By John Klar
A Vermont nurse alleges that she was compelled to perform an abortion in a hospital that has aggressively expanded its provision of abortion services right up until birth. She relates a nightmare scenario:
After being told that she would be treating a patient who had experienced a miscarriage, she discovered that she had actually been scheduled to help with an elective abortion. According to a recently created policy, UVMMC [University of Vermont Medical Center] can punish staffers who refuse to participate in abortions when the hospital is short-staffed, and the nurse’s boss allegedly would not allow her to step out of the procedure. Fearing retaliation, or that she would lose her job, the nurse agreed to go through with it. When she walked into the procedure room, the doctor allegedly said to her, “Don’t hate me.”
The hospital states that it “promptly and thoroughly investigated [the claims] and determined that they were not supported by the facts.” Yet, at least four other nurses have leveled similar allegations against this leading provider of abortions, transgender surgeries, and “fertility preservation” for children.
The hospital and liberal news media repeatedly seek to characterize this dispute as one of religiosity, but one can feel bad about killing a fetus without joining Opus Dei. The real issue is not one of religious doctrine, but of whether that fetus approaching delivery is deserving of all those ethical duties that doctors and nurses vow to provide to human beings. Indeed, all nurses and doctors suffer from performing such procedures, regardless of their religious beliefs — even hardcore “women’s rights” secularists.
James Michener, in his fascinating history Poland, recounts that Nazi soldiers laughed callously at Polish prisoners who were compelled to herd unsuspecting fellow Poles into showers to be gassed, to pile their corpses into carts, to heave the bodies by tens of thousands into brick ovens belching stench. When the prisoners condemned to process their own countrymen could not take the horror any longer, they were in due course disposed of and replaced.
In Vermont, the budding Josef Mengeles are especially brazen, in the Legislature as well as this hospital. Employing Donald Trump’s 2018 election as justification, most all Vermont legislation planned for the session was scrapped in order to advance Planned Parenthood’s “emergency” Vermont agenda to preserve abortion availability until the moment of birth. Voters were not consulted, except in sham displays of pretend democracy, at which opponents exponentially outnumbered supporters. No ameliorating amendments were allowed; no fetal personhood in criminal cases was considered.
Perhaps the tip of Vermont’s “abortion rights” spear has been its attorney general, T.J. Donovan, who has not permitted any pretense of impartiality to impede his determination to advance all things Planned Parenthood. Opposing Trump administration efforts to defund abortions, T.J. tweeted (June 20, 2019): “Over 10,000 Vermonters rely on #TitleX for wellness exams, cancer screenings, birth control & STI testing. I am committed to protecting Vermonters’ access to healthcare.” Donovan is committed to providing abortions at taxpayer expense, without ever naming the procedure.
A.G. Donovan’s strategy has been to expand the definition of “family services” to incorporate abortions during that third trimester that Roe v. Wade specifically identified as a stage where government held a “compelling interest” to protect a second life. Donovan and his Planned Parenthood puppeteers have sued the federal government to prevent health care professionals from possessing “the categorical right to deny lawful and medically necessary treatment … to patients based on the provider’s personal views.”
The nurse forced to perform an abortion after asking to be excused is a real person. T.J. Donovan instead uses fictitious, hypothetical people in his brief:
77. The Final Rule’s definition of “health care entity” would expand the applicable statutes far beyond their plain meaning, to permit objections by human resources analysts, customer service representatives, data entry clerks, and numerous others who believe that analyzing benefits, answering a benefits-related question, or entering a particular preauthorization for an objected-to procedure, for example, is inconsistent with their personal beliefs
79. …An ambulance driver in a private, sub-contracted fleet, a customer service representative at an insurance company’s hotline, and a hospital pharmacist all share the right, under the Final Rule, not to be asked prior to hiring whether they can execute the core functions of their jobs without objection.
Using bizarre hypothetical exceptions, A.G. Donovan dismisses the baby’s life with the nurse’s conscience, to silence both. But “human resources analysts” are never asked to dismember and discard little human bodies.
Extending this deceit, the plaintiffs claim that compelling nurses to participate in abortions is necessary in order to enforce existing laws compelling “sponsors of health insurance plans” to provide abortion (“contraceptive”) services:
117. A number of the Plaintiffs have enacted statutes or regulations requiring insurance providers to offer coverage for contraception and abortion….
n. Vermont law requires reproductive health equity in insurance coverage, such that a health insurance plan must provide coverage for contraceptive drugs and services to the same extent that plan provides coverage for any drugs or services. Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 8, § 4099c….
Moreover, Vermont’s AG averred:
C. The Final Rule harms Plaintiffs by threatening… congressionally-appropriated health care funds….
156. ….The Vermont Department of Health has received approximately $780,000 in Title X grants each year over the past ten years, with minor fluctuations….
But Vermont (and its Governor, Phil Scott) subsequently refused to accept that $780,000 in Title X grants:
Health Commissioner Mark Levine announced Monday that he had notified the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that Vermont would stop using Title X dollars to fund Planned Parenthood of Northern New England’s services at 10 clinics. Instead, the state will make up the $759,000 difference with general fund dollars set aside for just this purpose.
Vermont is hardly a wealthy state. Yet, this publicity ploy for Planned Parenthood — openly hijacking Vermont’s General Fund to oppose Donald Trump — was praised by Republican Governor Phil Scott:
“It’s important that we maintain women’s rights and access to health care,” Scott said in the press release. “It’s unfortunate we are at this point, but I appreciate the collaboration with the Attorney General and Legislature to put aside contingency funding in the … budget.”
Vermont’s progressives compel nurses to choose between their job or a lifetime of nightmares, echoing the antiseptic rationalizations of Nazi soldiers compelling humans to slaughter and dispose of their neighbors. Hitler’s social engineers killed millions in the name of liberating them from their poverty and genetic inferiority. Abortion is similarly praised for its benefits in “population control.”
Attorney Donovan tweeted (July 5): “No employee should fear workplace discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. We are ALL entitled to equal protection under the law.” And on July 10:
“The deplorable treatment of children detained at the southern border is contrary to the rule of law & is un-American. It’s a stain on our country. I joined a coalition urging the court to act to protect the rights of children in immigration detention.”
AG Donovan’s joint lawsuit with Planned Parenthood discriminates against healthcare professionals in the workplace, to compel abominable atrocities against unborn children. Concurrently, Vermonters’ anemic coffers have been diverted in a partisan show of Trumpian defiance: “…as for the federal money that Vermont has received annually since 1970? Unless the nation changes its mind, Vermont will pass up the funds from here on out.”
Perhaps as 2020 approaches, America will hear more voices of truth from the most trusted professionals in America: nurses.
John Klar is an attorney and farmer residing in Brookfield, and pastor of the First Congregational Church of Westfield. Originally published at American Thinker.
The Vermont Democratic Party, specifically has done massive harm and injustice to women. They have unwittingly passed a law that will overturn Roe v. Wade.
Their legislation defines what a pregnant woman carries as a POC, Product of Conception. In no way shape or form does it define it as a baby. Science, religion and commons sense would clearly and unanimously agree that a “product of conception” 8.5 months old is really an individual, a separate person……A BABY!
So with their definition passed into state law it takes away all responsibility of the father and the state for paying any support, because by their definition, women do not carry a baby, only a product of conception, so a man is only responsible for having the product of conception removed, it’s not a baby. The state should no longer have to pay any support for unwanted children, 50% of our births in Vermont, because they aren’t babies until they leave the womb.
The democratic party of Vermont has done more to undermine woman than any other organization out there.
My guess is that if the nurse loses her job for following her conscience, she could get a better job in a heart beat. Last I heard there is a shortage of nurses.
T.J. Donovan is one sick S.O.B. I can’t tell which he is losing faster, his voice or his mind. To blast the Trump administration over their care of illegal aliens at the border yet seek to force nurses and other health care providers to stomp on their own consciences and participate in the slaughter of innocent babies is impossible to reconcile. The Nazis had nothing on the liberals and progressives of today and, hopefully, someday they will be judged as harshly.
The abortion bill that was past is pure evil, and now these same Liberal idiots employers want to have people disband their religious beliefs for profit. UVMMC is too big and needs to be held accountable. And now Vermont’s AG doesn’t see a problem forcing people to do what they don’t want to do for their beliefs. This idiot needs to be replaced.
Castrate him at the polls.