The Church Times has a report by Pat Ashworth Nurses win abortion battle.
The first part of this deals with the case reported here: Equality Act applied in abortion case.
The second part deals with the EHRC intervention: Equality Commission reveals its views on 4 cases at the European Court. This finishes with a quote from me, which unfortunately got shortened in the editing process. The full quote reads as follows:
Many observers will welcome the EHRC’s suggestion that the rights of Eweida and Chaplin, under Article 9(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights to manifest their Christian beliefs, were not adequately considered. It is unclear why claims such as theirs ever came before the courts at all.
However, the EHRC’s view that the domestic courts came to the correct conclusions in the cases of Ladele and McFarlane will be very unwelcome to those who have campaigned so vigorously and so long on their behalf. Most employment lawyers though will breathe a sigh of relief that common sense has again prevailed.
I still don’t understand what this has to do with the nurses being Christians. No nurses, whether they have a personal faith of any kind or not, can legally be forced to participate in an abortion.
It was good that the courts decided that “participating in an abortion” included all aspects of work in an abortion clinic, not just administering the drugs.
Equal Rights are surely not compromised in the different issues dealt with here by the EHRC. In the case of Abortion, the issue of personal conscience is a very clear one – especially to those nurses and doctors who have a loyalty to the Hypocratic Oath; which rules on issues of life and death, as they interpret the same. Their claim for conscientious objection is a legitimate one. Regarding the other issues – of failure to comply with statutory requirement of their employment by an employee to deliver the legal requirements of their office; (a) in refusing to administer the… Read more »
There’s now an article about this by Adam Wagner at the UK Human Rights blog titled: Equality and Human Rights Commission reverses position on religious cases intervention
http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2011/08/22/equality-and-human-rights-commission-reverses-position-on-religious-cases-intervention/
And also this one
http://jewishgeekandproud.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/no-need-to-accommodate-religion-within-human-rights-they-share-a-bed-already/
And, there is this column by Nelson Jones at the Spectator:
For God and equality
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/nelson-jones/2011/08/rights-commission-equality