Re: Wisconsin Assembly Bill 67

Testimony before Wisconsin Senate Committee
on Health, Children, Families, Aging and Long-Term Care
October 7, 2003

I want to be clear from the outset that I loved my work on a labor and delivery unit at Waukesha Memorial Hospital in Waukesha, Wisconsin. I had deep roots in the hospital that I was employed with just about ten years. This was my community hospital that afforded essential health care for my very own neighbors, friends and most importantly, my family.

Over long years of dedicated service, I had advanced to the position of charge nurse. I had earned the respect of nursing management, nurse colleagues, as well as other physicians and nursing staff. But sadly, I must tell you about the hardship I endured since our hospital informed staff of a new abortion policy. While not a single abortion had been performed, I felt compelled, as a matter of conscience, to resign my cherished position as charge nurse. I believed that, as a leader, I would have to become involved in either staffing or otherwise supporting the performance of abortion procedures.

Thus, I felt compelled to gather signatures form co-workers on a petition that sought reconsideration of the new abortion policy. A great many co-workers joined me in our shared expression of solemn dissent based on our religious and ethical beliefs. Over one hundred co-workers signed the petition, expressing serious moral objection. The petition was presented up the "chain of command" within the organization, to the CEO, the Ethics Committee, and finally the Board of Trustees. These solicitations were obtained peacefully, courteously and properly.

But regrettably, since then I had experienced an onslaught of disciplinary reprimands, retaliation, criticism and ostracism. Far from respecting the religious and ethical beliefs of so many employees, hospital manager derided and ridiculed the dissenters. Petition signers were publicly denounced by our CEO in the hospital bulletin as "single issue militant detractors". Indeed, many employees who had freely expressed their moral reservations over the abortion policy were intimidated into hurried, secretive retractions of their signatures.

Our vice-president of human resources and nurse manager both interrogated me about allegedly inducing employees to abandon their patients in the workplace to attend an Ethics Committee meeting. This was an utterly false charge. The thought of a nurse turning her back on her patient is abhorrent to me.

I was also interrogated about "whether or not" I have been "sick" and about "how do" I "get my work done", as if I'd abandoned my own patients in securing signatures - another false charge.

I was no longer assigned to train or mentor new nurses despite my credentials and qualifications.

I was denied career advancement to clinical nurse three status, as the research project which qualified me for advancement, was resigned to another nurse without my prior knowledge or consent.

I was grilled as a "second class nurse" or "nobody" - despite my credentials - when I interviewed for a transfer to a parish nurse position within the organization. Again, the interviewers assailed me with their litany of false accusations, including my leading pickets and protest against the hospital as well as spreading bad publicity to the press. Finally, I was told that the vice president of nursing didn't "want me interviewed" for this position, but that I was "so qualified" that they had to interview me.

Under these circumstances, I felt I had no choice but to curb my ambitions, for the moment and simply go about my nursing duties. I've been rebuked by my superiors for "showing disrespect" for others views and causing unnamed "other nurses" to feel uncomfortable. It seems as if hospital management was determined to use me as a scapegoat to teach the rest of the staff that you will suffer bias, discrimination and retaliation if you dare dissent from the new orthodoxy or express your own differing moral or religious views.

What seems clear more than ever to me was that the hospital preferred silent acquiescence on the part of morally neutralized employees, rather than any genuine sort of pluralism. For dissent is equated with disloyalty. Opposing views merit only rebuffs rather than respect, let alone any reconsideration.

Yet, true pluralism entails mutual respect; not blind domination on the one hand, and meekly silent submission, on the other.

Approximately 18 months ago, I terminated my employment when the first abortion was committed at Waukesha Memorial Hospital. This abortion was performed for reasons other than to save the mothers life. I have lost 10 years of accrued seniority and other benefits that accompanied the place I had once loved.

Employees who exercise their right of conscientious dissent, therefore, need remedies to support their dissent; lest their dissent should merely sound a prelude to their farewell. Rights are fragile and ephemeral, unless their protectors may seek and obtain redress against those who infringe them. This right to redress is the protection that Assembly Bill 67 affords. We are in dire need of that protection. For here we stand. We can do no other . . .