Forcing Nurses to Participate in Abortions

In Wisconsin, it was the first right-to-law passed after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision — conscience rights. Our Wisconsin law, and subsequent federal law, protects medical professionals and facilities who do not want to participate in or provide abortions. Now, conscience rights are under siege as pro-abortion groups work to make abortion “mainstream” and force the participation of medical personnel.

Conscience rights are under fire within the Obama administration, with mandates to force Catholic entities to provide contraceptives and sterilization. This blog reported last week on the Catholic Church losing a major grant from the Obama administration to assist victims of sex trafficking because the Church refuses to do abortion referrals.

Now, a nurse, Lorna Jose Mendoza, who works in a New Jersey hospital, is suing the hospital because it wants to force her to participate in abortions. The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) filed on behalf of Mendoza and 12 nurses who have encountered threats to their jobs because of a policy change which requires them to participate in abortions even if they have religious or moral objections.

ADF attorney Matt Bowman said the policy change came “out of the blue.” Bowman told Fox News that the hospital has been performing abortions for decades but did not previously require that nurses participate. In October, according to ADF, the hospital imposed the new policy on nurses “and repeatedly threatened that they must assist abortions or be terminated.”

“When one nurse objected to assisting abortions on the grounds of her religious beliefs, a supervisor responded that UMDNG has ‘no regard for religious beliefs’ of nurses who object to participating in abortions.”

A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order against the hospital, prohibiting it from forcing the 12 nurses to participate in training to do abortions and actually participating in performing them.

It is not enough that abortions are performed for virtually any reason at any stage of pregnancy. Now pro-abortion groups want to force us to participate.

Barbara Lyons