RIVERSIDE, Calif. —When California nurse Michelle Diaz showed up for work one Monday morning in June 1999, her supervisor fired her as soon as she walked in the door.

Now, three years later, Diaz says justice has finally been done.

A nurse for six years, Diaz, 29, was capable, hardworking and conscientious —too conscientious for her county public health clinic employers. Diaz was one of five nurses at the Riverside Neighborhood Health Clinic who refused to sign a form saying they would prescribe the “morning-after pill” —a drug that induces early abortion if a woman is pregnant —as part of their duties at the clinic, saying it violated their Christian beliefs.

The other four nurses left the job rather than sign the paper. But Diaz, four months pregnant with two young children at home and providing half her family income, was expecting to be transferred to another department where the pill issue wouldn't arise when she was abruptly fired.

On May 24, a U.S. District Court jury of eight in Riverside determined that county public health clinic officials had wrongly discriminated against Diaz because of her born-again Christian religion and had violated her constitutional rights to free speech and religion. They awarded her $19,000 in back pay and more than $28,000 for emotional distress damages.

“This is a tremendous victory for our client and for all health care professionals who want to do their jobs without violating their consciences and religious beliefs,” said Francis Manion, senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, which represented Diaz. “Pro-life people in health care don't have to feel like second-class citizens.”

Diaz, who started work at the public health clinic in January 1999, said the morning-after pill first surfaced in March that year. “I recall just the subject coming up,” she said.

Ends Early Pregnancies

Diaz was unfamiliar with the pill and looked into it. In the 1970s, she found, Dr. Albert Yuzpe observed that concentrated doses of birth control hormones make the endometrium (the lining of the womb) a hostile place for a newly fertilized embryo.

Doctors began giving women super-high doses of birth control pills within 72 hours of sex to delay ovulation (which would prevent conception) or to prevent a tiny human life from settling into the womb. The Yuzpe Regimen, as it was called, was unofficial and sporadically practiced until birth control manufacturers decided to market it in the late 1990s.

Just like the Yuzpe Regimen, the repackaged morning-after pill will make women vomit, bleed, and feel sick and dizzy. And, if a woman is pregnant (and no one can be sure if she is not, since 72 hours is too early to confirm a pregnancy), she will shed an unwanted fertilized egg, effectively aborting a pregnancy in its first days. The drug's overall effectiveness in preventing pregnancy or ending one that has just commenced is 75%, according to information on one manufacturer's Web site.

“Once I understood how it worked and understood that it could cause an abortion, I didn't want to be a part of ending a new life,” Diaz said. She and her husband were both raised Catholic but had fallen away from the faith and were not attending church. In 1999 they were baptized in the nondenominational Pathways Christian Church.

Family planning was routine at the Riverside health clinic and Diaz did not object to counseling women to use birth control pills (which she was unaware also can be abortifacient) and even the morning-after pill.

The Catholic Church teaching on birth control, outlined by Pope Paul VI in his 1968 encyclical on the regulation of human birth, Humanae Vitae, condemns “any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation —whether as an end or as a means” (No. 14)”

Diaz arranged with her supervisor to have the pharmacist at the large clinic dispense the morning-after pill rather than hand it out herself.

“It's not like it happened every day,” Diaz said. “Probably in the six months I was there, [dispensing the morning-after pill] came up four or five times.”

But some nurse practitioners and doctors in the clinic heard about the arrangement Diaz and other nurses had worked out to skirt dispensing the pill and “they made clear they didn't like it,” Diaz said.

Diaz said the work atmosphere became charged with tension over the issue. “They were mean to me,” she recalled. “I think they were trying to make me quit.”

A Higher Authority

Soon an ultimatum came down from administration in the form of a paper outlining the duties of professionals at the clinic, including the obligation to prescribe the morning-after pill. It was to be signed by all employees.

The nurses were upset and the story leaked to the Sacramento Bee. Diaz was quoted in the local paper, saying, “I have someone to answer to, and it's not the county.”

When she showed up at the office the next work day, she was unceremoniously fired.

Diaz contacted the ACLJ and the lawsuit was launched. Two issues were considered at trial: Diaz's right to conscientiously object to dispensing the pill and her right to speak out publicly against policy at her work-place.

Federal law obliges employers to take reasonable steps to accommodate employees' religious practices and beliefs and to respect their wish to conscientiously object to specific duties, explained the ACLJ's Manion.

“Obviously the jury didn't think they tried to accommodate her,” he said. Rather, he said, it was a case where the clinic operators “didn't want people with her beliefs working there.”

The jury also found the clinic administrators had violated Diaz's freedom of speech. “It's not like she bad-mouthed anyone at the clinic,” Manion said. “She has a right to speak to the press and she did.”

Diaz said the counsel for the Riverside County officials repeatedly highlighted her quote about answering to someone besides the county, but she thought the strategy backfired. “I think [the jury] kind of agreed with it,” she said.

Dr. Gary Feldman, director of the Riverside County Health Department, who was a named defendant on Diaz's lawsuit, declined to comment on the case on the advice of the county, he said.

But Bruce Disenhouse, attorney for Riverside County, said the county would file two motions this week against the ruling. One will ask District Judge Virginia Phillips to overturn the jury verdict as a matter of law, and the other will seek a new trial. Disenhouse said the motions should be heard within 30 to 45 days.

Abortion advocates were angered by the verdict. Kathy Kneer, president and chief executive of he Sacramento-based Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said the nurses had their biology facts wrong. “A fertilized egg in medical literature is not a pregnancy until it is implanted,” she said, echoing the morning-after pill's manufacturers (but not embryology or obstetrics textbooks).

Kneer said she feared the verdict set a precedent that would pave the way for religiously divided public health care. “You won't be able to get the health care you need unless you are a certain religion,” she said.

“Health providers are there to meet client needs first,” Kneer said. “They have a right to their own religious beliefs, but the patient has a right to service.“

Manion countered: “Michelle Diaz didn't say, ‘Shut this place down. You can't do this.’ She said, ‘Don't make me do this.’” The clinic could easily oblige clients without forcing her to violate her conscience, he added; they just didn't want to.

Key Precedent

Manion said he believes the Riverside verdict could be a key precedent. The ACLJ is also representing Cincinnati pharmacist Karen Brauer, who was fired from her seven-year job at a Kmart pharmacy in 1996 after she declined to fill out a prescription for an early chemical abortifacient drug and then refused to sign a paper stating she would dispense any drugs prescribed to her. The trial is pending.

Cases like those of Diaz and Brauer will increase in number as abortion is further chemicalized, Manion predicted. As well, decisions rendered in pharmaceutical cases could influence the law in cases of surgical abortion and euthanasia.

Beginning in July, approximately 150 obstetrics and gynecology residents in New York City's 11 public hospitals will be required to undergo abortion training, including lessons about the administration of mifepris-tone (RU-486) for chemical abortion, as part of their standard medical training. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg authorized the abortion training requirement.

Federal law allows for the residents to “opt out” of such training on grounds of conscience, but the law on paper and in practice are often at odds, Manion warned.

The pro-life legal counsel expects to see more cases of medical personnel being pressured into various abortion jobs. Pro-abortion advocates have for years been lamenting the “graying” of abortionists and the dwindling pool of practitioners willing to replace them, Manion noted, and they are pushing aggressively to make participation in abortion a routine component of medical training and practice.

Celeste McGovern writes from Portland, Oregon.