, pharmacists, like physicians and nurses, enjoy the benefits of regulation and have chosen their professions voluntarily. Private reproductive choices can be exercised only if sufficient numbers of health care professionals are willing to perform lawful services.