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Lawsuit Claims University Refused to Hire Professor Because She Opposes Abortion

Lawsuit Claims University Refused to Hire Professor Because She Opposes Abortion

“my argument against abortion is based on the anatomy and physiology of pregnancy, and on logical reasoning”

What does it say about higher education that this is so easy to believe?

The College Fix reports:

Public university refused to hire professor because she opposes abortion, suit claims

When Indiana University-South Bend went looking for a new clinical assistant professor in obstetrics, the chair of its search committee imposed an unconstitutional viewpoint test, according to a lawsuit filed by a rejected applicant.

UPI reports that Cynthia Isabell’s lawyers are fighting to keep her First Amendment lawsuit alive, citing “circumstantial evidence,” as the public university claims she was passed over in favor of an applicant with “more relevant experience and qualifications” and “far superior evaluations.”

Isabell has a doctorate in nursing and education and has worked as a staff nurse, primarily in obstetrics, for nearly 40 years. She has also worked as an adjunct clinical instructor for more than 20 years, according to the suit.

The year before her interview at IUSB, she had written a blog post titled “How a Formerly Pro-Choice Nursing Instructor Discusses Abortion with her Students.” It explained that she had “assisted with abortions which were considered to be therapeutic … frequently done for Trisomy 21, or Down Syndrome.”

But Isabell’s experiences and “understanding of human biology and embryology” have made her pro-life, she continued.

When her students have asked her about her views on abortion – a question she never turns on them – and Isabell tells them, they “often assume that my position is based on my religious beliefs,” she wrote. This is wrong: “I explain that my argument against abortion is based on the anatomy and physiology of pregnancy, and on logical reasoning.”

Isabell believes the chair of the search committee was alluding to this blog post when she asked the applicant “how she would discuss controversial topics with her students and how she would use science in those talks.”

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Comments

This claim will be very difficult to substantiate, unless the Hiring Committee very stupidly generated damning emails and texts — or unless there was only one candidate for the job!

Agreed, hard to substantiate. Doesn’t mean it’s not the case.

My sister was a RN (now retired) who started out as an ER, and then surgical specialist. She was quite proud that her expertise and work ethic made her a preferred nurse for multiple surgeons. Then mid-career she started getting pressured to “be more of a team player” – ie – be willing to assist in elective abortions. Never official black-and-white written policy, mind you, but it became obvious that crap assignments and scheduling came your way if you had an ethical problem with assisting at elective abortions.

So she changed to psychiatric nursing, initially pediatric psychiatric nursing. She shone there as well, one example of her investment in helping patients was her yearly volunteer program to provide resident kids (many totally abandoned by their families) with personalized stockings each Christmas. By the end of her working life she had become a senior nurse administrator, effectively running her facility during the night shift. It being a state-run facility, sometimes the work ethic and professionalism of aides, nurses, even doctors could be less than perfect, but her experience, attention to detail (she documented everything), and trick memory (could replay conversations from weeks earlier word-for-word) meant good patient care was either priority one for staff or you faced the “Wrath of Peg”. Unlike some state administrators, she was willing to go through the effort and red tape required to remove bad workers from The System rather than let them slide by giving the minimum effort possible or transfer them to other facilities so they were someone else’s responsibility.

While I’m certain it would have been psychiatric patients’ loss, I suspect if she had been able to follow her conscience while staying in her initial career track there would be surgical patients alive today who currently are not.