Tag: nurses

Winnebago County LPN Sues Over Loss Of Job Due To Religious Beliefs

Northern Public Radio

A licensed practical nurse is suing the Winnebago County Health Department over allegedly violating her religious conscience.

Sandra Mendoza worked in the pediatrics unit until it was consolidated with women’s health and began offering contraception and abortion referrals.  Citing her Catholic beliefs, she petitioned for an accommodation from the hospital.  Her attorney, Noel Sterett, says what was offered in July of last year, either inspecting food or nursing home work, amounted to a demotion. . . [Full Text]

  

Growing Intolerance Threatens Rights of Conscience of Health Care Workers

cnsnews.com

Lynn Wardle*

Around the world, policies and actions of many governments and governmental agencies are threatening rights of conscience of health care providers and employees.  These challenges and dangers seem to be increasing.

Recent times have seen numerous high-profile incidents in which nurses, doctors, hospital staff, government employees, and other health care workers are being pressured, required and forced to provide morally-controversial elective procedures (such as non-therapeutic abortions) despite their expressed moral objections to participating in such services. [Full text]

 

Nurses Cannot be Good Catholics

BMJ Blogs

John Olusegun Adenitire

It seems that if you are a nurse you cannot be a good Catholic.  Or, better: if you want to work as a nurse then you might have to give up some of your religious beliefs.  A relatively recent decision of the UK Supreme Court, the highest court in the country, seems to suggest so.  In a legal decision that made it into the general press (see here), the Supreme Court decided that two Catholic midwives could not refuse to undertake administrative and supervisory tasks connected to the provision of abortions.

To be sure, no one asked the nurses to directly assist in the provision of abortions.  The Abortion Act 1967 says that “No person shall be under any duty … to participate in any treatment authorised by this Act to which he has a conscientious objection.”  The Nurses argued that this provision of the Act should be understood widely.  Not only should they be allowed to refuse to directly assist in abortion services: they should also be entitled to refuse to undertake managerial and supervisory tasks if those were linked to abortion services.  The nurses’ employer was not impressed; neither was the Supreme Court which ruled that the possibility to conscientiously object only related to a ‘hands-on’ capacity in the provision of abortion services. . . [Full text]

 

Right-to-die hits another snag with nurses

Nursing regulator in B.C. says it’s not yet clear that court ruling allowing assisted death protects participating nurses

Vancouver Sun

Jeff Lee

A B.C. doctor leading the efforts to provide physician-assisted dying says she’s being thwarted in her efforts to recruit nurses to help administer intravenous drugs.

On Monday Dr. Ellen Wiebe, the medical director of the Willow Women’s Centre in Vancouver, assisted a Calgary woman with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, in dying after an Alberta court issued an exemption allowing the assistance.

Wiebe said on Thursday that she has a case going to B.C. Supreme Court next week in which a patient has chosen to die at home using intravenous medications. But she said the College of Registered Nurses of British Columbia “does not support this.” . . . [Full text]

 

Lawyers to UN: Forcing nurses to assist abortions violates international law

 Parallel meeting in Geneva on 12 March

News Release

Alliance Defending Freedom

ADF International will hold a parallel event at the 28th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva Thursday to call upon European nations to respect the fundamental right to freedom of conscience within the medical profession. Two ADF International lawyers will speak at the event and will be available for media interviews.

ADF International, in coalition with Scandinavian Human Rights Lawyers, will urge the UN Human Rights Council and the international community at large to confront the lack of protections for freedom of conscience in several European countries. Although this fundamental human right is protected under international and European human rights law, a growing trend – particularly within the medical profession – is to override it. As a result, doctors, nurses, and midwives are being fired for refusing to perform or partake in abortion procedures.

“No one deserves to  be denied a job simply because they are pro-life,” said Ruben Navarro, ADF International’s director of UN Advocacy-Geneva, who will speak at the event. “International law makes it 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.”

At the event, Ruth Nordström, president of Scandinavian Human Rights Lawyers and lead counsel in the case Grimmark vs. Jönköping City Council, will discuss the lack of conscience protections under Swedish law.

“Sweden has failed to develop a comprehensive and clear regulation that defines and regulates conscientious objection at the workplace, in particular for health care providers,” Nordström explains. “Swedish medical workers are being reprimanded, repositioned, fired, and put at a disadvantage in other ways as well. Their freedoms under international treaties are being violated.”

“Willingness to commit an abortion cannot be a litmus test for employment,” added ADF International Senior Legal Counsel and Director of UN Advocacy Paul Coleman. “Medical clinics and hospitals need to respect the desire and conviction of a midwife or nurse to protect life – a desire that led Ellinor Grimmark and others like her to pursue the profession in the first place.”