A major victory yesterday for conscience protections. From LifeSite News:
Thu Dec 22 7:53 PM EST
NEWARK, New Jersey, December 22, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a triumph for conscience protections, a New Jersey hospital agreed that nurses will not have to assist with abortions if doing so would violate their moral or religious views.
Twelve nurses filed a lawsuit on October 31 against at the hospital run by the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), alleging that the hospital threatened to fire them if they refused to assist in abortions. According to the lawsuit, a supervisor told a nurse in the Same Day Surgery Unit that UMDNJ had “no regard for religious beliefs.”
Forcing a health care professional to participate in an abortion could violate both state and federal law. UMDNJ receives $60 million in federal funding, which protects the consciences of medical staff in some situations. New Jersey state law guarantees, “No person shall be required to perform or assist in the performance of an abortion or sterilization.”
“We are glad that the hospital finally agreed to obey the law and not force our clients to do any work on abortion cases in violation of their beliefs,” Matt Bowman, the attorney who handled the case for the Alliance Defense Fund, stated in an e-mail statement sent to LifeSiteNews.com. “The hospital agreed not to penalize our clients in any way because they choose to not help abortions according to their legal rights.”
The nurses agreed they will briefly assist mothers during a medical emergency, until new staff members who do not object can take their place. The hospital hired four new nurses for these cases. “I’m still scared about the part of them having four nurses brought in and we might become the surpluses,” said Fe Esperanza-Racpan Vinoya, one of the plaintiffs. However, Bowman stated, “the hospital cannot use pro-abortion staff to replace our clients or reduce their hours.”
“The judge warned the hospital that our clients could return to his court if they were assigned to work abortion cases or if the hospital pretextually tries to require the nurses to assist abortions,” Bowman stated.
The hospital notified members of the unit in September that they would undergo abortion training, which included participating in abortions, beginning on October 14. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to halt the practice on November 3, but nurses say the hospital continued to pressure them to participate. “They said very clearly if we did not assist, we would face termination,” said Racpan Vinoya.
Doctors reportedly told Vinoya, “You just have to catch the baby’s head. Don’t worry; it’s already dead.”
The agreement, which was reached on Thursday, ended the case Danquah v. University of Medicine and Dentistry of N.J. (UMDNJ), which was filed by all but four nurses in their unit.
Rep. Christopher Smith, R-NJ, said the hospital’s disregard for state and federal law and violation of its staff members’ consciences was “not only highly unethical but blatantly illegal.”
This was indeed a great victory, and the credit goes to twelve brave and principled nurses who stood their ground, and attorney Matt Bowman of the Alliance Defense Fund for his skillful and equally courageous defense of the nurses. There is a fundamental principle at stake here, one that is testing all of our established human anthropology, metaphysics, ethics, and jurisprudence.
Are medical professionals autonomous human beings or vending machines acting at the behest of patients and the state?
A government hospital in New Jersey was extremely backward thinking. They claimed that the medical professionals must assist in procedures that their well-formed consciences told them are inhuman and immoral, legality notwithstanding.
We’ve been here before.
The Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II wrestled with a very difficult decision. Nazi leaders and concentration camp personnel claimed to be following the lawful orders of Adolph Hitler, orders which were indeed lawful under Germany’s constitution, as the constitution had been amended by the people to declare the Fuehrer’s word law. At those trials, every civilized nation in the world stood to declare that Natural Moral Law is universal, and supersedes all manmade (positive) law.
Yes, the orders in Germany were indeed lawful under positive law, but the Natural Moral Law which takes the human nature of all human beings into its view supersedes any positive law which might conflict with the dictates of Natural Law.
On that basis, war criminals were hanged or imprisoned for life.
In Germany, it mattered not whether one actually dropped the gas tablets into the showers, or stood guard in the tower, or prepped the victims for their slaughter. Even today in 2012, those suspected of being camp guards are hunted down and put on trial.
It matters that much.
What Nuremberg tells us is that the human conscience is supreme over all positive law, that men and women in medicine are not inanimate vending machines who must respond mindlessly in the affirmative to all requests. That is the basis of conscience protections for health care workers.
Alarmingly, in medicine there are increasing voices who would take us back to a pre-Nuremberg world where the will reigns supreme over humble submission to universal law which respects universal human nature.
Blessedly, there were principled leaders who took on fascism in the middle of the last century in a conflict that claimed over 50 million human lives, and then charted a course in jurisprudence to help ensure that similar tragedies never befell humanity again. Twenty-five years later, the same US Supreme Court that sent Justice Jackson to preside at Nuremberg lost sight of its great contribution and enshrined in our law the principle that individual will trumps the rights of other human beings. Since then, over 53 million humans have lost their lives because of that decision.
Now we are faced with a series of Nurembergs, each struggling to assert the principle laid down so clearly, forcefully, and eloquently over 60 years ago in Germany.
Blessedly, we have principled leaders and warriors today in people like Matt Bowman of the Alliance Defense Fund, Nikolas Nikas and Dorinda Bordleee of the Bioethics Defense Fund, who speak frequently at medical and law schools about conscience rights, and brave medical professionals who are dedicated to upholding the highest estimation of humanity under the law.
To all of them, Thank You, and a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!
I count Nik Nikas and Dorinda Bordlee as personal friends, and they deserve all the kudos and support that they can get. Thank you for highlighting the good that these warriors do!
I once met a veteran who served in the “Screaming Eagles”/101st Air Borne,
and showed me personal photos he took of a concentration camp they
liberated. The photo had nurses lined up behind a long table, and I asked him
what it “meant.” He said they were the “medical team” that stabbed babies
that were born from the mating of SS officers to women to create the “perfect
race.”, and didn’t meet the racial requirements of the Nazi’s.
I said, ” your kidding me” and he said it was no joke, that the table I was looking at, was where
the babies were stabbed with a “SS dagger”. There was probably about 10 nurses in the photo I was looking at, and I asked what happen to them, to which he replied that they were executed “where the photo was taken.” I remember looking at the photo and thinking at first they were nurses that helped the 101st. They looked that normal in their medical garb. Who knows, the nurses might have only been following orders but the veteran had no doubt in his eyes he had done the right thing, when I asked him “what happen to them”.
Quite a story, and told to me by a man who was born on a Oklahoma reservation who served his nation as best as he could.
Here’s what doesn’t make sense to me.
A medical professional is actually required to protest and not assist in a medical procedure that will do harm and not good. No OBGYN will electively deliver a baby at 34 weeks (with the intent of a live birth). No ethical doctor will prescribe elective morphine. A nurse who saw a medication error not only should not administer the medicine, but should stand up to the doctor that issued it. Even if a drug or procedure is sometimes good, doctors will refuse to prescribe it to or perform it on a patient who feels they need it. Even if they need it for a medical reason, and other medical professionals think they ought to get it (I’ve been in that situation).
How then does a woman’s “right” to have her baby killed overrule the medical opinion of professionals who feel it is unnecessary and/or harmful? If I think I need a certain drug, and my doctor feels it’s not worth the risk, I don’t have any legal recourse except to sue, and unless the doctor is actually guilty of malpractice (rather than just having a different opinion) I’m likely to lose the suit. Saying abortion is immoral may make you a religious nut, but how can doctors or nurses who say elective abortion is harmful and not medically indicated, and carries risks without clear benefits, be prevented from exercising their medical opinion?