Category: News Releases

Swedish midwife denied employment for being pro-life

ADF files brief with Swedish court after three different clinics won’t consider woman because of her beliefs

News Release

Alliance Defending Freedom

JÖNKÖPING, Sweden – Alliance Defending Freedom has filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the district court of Jönköping County Council in Sweden on behalf of a midwife whom three different medical clinics denied employment because she will not assist with abortions.

“No one deserves to be denied a job simply because she is pro-life,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Roger Kiska. “International laws to which Sweden is obligated recognize freedom of conscience and make clear that being pro-abortion cannot be a requirement for employment, nor can medical facilities force nurses and midwives with a conscience objection to assist with practices that can lead to an abortion.”

In November 2013, Höglandssjukhuset women’s clinic rescinded a job offer as a midwife from Ellinor Grimmark after she explained that she could not perform abortions because of her Christian faith. The head of the maternity ward left her a telephone message saying that “she was no longer welcome to work with them” and questioned “whether a person with such views actually can become a midwife.” A few months later, Grimmark tried to obtain employment with Ryhovs women’s clinic, which told her that a person who refuses to perform abortions does not belong at a women’s clinic.

In January, Värnamo Hospital’s women’s clinic offered Grimmark a job but then withdrew employment because of the complaint she filed against Höglandssjukhuset in April. The group Scandinavian Human Rights Lawyers represents Grimmark in court.

The ADF brief in Grimmark v. Landstinget i Jönköpings Län explains that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has affirmed that “no person, hospital or institution shall be coerced, held liable or discriminated against in any manner because of a refusal to perform, accommodate, assist or submit to an abortion, the performance of a human miscarriage, or euthanasia or any act which could cause the death of a human foetus or embryo, for any reason.”

As the brief also explains, “The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights has itself explicitly affirmed rights of conscience for sincerely held religious and moral beliefs as falling within the gambit of Article 9 of the Convention.”

“Willingness to commit an abortion cannot be a litmus test for employment,” added ADF Legal Counsel Paul Coleman. “Medical centers need to respect the desire and conviction of a midwife or nurse to protect life – a desire that very likely led her to pursue the profession in the first place.”

  • Pronunciation guide: Kiska (KISH’-kuh)
Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith.
 
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CMA doctors hail Supreme Court mandate ruling, decry ongoing targeting of faith community

News release

Christian Medical Association

Washington, DC – June 30, 2014 – The 15,000-member Christian Medical Association (CMA, www.cmda.org), the nation’s largest and oldest faith-based doctors’ organization, today praised the Supreme Court’s ruling in two Health and Human Services (HHS) Obamacare mandate cases but noted “increasing attempts by the government to coerce the faith community.” CMA had outlined the medical aspects underlying religious objections to the HHS Obamacare mandate in its friend of the court brief in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood v. Sebelius.

CMA CEO Dr. David Stevens said in a statement, “We are very thankful that the Supreme Court acted to protect family businesses from government coercion and fines for simply honoring the tenets of their faith.

“This is a much-needed victory for faith freedoms, because this administration continues its assault on the values of the faith community. We are witnessing increasing attempts by the government to coerce the faith community to adopt the government’s viewpoint in matters of conscience,” noted Stevens.

CMA also filed a friend-of-the-court brief in another Supreme Court case this term, McCullen v. Coakley, to defend First Amendment free speech and assembly rights of pro-life advocates against a Massachusetts law that prohibited many citizens from entering a public street or sidewalk within 35 feet of an abortion facility.

“There seems to be growing intolerance of the faith community by some government officials who appear to want to extinguish the First Amendment freedoms that allow for a diversity of values,” Stevens observed, “We are seeing this antagonism expressed in coercive government mandates enforced with harsh penalties and discriminatory practices that threaten to eliminate the faith community from the public square.”

Dr. Stevens noted that the Obama administration recently launched another sweeping mandate that appears to target faith-based groups, requiring agreement with same-sex marriage as a condition of receiving federal grants. CMA’s Freedom2Care website (www.Freedom2Care.org) details other violations of faith and conscience rights:

ACLJ: Supreme Court Issues “Landmark Decision Protecting Religious Freedom and Freedom of Conscience”

News release

American Center for Law and Justice

WASHINGTON, June 30, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a pro-life legal organization that focuses on constitutional law, said today the Supreme Court issued a “landmark decision protecting religious freedom and freedom of conscience” in a 5-4 decision striking down the constitutionality of the ObamaCare HHS mandate, ruling that closely-held corporations cannot be required to provide contraception coverage for their employees.

“This is a landmark decision protecting religious freedom and freedom of conscience,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. “The court clearly recognized that closely-held corporations enjoy religious liberty rights just as they enjoy rights to free speech. American citizens do not lose their religious freedom when they form a corporation and try to live out their religious values in the conduct of their business. Moreover, the court – by holding that closely-held corporations cannot be forced to directly subsidize abortion-pills – dealt a severe blow to the Obama Administration’s ongoing assault on religious liberty and represents a significant setback to the abortion industry.”

The ACLJ filed an amicus brief urging the high court to reject the ObamaCare HHS mandate arguing that the mandate not only imposes “a very real and palpable injury” to those business owners affected but “substantially burdens their religious exercise” as well.

The ACLJ currently represents 32 individuals and corporations in seven pending actions against the government, including two cases currently pending before the high court. The ACLJ has obtained preliminary injunctive relief for its clients in all seven cases. Further, the ACLJ has represented 79 Members of Congress, filed more than a dozen amicus briefs, and stood up for hundreds of thousands who oppose the mandate.

Led by ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow, the ACLJ is based in Washington, D.C. and is online at www.aclj.org.

MEDIA  CONTACTS:
For Print: Gene Kapp (757) 575-9520
For Broadcast: Chandler Epp or Todd Shearer (770) 813-0000

MaterCare International stands firmly behind Dr. Bogdan Chazan

OFFICIAL STATEMENT

MATERCARE INTERNATIONAL

MEDIA RELEASE

June 12, 2014- MaterCare International stands firmly behind Dr. Bogdan Chazan, who is being told by the Polish Prime Minister to put the laws of the nation state above his Catholic faith.

Dr. Bogdan Chazan, a distinguished and celebrated obstetrician in Warsaw, has denied a request to abort an unborn child diagnosed with serious brain defects. An openly Catholic obstetrician, Dr. Chazan previously signed a “Declaration of Faith”, along with approximately 3,000 other physicians, which calls for the recognition of a Roman Catholic doctor’s rights to perform their duties in line with their religious convictions. Dr. Chazan argued that an abortion is against his faith and has come under siege from the Polish government and has been the victim of hateful attacks from fringe groups who oppose his rights as a Roman Catholic doctor.

Poland, a predominantly Catholic country, has remained in favour of positive alternatives to abortion for decades. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in a statement on Tuesday, reducing doctors to servants of the nation state, “Regardless of what his conscience is telling him [the doctor] must carry out the law.”

MaterCare International’s Executive Director Dr. Robert Walley commented, ““The simple fact is that the majority of people who have ever lived, and quite probably a large majority of people today, see abortion as the execution of an innocent life. Demanding that citizens abandon their morality and conduct executions at the command of the government is the hallmark of the most totalitarian and sinister states in human history. We are saddened and outraged that with this measure against Professor Chazan, Poland seems intent on joining their ranks.”

Walley continued, “People of faith become doctors, because they want to help people. They want to offer healing and hope, not death and despair. We look to them to give us their best advice and opinions. If we say doctors cannot have opinions, that patients are allowed to dictate their wants to a physician, then what good is a doctor? Whether or not to do anything is a moral decision, and to point the finger at those with religious backgrounds is prejudice. We should value their morality and not punish them for it. Dr. Bogdan Chazan, like Ghandi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and countless others, equates this ‘procedure’ with murder, being forced by the law to commit murder is something we can all surely reject.”

Through his decades of service, Dr. Chazan, as a physician and professor of gynecology and obstetrics, has gained the respect of colleagues, his fellow staff, and his patients. He is a graduate of the Medical Academy in Warsaw. Previuosly, he worked as a professor at the National Research Institute of Mother and Child and was the national consultant in obstetrics and gynecology. Since 2004 he has served as a director of the Holy Family Hospital in Warsaw.

Since 1994, Dr. Bogdan Chazan he has been a member of the Government Population Commission and a member of the Committee of the Demography of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He continues to work as a strong proponent of natural family planning and Naprotechnology in Poland. He was nominated twice, in 2010 and 2012 for the award “Totus” for “courageous and consistent activities for the benefit of the civilization of life in the spirit of St. John Paul II’s teaching”. He is the chairman of the Council of MaterCare International and director of MaterCare Poland.

-Dr. Robert Walley, Executive Director of MaterCare International

MaterCare International is an organization of Catholic health professionals dedicated to the care of mothers and babies, both born and unborn, through new initiatives of service, training, research and education. www.MaterCare.org

Email: info@matercare.org Ph: 1-888-579-6472

https://www.facebook.com/matercare

West Island Palliative Care Residence clarifies care it offers following passage of Quebec’s end-of-life legislation

Hospice statement 5 June following passage of euthansia law in Quebec

Will continue to provide care and comfort to terminally ill but will NOT act to hasten natural process of death

For immediate release

KIRKLAND, Quebec – June 5, 2014 – In light of the passage today by the National Assembly of new Quebec end-of-life legislation, the West Island Palliative Care Residence wishes to clarify that the new legislation will not change in any way the services it provides to terminally ill patients.

The Residence will continue to act in the way it always has – to provide the best possible care and comfort, including symptom relief to the dying but without taking any actions that hasten the natural process of death.

The new Quebec legislation permits, under certain conditions, Quebec health institutions and health professionals to provide “medical aid in dying” – the administration of drugs or other actions to intentionally cause the death of a patient. The legislation also permits any health professional as well as “palliative care hospices,” of which the West Island Palliative Care Residence is one, the option to choose not to do so, provided patients are informed that this is the case.

The West Island Palliative Care Residence has chosen to exercise this option and to make no change to the type and methods of care it delivers, meaning it will not take actions that intentionally cause a patient’s death.

“The goal of good palliative care is never to hasten the end of life,” said Teresa Dellar, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Residence. “We make the last days of life as comfortable and pain-free as possible so patients can live them in the best possible manner.” In fact, she noted, good palliative care from early on in a terminal illness has been shown in clinical studies to both extend patients’ lives and improve their quality of life.

“If we as a society are going to offer more choices to patients at the end of life, as this legislation does, then we must ensure one of those choices is ready access to high-quality palliative care in the patient’s community, as we offer at our Residence,” continued Ms. Dellar. “If quality palliative care is available, few will choose to end their lives prematurely. We can’t allow the premature ending of lives to become a substitute for our responsibility to provide compassionate care and symptom relief at the end of life.”

The West Island Palliative Care Residence will be changing its application forms and information for patients and families to comply with the new legislation and make it clear to them that the Residence will not provide the intentional end-of-life services now permitted.

About palliative care

Palliative care does not hasten death – as do euthanasia and assisted suicide – but ensures it is as comfortable, dignified and pain-free as possible. It is a conservative estimate that palliative care could be useful in more than half of Canadian deaths, or more than 125,000 patients per year. As proportionately fewer Canadians die suddenly or quickly from accidents or acute illnesses, more face end of life with chronic illnesses or diseases such as cancer that can extend over a relatively long period of time. Many dying patients end up in hospital ERs during the last weeks of life, an indicator of poor-quality end-of-life care and a very expensive and unsatisfactory alternative to palliative care.

About the West Island Palliative Care Residence

The West Island Palliative Care Residence is an independent, community-based, non-profit institution, accredited by the Quebec government to provide end-of-life palliative care services to residents of the West Island of Montreal. The Residence allows terminally ill patients to die in comfort and with dignity in a warm, home-like environment, close to their family, and in their community. It is not part of or affiliated with any hospital or health institution and services are provided without charge. The Residence has 23 beds in two pavilions, making it the largest freestanding palliative care residence in Canada. Since opening in 2002, the Residence has welcomed more than 2,500 patients in the final stages of ALS, multiple sclerosis, cardiovascular disease and cancer, as well as 10,000 of their family members. To learn more, visit ww.wipcr.ca

For more information:
Joanne Myers, Director of Development
Tel.: 514 693-1718, ext. 234
Mobile: 514 978-0793