Concerned the Biden administration was pushing abortion after the Dobbs ruling, Stephanie Carter suspected that political push would conflict with her own personal convictions about abortion in her job at the Olin E. Teague Veterans’ Center in Temple, Texas.
“She has a sincerely held religious objection to using her skills as a nurse practitioner in any way connected to abortion," Holly Randall, a First Liberty associate counsel, says of Carter.
Federal law technically bans VA facilities from providing abortions, which should shield Carter and others from participating in them, but the abortion-obsessed Biden administration is ignoring that prohibition and is allowing abortions to be performed anyway at VA-run facilities.
According to Randall, Carter approached a VA supervisor about her objection only to learn there was no process to file a religious accommodation.
“There was no accommodation structure to seek that more formally,” the First Liberty attorney explains. “And so once we filed our lawsuit, that was a signal to the VA that they need to take these types of accommodation seriously."
Because a nurse practitioner in Texas followed her convictions, Randall says, the VA is now respecting the moral convictions of medical providers nationwide.
“Simply because she had the courage to stand up," the attorney says.
