Should Nurses be forced, help Abortions? (1 views)
From:  David (DavidABrown)    7/6/2001 9:49 am  
To:  ALL    
 
  109.1  
 
From: The Pro-Life Infonet www.prolifeinfo.org 
Reply-To: Steven Ertelt infonet@prolifeinfo.org 
Subject: Canadian Nurses Want Pro-Life Conscience Clause 
Source: Ottawa Citizen; July 1, 2001 
Canadian Nurses Want Pro-Life Conscience Clause 

Ottawa, Canada -- Alice will never forget that sick feeling in the pit of 
her stomach. It happened every time she arrived at her nursing job at an 
Ottawa hospital and discovered she had been assigned to assist at an 
abortion. 

"I felt, oh, this is yucky," she recalls. "I thought, I really don't want 
to face this. I wish I was working nights and maybe I wouldn't have to 
face it." 

Alice, not her real name, is a pro-life nurse and the mother of two 
toddlers. To this day, she counts her lucky stars she was always able to 
get someone else to handle her abortion assignments. 

"I never had to go to the manager or quit or threaten to call the union," 
she says. 

But many of her pro-life colleagues in Ottawa and elsewhere in Canada are 
not so fortunate, according to Mary-Lynn McPherson, national co-ordinator 
of Canadian Nurses for Life. They live in fear of being fired or demoted 
for refusing to assist on so-called therapeutic abortions or silently 
suffer and do the work because they cannot afford to quit, she said. 

Alice's refusal to be identified for this story illustrates the 
sensitivity of the subject. 

Although she is no longer working as an obstetric nurse, she does not want 
to be branded as a troublemaker for fear she won't be able to get another 
job in her preferred field as a labour and delivery nurse. 

Indeed, attempts to win guarantees in provincial or federal law that 
nurses won't be forced against their will to participate in abortions have 
gone nowhere. Among them is a 1999 federal private member's bill sponsored 
by Saskatchewan Alliance MP Maurice Vellacott, that has been languishing 
in parliamentary limbo without having come to a vote in the Commons. 

Mr. Vellacott says he's keeping his fingers crossed the bill gets drawn 
for debate and a vote when Parliament resumes in September because the 
issue of "freedom of conscience" for health workers is becoming more 
urgent in the face of burgeoning and controversial technologies for 
assisting human reproduction. 

His bill also covers acts of euthanasia. 

Mr. Vellacott is convinced the bill, opposed by the Chretien government, 
would be approved if it was put to a free vote. The government argues the 
regulation of health-care professions and the development of employment 
standards for health-care professionals are areas of provincial 
jurisdiction. 

Mr. Vellacott's bill calls for amendments to the Criminal Code to protect 
the "rights of health-care practitioners and other persons to refuse, 
without fear of reprisal or other discriminatory coercion, to participate 
in medical procedures that offend a tenet of their religion, or their 
belief that human life is inviolable." 

Ms. McPherson says the dilemma faced by pro-life nurses is more common 
than most people think, and the country needs federal legislation to 
ensure equal protections across the country. 

She said nurses who balk at assisting at abortions are left in a bind on 
the job. 

"Nurses are not only intimidated by co-workers who get angry with them 
because they won't do their 'fair share.' But they also are certainly 
intimidated by bosses who tell them they are not team players." 

Barb Wahl, president of the Ontario Nurses Association, says the union 
treats it as a "human rights issue" and operates on the principle the 
employer is obliged to accommodate nurses by rearranging the assignments, 
or transferring them to different wards or facilities. 

Ms. Wahl said the ONA, which represents 45,000 nurses, handles the issue 
on a case-by-case basis. She described that route as satisfactory but said 
she personally thinks establishing a right to refuse in law would make 
life easier for nurses. 

"They could say, 'It's against the law. You can't make me. End of story,'" 
Ms. Wahl said. "That would be a good thing." 

Ms. McPherson, who has been active in Nurses for Life for more than a 
decade, says hospital amalgamations and restructuring plans have made it 
harder in some cases for pro-life nurses to avoid being tapped for 
so-called therapeutic abortions of unborn children beyond 12 weeks. They 
are done because the unborn child is supposedly deformed or suffering from 
Down's syndrome or other congenital disorders. 

"Nowadays if you work in the birthing area, they rotate the nurses," said 
Ms. McPherson, a psychiatric nurse at the Royal Ottawa Hospital. "So you 
could be working one day delivering babies and the next day be involved in 
killing them," she said. 

Alice says she opposes abortion at any stage and for any reason, although 
she stresses she has no problem providing post-abortion care to the women. 

"I believe personhood begins at conception and that I have two patients, 
the mother and the baby," she says. "No matter if the baby has a 
deformity, it's still a person." 

Wendy Nicklin, vice-president of nursing at the Ottawa Hospital, said the 
College of Nurses of Ontario, which sets standards for the profession, has 
provided a good ethical framework for nurses and their employers. 

The framework says that if an assignment conflicts with a nurse's personal 
values, and he or she believes they cannot provide care, the nurse needs 
to "arrange for another caregiver and withdraw from the situation." If no 
other caregiver can be arranged, the nurse must provide the immediate 
care. 

Ms. Nicklin says genuine attempts are made to ensure nurses are not hired 
for jobs that risk involving them in procedures that violate their 
beliefs. But she said flexibility in dealing with the issue once they are 
hired often depends on whether the staff is large enough to work around 
the problem. 

Marilyn Wilson, executive director of Canadian Abortion Rights Action 
League, says the pro-abortion organization views such "conscience" 
legislation as a a slice of the wider pro-life campaign to ban abortion. 

Ms. Wilson says CARAL doesn't oppose the right of nurses to reject 
participating in some procedures but it opposes carving that right in law. 

-- 
Pregnancy Centers Online 
www.pregnancycenters.org 





David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
 
From:  Zebra30   7/6/2001 1:39 pm  
To:  David (DavidABrown)    (2 of 4)  
 
  109.2 in reply to 109.1  
 
Definitely not!! Because that's asking her or him, who's job is to help heal, to become an assistant to a serial killer which (to my way of thinking) is what an abortionist really is. He is not a doctor or healer but a "reapectable" murderer! 
  
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  From:  David (DavidABrown)    7/6/2001 10:15 pm  
To:  Zebra30   (3 of 4)  
 
  109.3 in reply to 109.2  
 
Hi Zebra, 
I agree!!! 
I think this is a great topic to stand up for. The rights of Nurses to perform their chosen Life sustaining duties and not to be forced to do things they find Morally & Spiritually objectionable. 

I hope to see much more on this topic. 






David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
 
  
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   From:  David (DavidABrown)    6/22/2002 1:42 am  
To:  ALL   (4 of 4)  
 
  109.4 in reply to 109.1  
 
From :    
"Jay Alan Sekulow, Chief Counsel" jaysekulow@aclj.net  

Subject :    
ACLJ Update: Victory in court preserves YOUR religious liberties!  
   
Date :    
Fri, 21 Jun 2002 18:16:07 GMT  


With your help, we went into court to defend a health care worker who had been
fired because she refused to dispense "abortion pills" - commonly known as
"morning after" pills.

A U.S. district court jury agreed with our argument that the conscience of a
worker must be respected by the employer under the First Amendment to the
Constitution.

This means pro-life doctors, nurses, and medical workers will be bolder in
refusing to participate in abortions.  Babies' lives will be saved.  And THE
RIGHT TO STAND UP FOR LIFE HAS BEEN PROTECTED!

Your prayers and gifts made this important ruling possible - thank you!



David A. Brown
Basic Christian: Forum
 
  
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