Accommodating conscience
This article originally appeared in the
BC
Catholic.
Reproduced with permission.
They remain anxious, but Canadian nurses seem to have their right to
conscientious objection worked out, for the most part.
The nurses’ code of ethics and their collective agreements recognize their
right to withdraw from giving care that offends their morality, as long as
the patients they tend are placed in others’ care.
What’s more, when they apply for work, nurses have the opportunity to state
which medical practices offend their morality or religious convictions,
allowing management to hire and staff accordingly.
However, a recent contract cancellation at B.C. Women’s Hospital, as well as
developments in other provinces, raises doubt as to whether nurses do in fact
enjoy unfettered freedoms of conscience and religion.
Nurses get apprehensive when asked whether they do. They’re cautious when it
comes to sharing information, whether about themselves or colleagues. In the
course of this report, several backed away from interviews they’d previously
committed to, ultimately making it difficult to determine how much of their
fearfulness is due to rumour or innuendo, and how much is fear of the
consequences of being a whistle blower.
Barb Pesut, director of nursing at evangelical Trinity Western University in
Langley, said she has never seen a nurse’s freedoms of conscience and
religion violated during her career.
“This is not to say,” she continued, “that there is no moral distress in
nursing, because there is, but most of it doesn’t surround the biggies such
as abortion.”
Abortion is a practice that nurses can avoid by working in other areas, and
nurses who can’t cope with death and dying avoid hospice care.
B.C. Nurses Union acting president Andy Wiebe told The B.C. Catholic that
her union recognizes its members’ freedoms of religion and conscience and
has in fact supported members facing discipline for conscientious objection.
Citing confidentiality, she refused to provide documentation.
However, Wiebe admitted that conscientious objectors in the province’s more
remote hospitals might have a harder time because it’s often difficult to
find replacement staff in small towns.
Under the current agreement, nurses in conflict need only contact their
union steward, who then notifies management. If the grievance can’t be
settled, labour relations staff get involved.
The quality of help the union gives its members is not dependent on the
morality of its stewards, Wiebe said. If, for example, a nurse were being
disciplined for refusing to do abortions, a union
steward who is pro-abortion would refer her to a more sympathetic steward.
“Under the labour code, we are bound to provide services that are not
discriminatory. If there’s a conflict, the steward will declare herself in
conflict and another steward will step in.”
Pesut and Weibe both pointed out that most grievances have nothing to do
with conscientious objection, but rather with safety or working conditions.
When it comes to discussing conscientious
objection, however, the nursing profession tends toward silence.
Nurses who were contacted made a point of explaining that they work in a
specialty posing no ethical dilemmas. Some simply didn’t return phone calls,
while others avoided direct questions by referring to situations experienced
by nurses in Ontario, or at Calgary’s Foothills Hospital, or the janitorial
company that lost its cleaning contract recently with B.C. Women’s Hospital
in Vancouver.
Similarly, nursing management tend to claim that freedom of conscience
conflicts arise because nurses don’t reveal their objector status when they
are being hired.
In the publicized cases, however, ineffectual management seems to have been
as much a factor in the disputes as was nurses who don’t reveal their
objector status.
Cecilia von Dehn, a well known pro-life nurse, was but marginally involved
in a company that lost its cleaning contract at B.C. Women’s Hospital in
Vancouver. Hospital management cited the retired nurse’s well publicized
pro-life work and her ownership of less than five per cent of the company,
which is controlled by her husband, Ulf von Dehn, as sufficient reason to
cancel the contract out of ostensible concerns for security.
No other pro-life staff have been fired from the hospital, however, and to
date, numerous talented pro-life medical students, nurses, doctors, and
researchers remain at work at the hospital.
The Hospital Employees Union played a role in the cancellation of the
company’s contract, and the cleaning company is suing the union for
defamation.
The situation was different at Foothills Hospital in Calgary, where
management decided to move late-term abortions into the maternity ward,
telling delivery nurses they had to assist in them. These drug-induced “still births” often result in live births. If the
doctors who are supposed to deliver the aborted babies are late, nurses have
to deliver them; and if they’re born alive, they
can survive for extended periods, requiring comforting; however, no feeding
or other medical care is given.
The nurses, who were Baptist, Canadian Reformed, Pentecostal, Missionary,
and Alliance, as well as Catholic, complained to Alberta Report
newsmagazine, claiming that management had given them no choice in the
matter.
One nurse was quoted as saying, “These are not little lima beans with feet.
These so-called genetic terminations are babies. If you were holding their
heads in the palm of your hand, their little feet
would reach your elbow. We’re crossing the line.”
In Ontario, after a re-organization, management ordered very experienced
obstetric and neo-natal nurses at Markham-Stoufville Hospital to assist in
abortions. Again, no choice was offered. Eight
nurses filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
Five years later, in 1999, the hospital reached an out-of-court settlement,
agreeing that nurses may opt out of doing abortions and that it is up to the
hospital, not the dissenting nurses, to find
replacements for themselves.
In Thunder Bay, Ont., in 1997, Bishop Frederick Henry spoke out for
operating nurses who transferred from St. Joseph’s Catholic Hospital to
Thunder Bay Regional, where they were required to do abortions.
Management claimed that the nurses knew that they would be required to
assist in abortions, but Bishop Henry pointed out that management’s wording
of the Letter of Understanding was ambiguous: the nurses interpreted it to
mean that every effort to accommodate conscientious objectors would be made,
while management claimed it meant nurses could be required to do abortions.
“Don’t they care about the moral principles of their employees?” asked
Bishop Henry in a letter to the editor. “Are they anti-Catholic?”
Sean Murphy of the Protection of Conscience Project pointed out that
management reacted sympathetically to a nurse who was emotionally and
physically sickened when exposed to abortions,
but ignored two others who objected for moral reasons. They had no
confidence in management to hear their concerns, so they complained to
Bishop Henry, who made their concerns known to the hospital administrators.