The National Health Service Trust in the Midlands has given up its attempt to force an objecting nurse to work in an abortion facility attached to a hospital. The nurse, citing the protection of conscience provision in the Abortion Act, refused to do so. She was threatened with dismissal, but the Trust backed down when it received a letter from her lawyer and consulted legal counsel.[LifeSiteNews]
Tag: nurses
Conscience Rights, Nurses & Abortion
National Catholic Reporter
Distinctly Catholic
29 November, 2011
Reprinted by permission of National Catholic Reporter,
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I take second place to no one in my championing of the cause of religious liberty, both in the context of the HHS mandates and in denouncing attacks on Gov. Mitt Romney’s Mormonism. But, there are circumstances in which the issue of religious liberty can be invoked in ways that cloud the issue or, worse from my point of view, misunderstand what religion calls us to do. The facts of a case matter.
Yesterday, the Washington Post reported on a group of nurses at a public hospital in New Jersey who are suing the hospital because it has decided they must participate in caring for women who are going to have an abortion and women who have just undergone one. Federal and state law guarantees the right of hospital workers not to participate in an abortion. President Obama’s administration re-wrote the conscience rules it inherited from President Bush, but the new rules drew a bright red line on the issue of abortion: No one can be forced to participate in one against their conscience.
The Post’s article was not clear exactly what was expected of the nurses in question. Certainly, there are no religious grounds I can think of for declining to care for a woman who has procured an abortion. If that were so, why would we have Project Rachel, the Catholic Church-run program that specifically tries to minister to women who have procured abortions. Indeed, at the recent USCCB meeting, several bishops spoke about the need to expand the efforts and activities of this wonderful program which brings the mercy of God to women who desperately need it. On the other hand, if a nurse is expected to discard the aborted child after the procedure, or otherwise deal with the immediate effects of the surgical operation, I think that would cross the line into participation in the act itself.
We need to keep the bright red line around abortion, not only because individual consciences are at stake, but because it is vital, really vital, that we in the pro-life movement continue to insist that abortion is not health care. I have said it before and will say it again: The medical profession exists to prevent disease and to heal wounds. Disease, wound, baby. Which one is not like the others? The didactic value of insisting on the differentness of abortion is important to our on-going efforts to change the culture.
But, we also need to treat people as adults. Some of the comments by pro-choice activists seeking to narrow the conscience exemption regarding mandated insurance coverage of contraception have been demeaning to those women who choose to attend or work at a Catholic institution. Those women choose a Catholic university over a secular one for a variety of reasons, but they know what they are signing up for. The same goes for nurses. They should be able to decline, on conscience grounds, to participate in an abortion, but they should not have carte blanche to eliminate those parts of their job description they don’t like. They, too, knew what they were signing up for when they applied to work at a hospital.
The cause of religious liberty will not be advanced by instances of overreaching.
Equality legislation used to defend conscientious objection to abortion
(United Kingdom: 2011)
- John Smeaton* | The two nurses . . .were employed at a hospital for ordinary nursing duties. They were then allocated to work once a week at an abortion clinic in the hospital. The abortion process did not involve surgical abortion but the increasingly common process of “early medical abortion” . . .When they became aware that they were participating in abortion they told their management that they did not want to continue but were then told that they had no choice in the matter. . . Full Text
Nurses who refused to assist in abortion disciplined
(New York, USA: 2010)
- Pete Sheehan | Eight nurses who refused to participate in an abortion at Nassau University Medical Center here March 31 are resisting disciplinary action levied on them by hospital officials. . . Full Text
ADF rebuts NY hospital’s claim that pro-life nurse can’t sue
ADF attorneys respond to claims of Mount Sinai Hospital
NEWS RELEASE
19 August, 2009
NEW YORK — Alliance Defense Fund attorneys submitted a brief in federal court Monday in response to the claim of New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital that a pro-life nurse who sued the hospital has no right to defend herself in court. ADF filed suit after the hospital forced senior nurse Cathy Cenzon-DeCarlo to participate in a late-term abortion procedure.
“Pro-life nurses shouldn’t be forced to assist in abortions against their beliefs. Nonetheless, Mount Sinai Hospital is multiplying its injustices against nurse Cathy Cenzon-DeCarlo,” said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “First it disregarded Cathy’s conscience; now it argues she can’t go to court to defend her rights. Mount Sinai Hospital does not have the right to disregard federal law and then refuse to face the consequences of its actions.”
Administrators at Mount Sinai Hospital threatened Cenzon-DeCarlo with disciplinary measures if she did not honor a last-minute summons to assist in a scheduled late-term abortion. Despite the fact that the patient was apparently not in crisis at the time of the surgery, the hospital insisted on her participation in the procedure on the grounds that it was an “emergency,” even though the procedure was not classified by the hospital as such. ADF attorneys filed suit on behalf of Cenzon-DeCarlo in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on July 21.
Attorneys for the hospital submitted a brief to the court Aug. 10 arguing that the lawsuit should be dismissed because the federal law at issue “does not grant individual litigants a private right of action.”
ADF attorneys responded to the brief Monday, noting, “Mount Sinai’s compulsion violates 42 U.S.C. § 300a-7(c), ‘the Church Amendment’ (named after Senator Frank Church). This law provides that no recipient of federal health funds may discriminate in the employment or privileges of its health care personnel because of their religious objection to abortion. The law contains no exception letting Mount Sinai compel assistance based on their unbridled judgment that abortion is an ‘emergency.’ Mount Sinai’s actions are a quintessential example of discriminating in employment and privileges on condition that Mrs. DeCarlo violate her objection to abortion.”
The ADF brief goes on to explain that “Mount Sinai compounds its contempt of the law” by denying that the law allows Cenzon-DeCarlo to defend her conscience rights. The brief points out that a federal court just this year “not only recognized an individual right, but allowed the plaintiff (in that case an abortion supporter) to seek punitive damages.” It also points out that the federal law involves all of the factors that the U.S. Supreme Court has used to recognize such rights and that Congress obviously intended to protect individuals from discrimination under the law it created.
New York ADF-allied attorneys Joseph Ruta and Piero Tozzi are serving as local counsel in the case, Cenzon-DeCarlo v. The Mount Sinai Hospital. The court will hold a pre-trial conference on Sept. 10.
Contact: ADF MEDIA RELATIONS (480) 444-0020