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PrintJuly 27, 2009
Nurse given ultimatum: Help with abortion or lose your job
We don't know how often this is happening now that the Obama administration and Congress have repealed the "conscience workers" rule that gave those health care workers who opposed abortion the opportunity to follow their conscience and not assist in the procedure.
It is probably happening more than is being reported. But one nurse in New York city who has suffered mental stress as a result of her being given an ultimatum to help with a late term abortion or lose her job, decided to go public.
Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, a nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital, also claims that they made no effort to find a substitute nurse even though the life of the mother was in no immediate danger according to this New York Post article by Katerine Boninello:
The hospital even exaggerated the patient's condition and claimed the woman could die if the nurse, a devout Catholic, did not follow orders, the nurse alleges in a lawsuit.
"It felt like a horror film unfolding," said Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, 35, who claims she has had gruesome nightmares and hasn't been able to sleep since the May 24 incident.
The married mother of a year-old baby was 30 minutes into her early-morning shift when she realized she had been assigned to an abortion. She begged her supervisor to find a replacement nurse for the procedure. The hospital had a six-hour window to find a fill-in, the suit says.
Bosses told the weeping Cenzon-DeCarlo the patient was 22 weeks into her pregnancy and had preeclampsia, a condition marked by high blood pressure that can lead to seizures or death if left untreated.
The supervisor "claimed that the mother could die if [Cenzon-DeCarlo] did not assist in the abortion."
But the nurse, the niece of a Filipino bishop, contends that the patient's life was not in danger. She argued that the patient was not even on magnesium therapy, a common treatment for preeclampsia, and did not have problems indicating an emergency.
The federal conscience rule covered doctors, pharmacists, nurses, and other health care workers whose religious or moral beliefs precluded them from assisting in abortions, or euthanasia, or other medical procedures that went against their beliefs. It was a good rule in that it married personal and public ethics in a way that didn't harm the patient.
As Matt Bowman of the American Spectator pointed out a few weeks ago, Obama tried to make it appear that he really was in favor of the conscience rule. It's just that there was a "misunderstanding" about repealing it:
Obama seems to be persuading even pro-life Catholics that he supports "robust" conscience rights. The theologically conservative National Catholic Register said it was "most noteworthy" that the President "dispell[ed] ... the expectation of the worst regarding conscience clauses."
Yet one of Obama's first actions was to repeal basic rules protecting conscience. Obama dismissed that action as an unfortunate misunderstanding, causing people to think "my position may appear unclear."
What really happened with the repealed conscience rule shows that Obama's position against conscience is crystal clear.
The end result of this action will probably be a loss of some much needed, excellent health care workers who will follow their consciences bidding and leave the profession rather than participate in medical procedures that offend their sense of right and wrong.
