By Star-Ledger Editorial Board

    The federal laws appear clear: If health care professionals cite religious or moral objections, they cannot be compelled to assist in abortions in facilities that receive federal funding.

    But now, nearly four decades after the original law was passed, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey is looking for a loophole. The hospital’s position: It depends on what “assist” means. 

    If UMDNJ’s stance doesn’t violate the letter of the laws (and the courts eventually will decide that), it certainly violates the intent of them — which is to accommodate health care professionals with strongly held convictions on a moral issue that still divides our nation.

    UMDNJ’s policy also appears to violate a state law that says, “No person shall be required to perform or assist in the performance of an abortion or sterilization.”

    In the face of a lawsuit by 12 nurses, UMDNJ insists the hospital is allowed to force nurses to perform peripheral duties for abortion patients — logging information, drawing blood, taking a temperature and walking patients to the door after an abortion, for instance.

    In other words, UMDNJ believes it should be able to compel nurses and other health care professionals, against their moral beliefs, to perform duties leading all the way up to the actual abortion, then force those health care professionals to attend to patients immediately afterward — or lose their jobs.

    Narrowing the law to specify that nurses have the right to opt out of only the actual abortion procedure strains common sense.

    For decades, the law has been interpreted to allow nurses and others, if they object, to opt out of any care given to an abortion patient. The nurses involved in the lawsuit say that simply helping to admit an abortion patient facilitates the procedure, making the nurses an active participant.

    And they object to that.

    The nurses say UMDNJ adhered to the liberal interpretation up until September. To accommodate objectors, UMDNJ had been using freelance, nonobjecting nurses and nonobjectors on its staff, it says. Why the sudden change? UMDNJ isn’t commenting.
Maybe it’s a profitability or staffing issue. Maybe it’s an intramural squabble. Maybe the hospital wants these nurses to quit. It doesn’t matter.

    UMDNJ should accommodate objectors on its staff. What’s to be gained by compelling them? The care of abortion patients, many already in a fragile emotional state, could be compromised by reluctant nurses. If UMDNJ wants to provide abortions, it owes patients the best medical care by enthusiastic staff.

    An e-mail from UMDNJ to the nurses’ attorney says, “The pre- and post-operative care provided to these patients is of the same nature as that provided to patients who have undergone other surgical procedures.”

    Yes, but these patients aren’t undergoing “other surgical procedures.” They’re undergoing an abortion — an emotionally and morally charged procedure. This isn’t a tonsillectomy.

    Objecting nurses shouldn’t be forced to participate — on any level.