A Filipina nurse has filed charges against a hospital for allegedly forcing her to assist in a late-term abortion procedure in Brooklyn, New York City.
The New York Post reported that the May 24 incident was traumatic for Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, 35.
"It felt like a horror film unfolding," said Cenzon-DeCarlo in a report by the New York Post.
Cenzon-DeCarlo was reportedly threatened by Mount Sinai Hospital with insubordination and patient-abandonment if she refuses to assist in the abortion procedure. She also claimed that the hospital has cut her overtime shifts.
A devout catholic, Cenzon-DeCarlo is a married mother of a year-old baby and niece of a Filipino bishop.
She said her bosses at the hospital reportedly exaggerated about the condition of the patient who was 22 weeks into her pregnancy.
In her lawsuit, Cenzon-DeCarlo claimed that the hospital told her the patient had preeclampsia, a condition that could lead to seizures or death if left untreated.
However, she refuted this and said the patient was not even given magnesium therapy which was a common treatment for preeclampsia.
She found out later that the hospital's own records described the procedure "Category II," which is not considered immediately life threatening.
The incident prompted Cenzon-DeCarlo to file a grievance with her union, the report said.
"I emigrated to this country in the belief that here religious freedom is sacred. Doctors and nurses shouldn't be forced to abandon their beliefs and participate in abortion in order to keep their jobs," she said in the report.
Cenzon-DeCarlo is a native of the Philippines and moved to New York in 2001. She started working at Mount Sinai Hospital as an operating nurse in 2004.
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