Pro-Life Nurses Forced To Participate Late Term Abortions Or Get Fired

Though the tiny infant had been condemned to die, distraught nurses at Calgary's Foothills Hospital spent hours last August caring for it anyway. "The mother didn't want the baby, so we took turns rocking and holding it for 12 hours until it finally died," says Foothills nurse "Catherine," whose real name has been withheld to protect her job.
"Nurses were only allowed to comfort the suffering infant, but this did not even include feedings." The rejected baby's fate was sealed when it survived a so-called "genetic termination," an abortion performed only five weeks before the mother's due date.
Doctors had told her that her baby had lethal genetic defects. But Catherine could see only a baby. "I was sick for weeks," she says.
Catherine, and other maternal care centre nurses who share her views, are destined to get sicker. According to an internal Foothills Hospital memo sent to this magazine, postpartum nurses were told last month that for the first time they would have to begin caring for aborting women, regardless of their own moral qualms.
In interviews, nurses say it is unfair for the hospital to force professionals to handle abortions without regard for moral or religious convictions. But a unit caring for healthy mothers and babies is also a interesting environment for women having abortions, says Catherine. "Those women don't really want to hear a mother's newborn baby crying next door just after they've had an abortion."
Until March, women seeking late abortions at Foothills had been cared for in an area separated from new mothers and women who aborted before the 24th week of pregnancy. And according to Catherine, late abortions need to be kept separate, partly in order to avoid forcing postpartum nurses from having to do work they oppose morally. "After 23 weeks," she says, "it's pretty dicey because we're getting into viability. Babies can survive."
Late term abortions are done here by inserting Cytotec into the woman's vagina; the drug then ripens the cervix and causes powerful uterine contractions which eventually lead to premature birth. Nurses handle the procedure, giving the drug every four to six hours. But Cytotec can take four or five days to cause contractions powerful enough to expel the baby. "Meanwhile, the abortion is tying up a birthing room that's meant for couples who are having a wanted baby," Catherine says. "It's also hoped that the baby dies during labour before coming out. But not all babies do."
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