Am I the only person in the United States getting fed up with moral exhibitionism? And no, I'm not really talking about the Terri Schiavo spectacle playing out 24/7 on the cable news channels. Turning the poor woman's tragedy into a carnival sideshow became inevitable once Congress and the brothers Bush decided there was political advantage in taking sides in a grave and intimate family quarrel.

Most politicians' commitment to "err on the side of life" waned as quickly as polls showing widespread public resentment were released. But apparently not, the Miami Herald reports, before Florida Gov. Jeb Bush actually considered dispatching state troopers to take Terri Schiavo into custody in defiance of state and federal courts, a plan abandoned only after local police indicated they'd resist.

In Texas, meanwhile, they do things differently. On March 14, doctors at Texas Children's Hospital withdrew life support from Sun Hudson, a 6-month-old infant with a fatal and untreatable form of dwarfism, over his family's protests. The baby died quickly. Under a 1999 law signed by Gov. George W. Bush, doctors alone are empowered to decide when artificial life support [including feeding tubes] has become futile. Families are given 10 days to find another facility if they can.

The president's hypocrisy aside, that's how it should be. I've had sufficient personal experience of how seriously the medical profession takes such decisions to entrust them to hospital ethics committees. So when I hear Pat Robertson, the well-known TV faith healer, observe, as he did on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," last week "(w)hy, you wouldn't treat a dog or horse the way they're treating Terri," I'm inclined to say: No, Pat, you'd show an animal more mercy and dignity.

Medically speaking, brain death is death. All the rest is made-for-TV melodrama.

Meanwhile, the latest trend in moral grandstanding is pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions they suspect might be used sinfully. According to a March 28, 2005, article in The Washington Post, a growing number are not only refusing to dispense birth control or "morning after" pills that offend their personal religious beliefs, but delivering impromptu sermons to the sinners who come to pick them up.

One joker in Wisconsin cross-examined a college girl about why she needed birth control pills [which have medical uses unrelated to sex], condemned her sinfulness, then refused to transfer the prescription elsewhere so she could get it filled by a pharmacist who didn't have himself confused with a TV evangelist.

Actually make that the Pope. A lawyer with the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom explained that his client is "a devout Roman Catholic (who) believes participating in any action that inhibits or prohibits human life is a sin."

The Washington Post story also told about a married mother of four denied "morning after" pills by a conscience-stricken pharmacist. "I couldn't believe it," said the 44-year-old woman, who'd made love with her husband, but didn't want a fifth child. "How can they make that decision for us? I was outraged. ... But I was scared. I didn't know what we were going to do."

I think all this has less to do with real faith than the growing number of "devout" self-dramatizing narcissists among us. I'm on firm scriptural grounds, too. "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them," Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. "If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in Heaven."

Only hypocrites, Christ added, make a public spectacle of their religiosity. Apart from Old Testament admonitions about selling daughters into slavery or stoning Beavis and Butthead to death, it's getting to be the least-observed doctrine in the Bible.

But I'd put it differently to "Pharmacists for Life" and other holier-than-thou groups putting their agonized consciences on public display. (So far, they've gotten four states: South Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi and Georgia to pass laws saying they don't have to dispense medications they wouldn't themselves take. Several others, California, Missouri and New Jersey are considering laws requiring pharmacists to fill all legal prescriptions.)

My advice would be simpler: get over yourself or get a new job. This is a fairly straightforward piece of moral reasoning: The rights that matter here aren't yours, they're the patient's, whose sexual and reproductive practices come under the heading of none of your business. If that's not good enough, hire some kid to serve as your "Shabbas goy"--what Orthodox Jews call somebody who does grunt work on the Sabbath.

After all, anybody who can count to 10 can take pills from the big bottle, put them in the little bottle, and ring up the sale while you look prayerfully on.

Meanwhile, any pharmacy that advertises "We Fill All Legal Prescriptions" will get my trade.

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a national magazine award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at genelyons2@cs.com.