I previously posted about the latest rash of scandalous photos coming out of Afghanistan showing U.S. military atrocities under Obama’s command, and wondering if the media would pick up on it the way they did when it was Bush’s army… Well, here’s a twist I wasn’t expecting: yes, one of the U.S. media, Rolling Stone, [...]
Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for the Atlantic, cast a spotlight on yet another disgustingly overt example of pure bias in the mainstream media, particularly at the anti-Semitic Reuters newswire. He points to a Reuters news item which contains the following despicable sentences: Police said it was a “terrorist attack” — Israel’s term for a Palestinian [...]
In the [sparse] reporting of the Palestinians’ massacre of the Fogel family, several newspapers stand out with their distorted sense of “balance”, i.e., where they feel overwhelmingly uncomfortable describing the barbarity of the Palestinians without at least taking a swipe or two at the Israelis, no matter how patently irrelevant or disgustingly disrespectful it comes [...]
Conscientious-Objecting Nurse Coerced Into Aiding Abortion
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In a sickening sign of the times, Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, a nurse at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, was coerced into aiding an abortion, despite her stated religious objection to it. This flies in the face of the federal “conscience clause” that protects medical workers in exactly such cases by requiring institutions receiving federal funding to prove that they respect this right of their employees.
Bush was famous for his strong support of this clause and his tough enforcement of it. Obama, on the other hand, is famous for his enmity toward this right, and his desire to do away with this clause is no big secret. That notwithstanding, it still remains in effect, and the Department of Health and Human Services asserted in an April report that “providers will continue to be protected . . . by existing conscience-clause statutes.”
However, as this case illustrates, it’s apparent that in these times with Obama now at the helm, the institutions don’t feel as pressured to follow the law and respect such rights, much to the horror of persecuted workers like Cenzon-DeCarlo.
I use the word “horror” intentionally, as this was her own choice of word as well. As the New York Post reports:
“It felt like a horror film unfolding,” said Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, 35, who claims she has had gruesome nightmares and hasn’t been able to sleep since the May 24 incident.
The married mother of a year-old baby 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. . .
Her pleas were rejected, and instead she was threatened with career-ending charges of insubordination and patient abandonment, according to the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court.
Feeling threatened, Cenzon-DeCarlo assisted in the procedure. . .
“I felt violated and betrayed,” she recalled. “I couldn’t believe that this could happen.”
A native of the Philippines, Cenzon-DeCarlo moved to New York in 2001 and started at Mount Sinai on the East Side as an operating-room nurse in 2004. During her job interview, an administrator asked Cenzon-DeCarlo whether she’d be willing to participate in abortions. She flatly said no.
The nurse said she put her beliefs in writing.
The day after the procedure, Cenzon-DeCarlo filed a grievance with her union. Later that week, she was cornered by two supervisors who told her if she wanted any more overtime shifts, she would have to sign a statement agreeing to participate in abortions, the suit says.
The next month, Cenzon-DeCarlo was assigned to one overtime shift, rather than the eight or nine she usually received, the suit claims.