Nurse is threatened with job termination due to prolife beliefs

Not to put too fine a point on it, but she isn't threatened with job termination because of her beliefs, but because of her actions. She refuses to dispense the medication. Sadly, most people must do things that go against their beliefs in order to make a living.

Let's consider what is really at issue here: religious beliefs versus fulfilling her job description. If religious belief can allow her to keep her job without performing all of her required tasks, what follows? Would a christian scientist who acted *only* on her beliefs be allowed to keep her job as a nurse, even if she refused to administer *any* medication?

  I look at it this way: If she doesn't give me the medicine I was proscribed, then she is interfering with my health care.

   Which means she's forcing her religious beliefs on me. After all, if I had a moral, ethical or religious problem with the medication, I would have chosen myself to not take it. Instead, I have someone else trying to make religious choices for me.

   That's annoying. If she can't do her job, she needs to look for another job. I'm all for reasonable allowances for religion and personal beliefs on the job, but if you refuse to do part of the duties you are being paid for, you shouldn't get paid.

 

Ms. Day is correct in believing that life begins at fertilization. Any scientist who studies any form of biology also knows that is when life starts. The people who are in the wrong there are the people who would advocate post-fertilization birth control, which is murder. If birth control is to be used, it should be before pregnancy, not at any time after a child has already been conceived. If that institute is allowed to push Ms.Day out of her job then that will make it that much easier for any institution to get rid of anyone else who doesn't believe in killing womb-dependent children.

Eventually, the morals of society will progress to the point where such killing of womb-dependent children for profit or convenience will be outlawed and society will be ashamed of that part of their past. But that won't happen until we have people of high moral standards in the high courts and in government.

Originally posted by Miss Shelby
If I was employed at this clinic, it wouldn't be enough for me personally not to distribute the meds,  I would have a huge problem working at a place that did.(whether I passed out the meds or not)  I'd be looking for another job.

I'm not saying she is wrong in wanting to keep her job and I admire the fact that she won't distribute the medication, I just think I'd be convicted about working there.  Am I alone on that? 

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I couldn't work there either, for the same reason you stated.  I couldn't bear to work in a place knowing murder (by the standards I have adopted) is taking place in the same building every day.  I also couldn't bear to receive that 'blood money' as a wage, even if I refused to do the work myself.

To be sure, it's a difficult test she's been given.  Her priorities are being challenged.  How important is your faith?  Is it more or less important than your wage?  There will be consequences for her answers, either way she decides.

This pro-life nurse is faced with quite an interesting dilemma.  A friend of mine recently ran into this when her job as a temp worker for offices called on her to work as a receptionist in an abortion clinic.  She took the job and later told me about it. 

This was my emailed reply to her (note that this friend is a Christian who considers herself pro-life; this letter will not be really all that relevant to you if you are not pro-life or a Christian)
-------------------------------------------------------------
(Names changed to respect privacy)

This week's reception work was probably just an isolated incident, but I just wanted to take a moment, as a Christian friend, to give you some counsel should you ever be asked to work at an abortion clinic again.

I want to start off by saying that I don’t doubt the sincerity of your pro-life beliefs. I realize you probably felt you didn’t have a choice since it was your job requirement to work at the TA clinic that day. You are not the first Christian I have met who has been in the situation where the professional duties required of them conflict with their moral convictions.

For future notice, as a Canadian citizen you do have the right to refuse work that compromises your religious convictions. No place of employment has the jurisdiction to discriminate against you based on your religious beliefs.

As a Christian who was asked to work in an abortion clinic, I realize you were put into a very tight spot. You want to be professional, but at the same time I’m sure you probably felt uneasy about giving your services to the clinic. Morally speaking, working at that clinic would be like being an accessory to murder. Children’s mothers would be coming to you and you would direct them down the hall towards the people who would tear them apart and kill them. Understandably, this was probably not a pleasant thing for you to do.

A friend of mine works in a counseling facility that requires she give women the details for where and how they can obtain an abortion. When we discussed her duties I tried to help her see the situation in a different light. I told her “If we were talking about toddlers, instead of the unborn, and women were coming to you and saying ‘I’ve made my choice, I want to have my toddler killed, can you show me where to go to have this done?’ (assuming toddler killing were legal as abortion is today) morally speaking, would you be ok handing that woman the information for a hit man who would rip the child apart and suck her into a vacuum cleaner?” My friend let out an emphatic ‘Of course not!!!’ I then asked her “If you really believe that the unborn are human beings like that toddler, why are you assisting these women in having them destroyed?”

Of course there is are the obvious points that you made, that if you don’t do it someone else will, and that abortion is an act that is currently legal. However, both facts are irrelevant to the question of a whether or not a Christian should be involved in helping the people who are performing an act that is listed under the ‘seven things that are detestable to the Lord’ (Proverbs 6:17 NIV) While your professional duty may require you to play a small role in the in an evil procedure, God’s law, which says that ‘thou shall not shed innocent blood’ is higher. You have a moral duty as a Christian to stand up for God’s truth and His laws. The laws of the land, and particularly of the work force must be secondary if they go against God’s laws.

You mentioned, when we briefly spoke about this at Britannia, that someone (a colleague? Supervisor?) had mentioned something about ‘I wondered how you would react to working there’. Obviously he knows that you’re a Christian and he was watching to see your response. If this happens again, you have a great witnessing platform – an opportunity to speak up for God’s truth and tell him, that you hold God’s law and moral code above this country’s. When you can tell him that because you’re a Christian you will not have any part, no matter how small, in the shedding of innocent blood what a testimony that could be.

And while again, it may be true that someone else will do it if you don’t, and whether or not you are there these children probably would have been killed anyway; at least you don’t have to live with the knowledge that you, as a Christian assisted the perpetrators of an ungodly act. You don’t have to live with the knowledge that while you were probably the only person in that clinic who believed that unborn child had value, that you sat by and did nothing while he was ushered to his death. I say this as gently as I can, but Leslie, for all the good you did those children who died that day, you might as well have been pro-choice.

I realize there’s probably little you actually could have done in the way of speaking out while you were in that clinic. I suppose you could always have told the first woman where she could get help to carry through the pregnancy (a crisis pregnancy center) or encouraged her to reconsider her decision. You certainly would have been kicked out then and there but who knows if that might have caused the child’s mother to think twice. But that’s neither here nor there.

If you turned down a future job at the TA clinic or similar environment might you lose your job? Perhaps. Legally they can’t do it because of regulations forbidding religious discrimination, so if they were to do it, they’d have to make up some other ‘short coming’ to terminate you on. It happened to my friend Rachel: She worked in a doctor’s office and was asked to book an appointment for a client at an abortion clinic. She basically said ‘no sir, as a Christian I can’t morally justify scheduling anyone for a procedure that I believe kills a human being.’ She was told that it wasn’t her place to judge people’s beliefs (although by saying that, the doctor was in fact judging hers) and she was terminated.

Did Rachel regret her decision? No way. Losing a job is nothing next to the 315 children who lose their lives every day in Canada. As Christians we’ve been told to expect persecution and be willing to stand up for God’s truth even to the point of death. We’ve been told to be God’s salt and light in this world, not to just go along silently with what the world is doing.

I think of the Christians back in Nazi-ruled Germany. Those, like Corrie Ten-Boon who chose to speak up for the voiceless in their society by protecting Jews, stood to lose more than jobs – their very lives were at risk. Modern Christians have the same duty to defend the helpless. Proverbs 24:11-12 reads “Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say ‘But we knew nothing of this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay each person according to what he has done?”

Remember that Jesus told us that whatever we do for the least of these, we do it unto Him. How we, as Christians, love and treat the least in our society, the unborn, is a reflection of how we love Him. As Christians we have a moral duty to love our neighbours as we love ourselves, and this includes our unborn neighbours. We cannot, as many other Christians did in Germany, stand silent while evil is being done against them. We must ‘speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves'. (Proverbs 31:8)

I hope that this letter has served to help you reconsider your views and attitudes towards our Christian duty with regards to abortion. I’m sure your heart is in the right place and that you are sincere in your desire to love God and serve Him. I welcome your thoughts and comments regarding this letter (or anything else for that matter) I will be praying for you as I know you seek to glorify God in your present and future work endeavors.

In Christian love, Kristine Kruszelnicki

PS. It may help you, as it did me, to take abortion out of the abstract and see it for what it really is: a violent act that kills a baby. The following link will break your heart as well as open your eyes to the reality that is going on around us. I encourage you to take a look.

For interest sake, this was the link I gave her. 

http://cbrinfo.org/choice_signs.htmlhttp://cbri

Keep in mind that employers are not required to accomodate every religious whim of every employees, they are required "reasonable accomodation". In the case of the Nurse, if there were other nurses who could dispense the medication then the employer would have to reasign her to other duties. If she was the only nurse in the location and her not dispensing the medications would result in the clinic not fulfilling it's mandate or purpose then the employer would not have to accomodate her. Similarly with the temp, the employer should have been able to assign a different temp to that assignment. If, however she had gotten a perm job at the abortion clinic and then told the employer that they would have to stop performiong abortions becuase her religious belifs forbade it, that would not be considered reasonable accomodation.

That's a great story, too.  Of course, most humane people would  be outraged to think of a family talking about killing little Michael 'for his own good'. 

And yet a lot of people don't see the inconsitency in their excusing a woman/family for killing little Michael for his own good, while he is a little smaller and younger and still living in the protection of his mother's body. 

This is a slight tangent from the main point of this thread, but that's why it's crucial that we all recognize that "what is the unborn" is the central question in the abortion debate in general.  If a reason is not valid for killing a toddler, it's no more valid for killing the unborn if they are human beings (and scientific/philosophic evidence says they are).

Instead of debating whether unplanned pregnancies are hard for women (they are), or whether women might die from seeking illegal abortions (some might), we need to focus the debate on whether or not the unborn are human - after all why should the law be faulted for making it more dangerous for one human being to kill another?

God bless,
Kristine