Hospital Restricts Nurses' Freedom of Conscience
Markham-Stoufville, Ontario, Canada
(1993-1998)
The Interim, June, 1993
Reproduced with permission
In a column in the May issue of Thornhill Month, John Stephens asked, "Must it
be a matter of either job or conscience?" Until now, he wrote, the Birthplace
Unit at the Markham-Stoufville Hospital has been used as the name implies. Now,
nurses in the unit who abhor abortions are being told either to assist at these procedures
or accept transfer to another department. "For nurses who have developed great
skill at the birthing process," Stephens pointed out, "this means giving up the
job they love, and losing the opportunity to practise their expertise. In other
circles, this would be called wrongful dismissal."
What is worse, Stephens added, the hospital is being deceptive. It is asking nurses
whether they will consent to look after patients using a new definition of obstetrics it
has prepared. At first sight, the document seems inoffensive: who could object to
looking after a woman who will deliver a healthy child, or who has gone through a
spontaneous abortion, or whose child is stillborn? "What the hospital won't
tell you," says Stephens, "is that the spontaneous abortion wasn't, perhaps, so
spontaneous, and that if the fetus should be born alive, the doctors will allow it to
die. Likewise, the diagnosis of stillbirth hides the fact that a doctor may have
caused the death of the fetus. This is abortion."
A person cannot be fired for refusing to work on Sunday if his or her religion prohibits
it, but a nurse can apparently be fired or transferred because she will not assist at what
her religion tells her is the murder of a child. If the province can spend millions
of dollars setting up abortion clinics, Stephens said, it can well afford to hire nurses
prepared to take part in abortions, rather than forcing others to go against their
consciences. It does not have to force abortions on birthing units either. And
if hospitals pride themselves on being responsive to the community, this one should make
plain how the recent decision was made and why the nurses are under such compulsion.
Some of the comments included in the Badgley Report (1977) brought or a number of reasons,
apart from religion, why nurses do not want to participate in abortions. Some of
these comments were fairly brief: "Personally I dislike assisting in abortions
because it is uncomfortable for me to remove parts of a so-called 'torn up foetus'"
"I have been involved in operations where a foetus has moved. I find this
distressful and feel no government has a right to inflict this treatment or moral
responsibility on an individual."
One longer submission made the very telling point that, when a doctor has given a pregnant
woman a saline injection, it is usually or at least very often the nurse who has to take
care of the extremely unpleasant consequences:
"I feel as if my rights were transgressed - a doctor can refuse to abort any patient
he wishes - I'm forced to nurse- and deliver - the patients having abortion.
Recently one of the doctors was present and helped deliver a foetus following a saline
induced abortion - he now says he'll not do any more saline injections - I'm not permitted
to make this choice - The death on our unit following a therapeutic abortion was very
stressful to the staff (patient 18 years) and even now, four years later, that patient is
still remembered."
. . . Does her freedom of conscience not matter at all? For years Nurses for Life,
led by Peggy Madill and Helen McGee, has tried to secure the passage of a conscience
clause - such as exists in New Zealand, Great Britain, and many states of the U.S.A. -
which would enable health professionals to refuse to participate in abortions and not be
penalized for doing so. The Liberal government argued in 1969 that it was
self-evident that no one would be forced to participate in abortions and therefore a
conscience clause was unnecessary. As Father Alphonse de Valk pointed out in his Morality
and Law in Canadian Politics, since 1969 there has been a serious decline of tolerance
concerning the freedom not to perform abortions. Most nurses find the
destruction of life the very opposite of what they believe. But the pro-abortionists
count on them gradually becoming "enlightened" and conditioned. So a
conscience clause is becoming ever more necessary. Such callous treatment of nurses
as is going on at the Markham-Stoufville Hospital is completely wrong.
"I firmly hope these nurses will appeal to the Ontario Human Rights Commission,"
wrote John Stephens, "because the hospital has blatantly discriminated against
them." Whether they will feel satisfied to trust their case to the tender
mercies of the Commission is open to question. At any rate, they have been forced to
become involved in a most disagreeable conflict with the hospital authorities and to go
to the expense of employing legal counsel. Largely because of
pressure from two pro-abortion doctors, they feel that their own respect for human life is
being dismissed as unimportant, and that there is a steady downward descent in working
conditions at the hospital. No doubt this is a situation which the provincial
government is glad to encourage.
So much for "pro-choice".
"Must it be a matter of either job or conscience?" Stephens asks. Why
should it be. Is there no sense of justice left in Canada?