Tag Archives: Conscience

News

Court says nurse who was forced to perform late-term abortion can’t sue

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Story here from LifeSiteNews. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

Today the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Catholic nurse who was forced by a New York hospital to participate in an abortion does not have the right to sue her employer.

Administrators at Mt. Sinai Hospital had threatened Catherine DeCarlo with disciplinary measures in May 2009 if she did not honor a last-minute summons to assist in a scheduled late-term abortion. The hospital insisted on her participation in the procedure on the grounds that it was an “emergency.”

Lawyers for DeCarlo, however, have pointed out that the procedure was not classified by the hospital as an emergency, and the patient was apparently not in crisis at the time of the surgery.

DeCarlo claims that her participation in the abortion led to serious emotional trauma. She also claims that hospital administrators later attempted to coerce her into signing an agreement to participate in abortions in the future.

The hospital had reportedly known of the Catholic nurse’s religious objections to abortion since 2004.

Alliance Defence Fund (ADF) attorneys had filed two suits in the case – one federal, filed in July 2009, and another state, filed earlier this year. The federal suit claimed that Mt. Sinai ignored federal laws prohibiting coercion while receiving hundred of millions of dollars in federal funding.

In January the case was dismissed by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, at which point it was appealed to the Second Circuit.

However, in today’s ruling the court found that there is no right to private action or private remedy under the statue cited by DeCarlo in her suit – the so-called “Church Amendment.”  (Read the decision here.)

That amendment protects health care workers working for federally-funded entities from being discriminated against because they refused to perform abortions on religious or conscience grounds.

In other news, pro-abortion nutter attacks pro-life display with metal pipe and gets arrested when he turns to attack pro-lifers, too. Hey – anti-life is pro-violence. That’s their view.

Sorry if blogging is a little light lately. I am having fun reading Mary’s frequent debates on Facebook. It’s really fun!

Commentary

Europe’s conflict with conscience protections

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From Public Discourse. (H/T Ruth Blog)

Excerpt:

This Thursday the Council of Europe, a transnational body created in 1949 to promote democracy and human rights, will vote on a resolution and series of recommendations on conscience protection. Americans, who faced similar issues during the debate over the health care overhaul, will find much of interest in the resolution. It would create guidelines that encourage member states to force doctors to perform abortions in some circumstances and to make referrals for them in every circumstance. Drafted by the pro-abortion British parliamentarian Christine McCafferty, it is an all-out assault on conscience and community.

The central feature of the resolution is a call for enforcement against conscientious objectors who refuse to perform or make referrals for abortion. The report encourages member states to “establish effective complaint mechanisms that can address abuses of the right to conscientious objection and provide women with an effective and timely remedy.” While many European countries are woefully lacking in conscience protection, authorities have sometimes hesitated to enforce these unjust laws. This provision seeks to end that. As the European Center for Law and Justice says in its report on the proposed law, “the ‘conscience clause’ is nothing other than an official immunity from liability for refusing to participate in abortion.” While the law fails to specify how this unjust law will be enforced, doctors can be forgiven for worrying that its implementation will be far from sensitive and sympathetic.

Among the report’s many specific recommendations, the most sinister sounding may be a call for the creation of national registries of conscientious objectors in order to further what the report describes as “oversight and monitoring mechanisms.” In Norway, doctors are already required to notify hospitals of their conscientious objector status, and the hospitals in turn are required to report the names of conscientious objectors to state authorities. The goal of these mechanisms seems to be to enable a highly inappropriate and political scrutiny of doctors who have deeply held objections to procedures like abortion and euthanasia.

The new guideline further restricts conscience by requiring that doctors give timely notice of their conscientious objections. But what happens if a doctor’s view on conscience changes? What if he is serving as the sole medical provider in an under-served area? Will he be required to give up his job?

There is already discrimination against conscientious objectors in Britain, where the National Health Service has urged hospitals to ask job applicants whether or not they are conscientious objectors and to refuse to hire conscientious objectors unless there is an already present physician willing to perform acts like abortion. One’s conscientious objector status becomes a matter of administrative record that must be consulted at every step in one’s employment, from hiring, to promotion, to professional security. Conscientious objectors become last hired, first fired.

This will make it harder for Christians to have an influence where it matters.

Commentary

How government control of medicine leads to violations of conscience

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Story here from the leftist Washington Post.

Excerpt:

Deep within the massive health-care overhaul legislation, a few little-noticed provisions have quietly reignited one of the bitterest debates in medicine: how to balance the right of doctors, nurses and other workers to refuse to provide services on moral or religious grounds with the right of patients to get care.

[…]The debate has focused attention on President Obama’s plan to rescind a federal regulation put into effect by the previous administration to protect workers who refuse to provide care they find objectionable. Soon after taking office, Obama announced he would lift the rule, arguing it could create obstacles to abortion and other reproductive health services. But a final decision about whether to kill, keep or replace the rule with a compromise has been pending as the debate over the health law raged. The outcome is being closely watched as a bellwether of how the administration will handle a possible thicket of conflicts under the health legislation.

“The act is thousands of pages of new government power, decision-making and funding,” said Matthew S. Bowman of the Alliance Defense Fund, which represents workers who object on religious grounds to being required to provide some forms of health care. “Any government power over health care can be exercised in a way that discriminates against pro-life health providers, especially when officials already support abortion and oppose enforcement of conscience laws.”

And more:

Bowman and others point to Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo as an example of what they fear could become increasingly common as the government becomes much more deeply entwined with health care. Cenzon-DeCarlo was working at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York last year when the nurse was stunned to learn that she had been assigned to help abort a 22-week-old fetus. A devout Catholic, Cenzon-DeCarlo thought she had a long-standing agreement with the hospital that let her avoid abortions. But this time, despite her pleas, Cenzon-DeCarlo’s bosses insisted.

“It felt like a horror film unfolding,” Cenzon-DeCarlo said. “It was devastating. I have suffered intense emotional pain. I’ve had nightmares. . . . I felt violated and betrayed.”

Cenzon-DeCarlo, who filed state and federal lawsuits against Mount Sinai, is the only health-care worker who has filed a complaint under the previous administration’s rule, which remains in effect. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is investigating, but officials would not comment on the case. The hospital also declined to comment.

Government is necessarily secular, and it is typically run by people who are born rich and educated at expensive schools. It causes them to think they are better than other people. They become extremely disdainful of the moral law, and the Judeo-Christian worldview that supports it – because they view the moral law (and the Constitution, etc.) as a  antiquated brake on their pursuit of happiness in this life. The desire for happiness now causes them to believe in anything that will push the demands of the moral law off.

And their personal views inform their political views. Those on the left favor policies that push moral rules aside, and sometimes even the people who believe moral rules – like pro-life doctors. The problem is that dismissing the moral law only works when you have a rich grandmother to bail you out. That’s why we need to elect more people like Michele Bachmann, who are self-made and had to work for a living, and who have raised their own children. People who don’t have contempt for the beliefs and values of ordinary people.