The Right of Conscience in the Age of Obama

By Daniel Allott & Matt Bowman
November 2009

"Conscience is the most sacred of all property." --James Madison

Nurse Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo winced as the doctor inserted forceps into his patient's dilated cervix and pushed them deep into her uterus. Then she stood shocked as he carefully plucked, piece by piece, parts of the patient's unborn child, pulling them back through the cervix and vagina, and ultimately placed them in a specimen cup. DeCarlo then was required to pour saline into the cup and deliver the bloody body parts to the specimen room.

On May 24, DeCarlo, a nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, was forced to participate in the killing of a 22-week-old unborn child by dismemberment. As she began her shift that morning, a superior informed her that she needed to assist in the late second-term abortion. DeCarlo protested that as a practicing Catholic, she had strongly held religious beliefs against killing unborn children.

Though she had repeatedly and in writing made her belief known to hospital administrators since she was hired five years earlier, DeCarlo was told on that day that if she did not participate, she would be charged with "insubordination and patient abandonment." That meant she might lose her job or her nursing license or both. Despite repeated tearful pleas, DeCarlo was refused. The next day, DeCarlo called the Alliance Defense Fund, which has filed a federal lawsuit on her behalf. the rest