Church Law Issues

In South Dakota, Judge Karen Schreier upheld the South Dakota law that requires women wanting an abortion be told that abortion will end a human life.  Planned Parenthood had filed the lawsuit seeking to have the law declared unlawful.

The ruling has some important implications, not the least of which is this: If abortion kills a human life, at what point does it become murder?  (For an interesting perspective on that issue, see this piece.)

The judge took the position of the state, ruling that doctors must make the disclosure “…that the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” Judge Schreier added that doctors can provide more information than the language in the statute.

She did strike one portion of the statute by ruling  that pregnant women do not need to be told abortion increases the likelihood of suicide,  or that they have an existing relationship with the fetus.

Planned Parenthood runs  South Dakota’s only abortion clinic, which is in Sioux Falls.

It remains to be seen whether either side will appeal.

It is interesting that the law can conclude that an abortion will clearly end the life of a viable human, but Planned Parenthood is willing to argue for death of human life at the will and whim of a would-be mother, with complete disregard for the fact that a life will definitely be ended.

Surely, if someone came in and ripped out the germinated seeds planted in the garden or farm of a Planned Parenthood leader, in the subsequent lawsuit, they’d sue for loss of the crop they would have gotten. Wouldn’t they?

(Opps…I forgot. Their reasoning is different than normal humans. They would probably stick with their position, to wit, it isn’t really a plant. After all, a germinated seed is just that, nothing more. After all, those seeds  hadn’t really popped through the earth yet.)

In the New York Eastern District Federal Court,  a complaint (lawsuit) was filed by a nurse at The Mount Sinai Hospital. In her complaint, Mrs. DeCarlo alleges, in part, the following (taken from the actual complaint):

“1. This action seeks injunctive and declaratory relief on behalf of CATHERINA
LORENA CENZON-DECARLO (herein “MRS. DECARLO”), a nurse who in May 2009 was
forced by Defendant THE MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL (“Mount Sinai”), to assist in the abortion
of a 22-week-old preborn child despite her longstanding religious objection to participating in
lethal abortions. Mount Sinai blatantly violated federal law by threatening Mrs. DeCarlo’s job
and nursing license unless she would assist in the late-term abortion. Then when Mrs. DeCarlo
tried to use appropriate channels to seek to have her rights of conscience respected, Mount Sinai
condoned the compulsion it had exerted against Mrs. DeCarlo in May, declared that she could
again be subject to such a mandate at Mount Sinai’s arbitrary discretion, and even resorted to
retaliation and brash bullying tactics to get Mrs. DeCarlo to abandon her rights.

2. Mrs. DeCarlo asks the Court to order Mount Sinai to refrain from mandating
employees to assist in abortion over their conscientious objection. Pursuant to the Church
Amendment, 42 U.S.C. § 300a7(c), which protects the right of conscience of pro-life health care
workers employed by recipients of federal Health and Human Services funding, Mrs. DeCarlo
also seeks an order requiring Mount Sinai to disgorge an appropriate portion of the millions of
dollars in federal funding it has received in the last several years, and ordering that the hospital
be disqualified from receiving additional funding unless and until it demonstrates compliance
with the Church Amendment.”

It should prove to be an interesting lawsuit. Here, a hospital has pretty much told a worker that she must violate her conscience by doing what, in her mind, amounts to murder. Incredible. Worse, somehow the mindset of much of the public has grown such that across our nation, thousands of bureaucrats running hospitals seem to believe that they can order an employee to do an abortion, in spite of their opposition to abortion.

Hopefully, she will prevail.