N.Y. nurse sues after forced to aid abortion

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By Julia Duin

A Roman Catholic nurse who says she felt "violated and betrayed, like I had been raped" after being forced to take part in a second-trimester abortion is suing a New York City hospital on charges of violating her rights.

Catherina Lorena Cenzon-DeCarlo, 35, a Filipina nurse who is a permanent U.S. resident and married to an American, says that Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan "blatantly" violated a 35-year-old federal law that protects health care workers with religious objections from having to assist in performing abortions.

The hospital performed a late-term abortion on a woman whose health was not at risk, she says. The nurse is asking for a jury trial that could strip the hospital of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding until it complies with the law.

"I hope that Mount Sinai will obey the law and allow health-care workers not to assist in abortion against their beliefs," she said in a statement. "I believe lots of nurses and doctors throughout the country are being pressured to assist abortion, and I want them to know they are not alone, and they should speak up for their rights of conscience."

Because the case is pending litigation, Mount Sinai is refusing to comment, spokeswoman Jeanne Bernard said Thursday.

The New York State Nurses Association, the union representing nurses at Mount Sinai, and the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the hospital's federal funding, did not return requests for comment.

According to the 26-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court for New York's Eastern District, the lawsuit says when Mrs. DeCarlo was hired in August 2004, she told hospital officials outright that she would not participate in abortions. She is Catholic and her uncle is Bishop Carlito J. Cenzon, who leads the Roman Catholic diocese of Baguio in the northern Philippines.

The hospital did not object to this and gave her a form to complete that indicated her refusal to take part in the procedure. During the nearly five years from her hiring date until this May, the lawsuit said, the hospital had avoided asking her to assist on abortions, as it has a cadre of other nurses who have indicated their unwillingness to do so.

Founded in 1852, Mount Sinai was the nation's second Jewish hospital. The plaintiff said it usually schedules abortions on Saturdays, which is the Jewish sabbath.

But it was on May 24, a Sunday morning shift over Memorial Day weekend, when matters came to a head. The nurse said she was told she was assigned to help with a "D&C," signifying "dilation and curettage," a procedure to remove the remains of a miscarriage from a woman's womb. But when she began preparing the operating room, she learned she had been assigned to help with aborting a 22-week pregnancy.