This is pretty darn awful and disturbing and yet another example how necessary conscience clauses are for healthcare workers. With this upcoming debate on healthcare be assured that there will be a thorough going over of conscience clauses.

Remember, to the left abortion is a right. And your religion can’t preclude others from exercising their rights. Your religion can’t prevent some from having free speech or the right to assemble. They see abortion as the same thing. If they have their way, stories of health care workers being ordered to perform abortions will be an everyday occurence..

The New York Post reports that a Catholic nurse from Brooklyn, New York is claiming that the hospital where she’s employed ordered her to assist in a late term abortion or be fired.

Now there is curently a conscience clause which exists already but I guess there’s an out clause if the patient’s life is in jeopardy. The hospital allegedly told the nurse that the mother’s life was in danger and it would appear now that it was not, according to a lawsuit filed by the nurse.:

“It felt like a horror film unfolding,” said Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, 35, who claims she has had gruesome nightmares and hasn’t been able to sleep since the May 24 incident.

The married mother of a year-old baby was 30 minutes into her early-morning shift when she realized she had been assigned to an abortion. She begged her supervisor to find a replacement nurse for the procedure. The hospital had a six-hour window to find a fill-in, the suit says.

Bosses told the weeping Cenzon-DeCarlo the patient was 22 weeks into her pregnancy and had preeclampsia, a condition marked by high blood pressure that can lead to seizures or death if left untreated.

The supervisor “claimed that the mother could die if [Cenzon-DeCarlo] did not assist in the abortion.”

But the nurse, the niece of a Filipino bishop, contends that the patient’s life was not in danger. She argued that the patient was not even on magnesium therapy, a common treatment for preeclampsia, and did not have problems indicating an emergency.

Her pleas were rejected, and instead she was threatened with career-ending charges of insubordination and patient abandonment, according to the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court.

Feeling threatened, Cenzon-DeCarlo assisted in the procedure.

She said she later learned that the hospital’s own records deemed the procedure “Category II,” which is not considered immediately life threatening.

“I felt violated and betrayed,” she recalled. “I couldn’t believe that this could happen…”

The day after the procedure, Cenzon-DeCarlo filed a grievance with her union. Later that week, she was cornered by two supervisors who told her if she wanted any more overtime shifts, she would have to sign a statement agreeing to participate in abortions, the suit says.

The next month, Cenzon-DeCarlo was assigned to one overtime shift, rather than the eight or nine she usually received, the suit claims.

Although the Brooklyn resident is still working at Mount Sinai, she’s asking a court to order the hospital to pay unspecified damages, restore her shifts and respect her objections to abortion.

Pray for all involved. Slightly more awful from a hospital called “Mount Sinai” named for the mountain where God gave Moses a list of commandments which included “Thou Shall Not Kill.”

As usual Pundette sums it up better than I could:

In a country where it’s acceptable for a mother to ask a doctor to dismember the baby she’s been carrying for 5 months, why would one expect anything, including religious freedom, to be sacred?

OSV has more.