Catholic Midwives Fight Against Involvement in Abortions
Two nuns are taking the hospital they work for to court over being required to preside over and supervise nurses who are facilitating abortions.
Mary Doogan, 57, and Concepta Wood, 51, explained to officials at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde in Scotland they were not "prepared to delegate, supervise or support staff" who were caring for patients during "the processes of medical termination of pregnancy."
The women "hold a religious belief that all human life is sacred from the moment of conception and that termination of pregnancy is a grave offence against human life." Subsequently their participation in the process would be wrongful and "an offence against God," according to The Telegraph.
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Their positions were rejected by hospital officials and currently are hopeful that the ruling will be overruled after a formal judicial review.
Doogan and Wood, are midwives at the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow. The pair is hoping that a ruling in the Court of Session in Edinburgh would back up their position which is based on conscientious objection under the 1967 Abortion Act, as reported by The Telegraph.
The two midwives informed the hospital administrators previously concerning their conscientious objection to any participation in abortions and claimed that they were not required to have any involvement in such actions.
In 2007, however, the health board of the hospital introduced changes to protocol for patients undergoing medical termination procedures and stated that those patients were to be cared for in the labour ward where the sisters worked.
The new guidelines made note the sisters were not expected to administer abortion-inducing drugs, but hospital officials stated that requiring conscientious objectors to provide care for patients through a termination was lawful.
According to the court papers, Wood had to provide direct care to a patient undergoing an abortion, which caused her "considerable distress and anxiety" and led to her requesting a transfer.
The documents went on to explain that Doogan had been absent from work due to poor health since 2010 as a result of the ongoing legal action.
In a related incident last year two Catholic nurses who were told they could not refuse to work at an abortion clinic, but had the ruling thrown out after stating that the sanctity of unborn life was a philosophical belief protected under the Equality Act 2010.
