{"id":209557,"date":"2019-08-28T13:40:27","date_gmt":"2019-08-28T18:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=209557"},"modified":"2019-08-29T12:57:08","modified_gmt":"2019-08-29T17:57:08","slug":"trump-admin-hospitals-cant-force-employees-abortions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/trump-admin-hospitals-cant-force-employees-abortions\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump admin: Hospitals can’t force employees to assist with abortions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In a press release<\/a> today, the Trump administration’s Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it is sending a Notice of Violation letter to the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMMC), a hospital which received $1.6M in federal funds over three years, for forcing objecting employees to assist with elective abortions against their will. This violates the Church Amendments<\/a> protecting the conscience rights of healthcare workers. The amendments, passed in the 1970s, protect workers from participating in abortion or sterilization procedures ” if doing so would be contrary to the provider\u2019s religious beliefs or moral convictions.”<\/p>\n

According to the Office of Civil Rights, a nurse was forced to participate in an elective abortion — having to choose between keeping her job or following her conscience. She is said to have been “haunted ever since” this incident, in which she showed up to assist with what she believed was a post-miscarriage D&C procedure, only to find that the doctor in the room was an abortionist. Upon the nurse entering the room, the abortionist allegedly remarked, “Don’t hate me.” The nurse’s objection to participate in anything abortion-related had long been known. The Office of Civil Rights noted in a conference call that the D&C was not an emergency situation, and “other staff was available.” Yet, the nurse was forced to participate or lose her job.<\/p>\n

UVMMC had, apparently unbeknownst to many of its staff, begun offering elective abortions on site in 2017. According to the press release, “OCR… found that UVMMC has discriminatory policies that assign or require employees to assist abortion procedures even after they have recorded their religious or moral objections to assisting in the performance of such abortions.” These policies are not in compliance with federal statutes, and the OCR says its main goal is to bring UVMMC into compliance. “… Part of compliance is to make sure the injury is remediated\u2026. Nobody should be put in that position,” OCR’s Roger Severino stated in a conference call.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Trump HHS releases stronger conscience protections for healthcare workers<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n