Church Law Issues

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.