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!
WINTERY KNIGHT 