ABSTRACT
An operating room nurse arrives at her weekend call shift. It is morning at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, and Cathy DeCarlo comes to her assignment desk just as she has countless times in her five years at the hospital. But this morning is different. Cathy is assigned to circulate in a room where a twenty-two-week “D&E” dismemberment abortion will be performed on a live baby. Cathy promptly calls for clarification, noting that the hospital has known her religious objection in writing based on her Catholic faith since the day she was hired. The pregnant mother is diagnosed with preeclampsia, but the hospital did not designate the case as requiring immediate surgery, and the patient is not on magnesium therapy. The patient later presents in the operating room in a stable condition with blood pressure that is not near crisis level. Cathy’s supervisor, who is willing to participate in such procedures, is available to assist. And Mount Sinai, one of the top ranked medical centers in the United States, receives hundreds of millions of federal health dollars every year, which require the hospital not to discriminate against employees who choose not to assist abortions if it would violate their religious beliefs. Yet despite Cathy’s tearful pleas, her supervisors tell her she must immediately assist in the late-term abortion or she will be charged with insubordination and patient abandonment, threatening her job and her nursing license.
