A Filipina Catholic nurse has filed a second civil lawsuit against Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and some members of its medical staff, charging that her conscience rights were violated when she was forced to assist in a late-term abortion, against her will and religion, or face charges of "insubordination and patient abandonment."
Lawyers for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) filed the lawsuit on April 29 before the New York Eastern District Court in Brooklyn on behalf of Catherina Lorena Cenzon-DeCarlo, alleging that the nurse's conscience rights under state law were violated by her forced participation in the non-emergency abortion in May 2009. ADF – an Arizona-based Christian legal alliance dedicated to defending religious liberty, sanctify of life, marriage and the family – said the hospital violation happened despite the fact that Cenzon-DeCarlo, 36, of Brooklyn, had notified the hospital of her religious objections to abortion before she was hired in 2004.
Cenzon-DeCarlo's uncle, the Most Rev. Carlito J. Cenzon, is the bishop of Baguio in northern Philippines.
Another civil lawsuit was earlier filed by ADF on behalf on Cenzon-DeCarlo on July 21, 2009, charging the same violation under federal law.
The complaint claims that despite her repeated objections, the Baguio City-born nurse and niece of a Catholic bishop was forced by hospital administrators to honor a last-minute summon and participate in the procedure "which dismembered a preborn child in the 22nd week of gestation."
Like a horror film
"It felt like a horror film unfolding," Cenzon-DeCarlo, an operating room nurse and mother of a two-year-old, said last year.
She claims she has had gruesome nightmares and hasn't been able to sleep since the May 24 incident.
"I felt violated and betrayed," said Cenzon-DeCarlo, who has sought therapy after she began suffering reportedly from nightmares, as well as insomnia and a breakdown in personal and religious relationships. "I couldn't believe that this could happen."
The nurse – a 1995 graduate of St. Louis University in Baguio – is described in court papers as having a reputation for a "high level of expertise" and competency in various medical disciplines. She was reportedly accustomed to assisting at similar procedures that followed a miscarriage.
"Pro-life nurses shouldn't be forced to assist in abortions against their beliefs," Matt Bowman, the defense fund's legal counsel, told the Catholic News Service (CNS) and published in the May 29, 2010 issue of The Tablet. "It is illegal, unethical and a violation of Cathy's rights of conscience as a devout Catholic. It was not only wrong, it was needless."
The Filipino Reporter first reported Cenzon-DeCarlo's complaint in its July 3-Aug. 6, 2009 issue.
Begged for replacement
The Filipina immigrant RN 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.
Her superiors reportedly told a weeping Cenzon-DeCarlo the abortion was necessary because the patient had preeclampsia, a condition marked by high blood pressure that can lead to seizures or death if left untreated, and that the nurse was needed to abort the baby.
The nurse said she knew such a condition can be treated without the necessity of an abortion, the suit says.
When Cenzon-DeCarlo was told the unborn child was alive, she immediately objected to Dr. Noel Strong, the resident assigned to the procedure. A series of calls to the nursing supervisor, Fran Carpo, and her supervisor, Ella Shapiro, followed, according to the suit. The orders came back from Carpo that the Filipina nurse must assist in the procedure, the suit says. Cenzon-DeCarlo reportedly repeated her longstanding objection and pleaded with Carpo to call other nurses instead.
Carpo said that Shapiro had insisted that Cenzon-DeCarlo assist on the procedure, and had prohibited Carpo from even trying to call other nurses as replacement. Carpo also said that "Dr. Silverstein had yelled at her over the phone in opposition to any delay in the case as a result of Cenzon-DeCarlo's request for accommodation," the court document explains.
Then the threats began, the suit says.
RN's financial losses
Aside from the emotional and psychological trauma, Cenzon-DeCarlo had been subject to financial losses because she is no longer scheduled for as many on-call assignments that supplement her income as she was before the abortion, the suit alleges.
Lawyers representing Mount Sinai Hospital last year asked U.S. District Chief Judge Raymond J. Dearie of Brooklyn to dismiss the lawsuit because the Church amendment – named for Sen. Frank Church and prohibiting entities receiving federal funds from discriminating against health care personnel who refuse to participate in sterilization or abortion procedures because of their religious beliefs or moral convictions – "does not grant individual litigants a private right of action."
In a brief responding to that claim, ADF attorneys said a federal court in 2008 " not only recognized an individual right but allowed the plaintiff (in that case an abortion supporter) to seek punitive damages."
"Mount Sinai's actions are a quintessential example of discriminating in employment and privileges on condition that Mrs. DeCarlo violate her objection to abortion," the brief said.
The twin lawsuits have wider implications for implementation of the new health reform law, which the U.S. Catholic bishops contend does not adequately protect conscience rights, according to The Tablet.
It could also affect a pending decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on whether to rescind conscience protection regulations put in place during the final days of President George W. Bush's presidency.
Cenzon-DeCarlo was an operating room nurse at The Medical City, the largest Philippine hospital located in Pasig City, before she moved to New York City in 2001 and started at Mount Sinai on the East Side also as an OR nurse in 2004. She still works there.
During her job interview, an administrator asked Cenzon-DeCarlo whether she'd be willing to participate in abortions and she flatly said no, Bowman said.
The nurse said she put her beliefs in writing.
"I emigrated to this country in the belief that here religious freedom is sacred," said Cenzon-DeCarlo, who also worked as a nurse at the Philippine National Red Cross and Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center. "Doctors and nurses shouldn't be forced to abandon their beliefs and participate in abortion in order to keep their jobs."
