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Tufts ER doctor sues hospital because she was fired for refusing Covid-19 shots in 2021

By adamg on Wed, 10/09/2024 - 11:31am

A doctor who spent 29 years in the emergency room at Tufts Medical Center yesterday sued the hospital for at least $6 million for rejecting her request for a religious exemption from Covid-19 shots in 2021 because she believes the vaccines were derived from aborted fetuses and that goes against her Christian beliefs.

In her complaint, Dr. Theresa Gabana, fired on Dec. 5, 2021, charges the hospital really fired her because they didn't want to pay her the retirement benefits she would soon be due, and that the hospital could have found an "accommodation" to let the emergency-room doctor continue doing her job without vaccination.

Gabana avers she is not opposed to vaccines in general, just the Covid-19 ones because the vaccines were "developed with or tested on aborted fetal cell lines" and that:

The sanctity of human life, including the unborn, is a major tenet of my faith. Using this vaccine is a violation of my faith.

Besides, her suit adds, the "experimental" vaccines don't really work and the hospital's vaccine mandate was unconstitutional, in part because Gov. Charlie Baker formally ended the state's Covid-19 state of emergency on June 15, 2021 - and yet the hospital continued to mandate shots. And the hospital let her treat acutely ill and injured people in the ER before vaccines were rolled out, so the hospital could have continued to let her work with patients while wearing a mask, the suit alleges.

Gabana is seeking $1 million in damages plus another $5 million to make the hospital think twice about ever again doing something like this. Her complaint alleges that she suffered "extreme anguish, an enormous amount of stress, anxiety, sleepless nights, and deep, unrelenting sadness as she realized she would have to choose between her sincerely held religious beliefs and a job she loved." She has also been unable to find another job because of her firing.

Gabana is represented by Richard Chambers of Lynnfield, who has filed a number of similar lawsuits involving hospital employees.

Among his other clients is a clerk at the Greater Roslindale Medical and Dental Center who sued last year in Suffolk Superior Court over her firing; she is also seeking $6 million.

Federal judges have rejected similar suits either because the protestations of Christian faith were too vague - not listing which specific tents of a specific denomination - or because hospitals have a right to overrule even sincere Christian beliefs if they would put the lives of patients or other hospital employees at risk and there was no way to provide alternative working conditions for such employees.

$6 million was also the specific amount sought by a series of people Chambers represented in a failed suit over Boston's brief requirement to show proof of vaccination to enter certain public indoor locations.

Complete complaint (1.5M PDF).

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Comments

By Lee on Wed, 10/09/2024 - 12:12pm.

…. when I went to Tufts ER last year for a life threatening event. Might not have survived if she gave me Covid on top of it.

What a waste of a medical education. But she should not be using her “sincere Christian beliefs” to endanger vulnerable patients.

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By lbb on Wed, 10/09/2024 - 12:27pm.

...then she was raised by people who lived before the polio vaccine was available -- people who almost certainly knew those who were permanently disabled by polio. You talk to people of that generation and it seems like they all knew someone who spent their life in an iron lung. You didn't get many people of that generation refusing the polio vaccine because of any "sincerely held religious beliefs". Indeed, if they tended to be religious about anything, it was about getting their kids vaccinated, so you have to wonder where the disconnect happened.

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By Kaz on Wed, 10/09/2024 - 2:08pm.

I'm not about to give a flying fuck what denomination of sincere Christianity this woman is, but in the CDF from the Vatican parsing the morality of using a vaccine that relied (in development or testing) on cell lines passaged repeatedly (meaning child cells of child cells of child cells...) over 6 decades of biology research, originally from aborted fetuses...not only do they say that you can take the vaccine morally because you're so far removed from the original immoral act to have not created a moral issue to yourself given the seriousness of the public health crisis at hand...

BUT they go on to point out that:

Those who for reasons of conscience reject vaccines produced with cell lines from aborted fetuses, however, must “do their utmost to avoid, by other prophylactic means and appropriate behavior, becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent.”

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2020-12/vatican-cdf-note...

So, in her sincerest Christian beliefs, if they were to at all align with the teachings of the Vatican, she should have resigned if she wasn't going to get the vaccine because as an ER doctor (particularly within all the ways of working in a hospital) the only way she was going to do her utmost to avoid being a vehicle for the virus would be to stop being an ER doctor.

If anything, the hospital, in firing her, is only *helping* her adhere to her sincere Christian beliefs that the weak, young, and elderly who she might have gone on to infect should be safer through their actions than her own.

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By cybah on Wed, 10/09/2024 - 6:19pm.

So, in her sincerest Christian beliefs, if they were to at all align with the teachings of the Vatican,

In recent years we've learned that many Christian "sects" disregard the Pope most of the time. He has come out and supported different liberal causes and they thumb their nose at him because they don't like him. And like many MAGA, they call him a "liberal hack" or some such silliness.

But then again, most Christians who do this, like this woman, are what I call "Pick N Choose" Christians, where they pick and choose that out of the religion that suits their needs when its convienent for them. They are just masquerading as Christians.

Funny the Bible has several passages warning about people who are fake Christians and fake prophets, yet these people seem to glaze over these passages in the Scripture. Probably because they *are* fake Christians and prophets.

By Frelmont on Wed, 10/09/2024 - 2:48pm.

There are various “sincerely held beliefs,” which afford the believer protection from harassment and discrimination and some that don’t. Rights which flow from the universal rights, humanism, Constitution, or from ascribed (or derived) “protected classes.” The Pope seems to be the “decider” in this case, yet I’m not sure he really puts to rest the essence of the question. So, should it be that a believer who in all sincerely holds a view consistent with the long, long teaching of their faith and church who now must contend with an emergency decision made by a novel Pope in a changing Church can have that sincerely held belief nullified?

The doctor’s reasoning is a bit fakakta in that this physician, care-giver had two choices to fulfill the first part of the Hippocratic Oath and “do no harm” by either getting the vaccine, or abstaining from practicing.

By cybah on Wed, 10/09/2024 - 6:11pm.

Let me understand something...

she believes the vaccines were derived from aborted fetuses and that goes against her Christian beliefs.

She believes that and expects to remain a doctor? Take away her license and let her out to pasture. This lady is a.... quack. For real.

Crazy these people hear this crap on fringe "news" sources and really do believe what they say.

But then again she believes in a fable so I think her belief system might be off too.

By Friartuck on Wed, 10/09/2024 - 6:30pm.

The way.