Justice Department Drops Coercive Abortion Lawsuit from Catholic Nurse

In disturbing news, the Department of Justice has decided to drop a lawsuit filed on behalf of a former University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMMC) nurse who claimed that she was coerced into assisting with an abortion procedure despite her religious objection to abortion.

On July 30^th, the Justice Department in U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vermont released a one-page document detailing that the DOJ was dismissing the case against UVMCC after a request was made by “Catholic” Xavier Becerra’s Department of Health Human Services (HHS) to dismiss the case. 

The incident involving UVMMC occurred in May of 2018 when a Catholic nurse was forced into aiding in an abortion procedure that she was originally told was a procedure related to a miscarriage. When she found out that she would be assisting with an abortion procedure she exercised what she thought was her conscience rights under the Church Amendments and asked to be relieved from her scheduled duties. Her objection was denied. In December of 2020, the ACLJ represented the former nurse and filed a lawsuit in federal court in Vermont against UVMMC.

Relatedly, in August of 2019 HHS’ Office of Civil Rights (OCR), under the Trump administration, issued a notice of violation against UVMMC for violating the Church Amendments. The Church Amendments contain conscience protections for employees of HHS grant recipient health care facilities who object on moral or religious grounds to performing or assisting in an abortion. The OCR found that the Vermont hospital discriminated against health care workers who objected to abortion and that the hospital scheduled ten nurses who objected to abortion to assist with twenty abortion procedures. Furthermore, OCR called on the Vermont hospital to change its policies or risk losing its federal funding. 

The president of UVMMC, Dr Stephen Leffler, spoke out in December of 2020 before the lawsuit was filed and said that the “latest threats are not just baseless from a legal standpoint, they’re an attack on reproductive care and we will do everything we can to protect our patients’ access to the services they need.” Leffler claimed that the hospital had only enhanced its conscience compliance policies since receiving the letter from the OCR in 2019. However, the former Trump administration’s HHS found otherwise. 

While President Biden and Secretary Becerra are represented by the mainstream media as devout Catholics, truly devout Catholic priests who exposit and abide by the teachings of the Church have spoken out. In a statement put out after the agencies’ recent decision, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, Chairman of USCCB’s Committee on Religious Liberty, and Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, Chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities, decried the decision. Their statement read, 

“The U.S. DOJ is acting in dereliction of duty to enforce the plain meaning of federal law. It is hard to imagine a more horrific civil rights violation than being forced to take an innocent life. We call on the administration to stand up for the basic dignity of our nation’s healthcare workers by reopening the case and on Congress to pass the Conscience Protection Act so that doctors and nurses can defend their own rights in court.”

Catholic politicians who abide by the teachings of the Church regarding conscience rights and abortion have also responded to HHS’ and the DOJ’s most recent actions. A bicameral coalition of more than eighty Republicans in Congress has sent a letter to Attorney General Garland and Secretary Becerra demanding answers regarding the agencies’ reasons for dropping the case. The letter also decried the agencies’ decision as a “profound miscarriage of justice and a rejection of your commitment to enforce federal conscience laws for Americans of all religious beliefs and creeds…”

American Catholics have reasons to be fearful in today’s increasingly secular political climate. This recent decision which represents a propagation of a skewed, progressive version of Catholicism signals that the authentic teachings of the Catholic faith are not the basis of this country’s second Catholic president’s public policies. It also signals that Americans who live out the Bible’s and Catechism’s condemnation of abortion can no longer rely on the government to enforce the federal laws that have protected their conscience rights for over forty years.

But American Catholics and Christians in general also have reasons to be hopeful. The Catholic Church, through its clergy and lay people, has been experiencing a resurgent opposition to this administration’s policies. This decision is a sobering glimpse into the punishingly secular reality that this purportedly Catholic President and his secular administration has brought upon believers across America. However, there has been an awakening by traditional and doctrinally sound Catholics who realize the magnitude of the threat that this administration poses to the Catholic faithful.