Radio Recap: ACLJ Exposes Forced Abortion Coercion at Taxpayer Funded Hospital

By 

Jay Sekulow

|
August 28, 2019

3 min read

Pro Life

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In breaking news, the ACLJ has exposed forced abortion participating at the University of Vermont, a taxpayer supported institution.

On today’s show, we discussed an unprecedented win for life and pro-life healthcare professionals against the University of Vermont for forcing pro-life nurses to participate in abortions.

On May 9th, we filed a complaint for discrimination against the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMMC) on behalf of our client, a nurse, who was forced to participate in an abortion, in violation of her conscience rights.

Our client was made to feel she would lose her job if she didn’t agree to go ahead and assist on the procedure.

As I said in an official statement regarding the case:

“In the more than two decades of work that ACLJ has done to defend the rights of conscience of pro-life health care workers, this is by far the most outrageous case we’ve ever seen. Our client’s most fundamental beliefs about the sanctity of life were simply brushed aside.

“Worse, her superiors deliberately misled her into thinking she was assisting in a procedure following a miscarriage. But once trapped inside the OR she discovered that it was, in fact, an elective abortion and that this had been known all along by her superiors who then callously refused to relieve her. To say that she was emotionally traumatized by this event is putting it mildly.”

Today, this morning, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued an order in our favor against the University which could cost it $500,000 a year in federal funding. It is compelling coerced forced abortion procedures involving nurses who objected on religious and moral grounds, which those pro-life professionals are well within their rights to do without consequence.

The school was fully aware that healthcare professionals did not have to participate in abortions. It was their right to say no based on their moral objections. But they forced our client to participate anyway, waiting until she stepped into the operating room to even tell her what the procedure was, and seemingly holding her job over her head if she didn’t participate.

As our Senior Counsel CeCe Heil pointed out, these weren’t emergency abortions where they needed any nurse available to assist immediately. These were elective abortions. The UVMMC staff had plenty of time to find another nurse who had not personal objections. In fact, when she walked into that operating room, the doctor reportedly said to our client, “Don’t hate me.”

Everyone involved knew what was being done to this nurse. As the specific finding by HHS shows, this is clear biased discrimination against a pro-life professional because of her beliefs. This was done intentionally. They wanted to force a pro-life nurse to participate in an abortion.

With this decision from the HHS, the school’s actions may now strip it of a half-million dollars in federal funding every year.  

You can listen to the entire episode here.