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Should health-care workers be required to care for patients if they're morally opposed to the surgical procedure?
A group of 12 nurses in New Jersey is arguing they have the right to refuse to participate in caring for women getting abortions, based on religious or moral grounds.
The nurses have filed a lawsuit against the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, claiming the institution violated the law earlier this fall by announcing that nurses would have to help with abortion patients before and after the procedure, The Washington Post reports.
The newspaper notes that most states, including New Jersey, have had laws for decades that protect health-care workers who have moral objections to participating in abortions. Federal laws also require that government-funded facilities allow workers to refuse on ethical grounds.
A lawyer representing the nurses told The Washington Post these laws also protect workers from being involved before and after an abortion.
"All these nurses are asking is that they not have to assist in any part of an abortion case," attorney Matt Bowman said.
Beryl Otieno-Negoje, one of the nurses involved in the lawsuit, explained it this way: "I'm a nurse so I can help people, not help kill, and it just doesn't seem right to me. No health professional should be forced to choose between assisting abortion or being penalized at work."
For its part, the University Hospital says it is in full compliance with the law, and that no nurse is required to have any direct involvement or be present in the room during a procedure that is against his or her values or beliefs.
"The pre- and post-operative care provided to these patients is the same nature as that provided to patients who have undergone other surgical procedures," Edward Deutsch, a lawyer for the hospital, said in an e-mail.
According to The Star-Ledger, the case raises the question of how to define assisting in an abortion. Nurses could be considered assisting, for example, even if they take down a name or walk a patient to the door, lawyer Demetrios Stratis told the newspaper.
"If they did that, they'd be helping to make it happen," Mr. Stratis said.
Up to what point should health-care workers be allowed to refuse involvement?
Wency Leung