A 35-year-old Filipino nurse, married and a mother of a year-old baby, is waging a battle against the culture of death that has been given a boost by the Obama administration in the United States. In a verified complaint filed with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Catherina Lorena Cenzon-DeCarlo is suing The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York for damages for forcing her to assist in a late-term abortion against her will.

The preliminary statement of the complaint clearly states the direct affront to her religious convictions: “This action seeks injunctive and declaratory relief on behalf of Catherina Lorena Cenzon-DeCarlo (herein “Mrs. DeCarlo”), a nurse who in May 2009 was forced by Defendant The Mount Sinai Hospital (“Mount Sinai”) to assist in the abortion of a 22-week-old preborn child despite her long-standing religious objection to participating in lethal abortions. Mount Sinai blatantly violated federal law by threatening Mrs. DeCarlo’s job and nursing license unless she would assist in the late-term abortion. Then when Mrs. DeCarlo tried to use appropriate channels to seek to have her rights of conscience respected, Mount Sinai condoned the compulsion it had exerted against Mrs. DeCarlo in May, declared that she could again be subject to such a mandate at Mount Sinai’s arbitrary discretion, and even resorted to retaliation and brash bullying tactics to get Mrs. DeCarlo to abandon her rights.”

The case was given prominent coverage by the New York Post. In an article by Kathianne Boniello, Mrs. DeCarlo, who is a niece of Bishop Cenzon of the Baguio Diocese, was clearly described as the aggrieved party. The report stated that the hospital even exaggerated the patient’s condition and claimed the woman could die if the nurse, a devout Catholic, did not follow orders, as the nurse alleges in a lawsuit. “I felt like a horror film unfolding,” said Mrs. DeCarlo, who claims she has had gruesome nightmares and has not been able to sleep since the May 24 incident.

Mrs. DeCarlo contends that the patient’s life was not in danger. She argued that the patient was not even on magnesium therapy, a common treatment for preeclampsia, and did not have problems indicating an emergency. But the Hospital management completely rejected her pleas, and instead she was threatened with career-ending charges of insubordination and patient abandonment. Feeling threatened, Mrs. DeCarlo was forced to assist in the procedure.

She said she later learned that the hospital’s own records deemed the procedure “Category II,” which is not considered immediately life threatening.

“I felt violated and betrayed,” she recalled. “I couldn’t believe that this could happen.”

The case involved was clearly not that of a miscarriage in which the fetus is already dead and has to be removed. Mrs. DeCarlo never objected to participating in what are known as dilation and curettage (D&C) first-trimester abortions, in which preborn children have miscarried and have to be removed with other uterine contents from the woman. But what was involved in this situation imposed on Mrs. DeCarlo was a 22-week-old child. As described in the Verified Complaint filed in the Court, the procedure is called Dilation and Evacuation

(D&E), in which the mother’s cervix is dilated, and after sufficient dilation the mother is placed under anesthesia or sedation. The doctor then inserts grasping forceps through the mother’s cervix and into the uterus. The doctor grips a part of the preborn child with the forceps and pulls it back through the cervix and vagina even after meeting resistance from the cervix. That friction causes the preborn child to tear apart.

The process of evacuating the preborn child piece by piece continues until the child has been completely removed.

There is no other name for such a procedure but murder. It is never morally allowed to directly take the life of an innocent human being even if the intention is to save the life of another. That is what every Catholic with a well-formed conscience should stand for. Mrs. Catherina Lorena Cenzon-DeCarlo is a Catholic with a well-formed conscience. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing from St. Louis University in Baguio City. Her last place of work before she went to the US was at the Medical City. During her time at Medical City, she treated many patients with pregnancy complications, including many with preeclampsia. She gained extensive experience in managing such patients with the goal of preserving the life of both the woman and her unborn child. She gained knowledge of the pathologies that can arise in such patients and how to treat them. She saw that as long as they were properly monitored and medicated, patients could be successfully managed to a stage of pregnancy where the child could be delivered alive with a good chance of survival.

Medical science and technology have sufficiently advanced that it is only in very exceptional cases in which a decision has to be made between the life of the baby and that of the mother. Catholic morality is very clear that in these exceptional cases, it is never permitted to directly kill the baby in order to save the life of the mother. It is this deep religious conviction of Mrs. DeCarlo that was violated by Mount Sinai Hospital. Let us hope that the cause of this courageous Filipino nurse will triumph for the sake of other nurses and health personnel with well-formed consciences. Her victory will also serve to arrest even a little the spread of the culture of death in the U.S. and other increasingly pagan societies. For comments, my e-mail address is bvillegas@uap.edu.ph.