Opinion ID: 876934
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: whether the right to refuse is outweighed by other considerations

Text: The third issue that we address relates to the conclusions of law adopted by the District Court. In both of these conclusions, the District Court determined that Swanson's right to refuse to participate in sterilization was outweighed by considerations outside the scope of her conscience. The first conclusion of the District Court was that the right of refusal to participate in sterilization was far outweighed by the rights of the hospital under the circumstances of this case to maintain its standards as an effective employer and operator of the only hospital in an isolated geographic area. The District Court bases this conclusion upon its findings that substitute nurse-anesthetists available to replace Swanson must be procured from Bonners Ferry, Idaho, a 55 mile distance or Kalispell, Montana, a 90 mile distance; that such substitutes are employed at other hospitals and available only when their schedules do not conflict; that continual arrangements for substitutes are unacceptable to the hospital because of traveling and scheduling difficulties; that uncertainty results in the hospital as to when a sterilization procedure might be accomplished, that are detrimental to patients; and that the cost of substitutes is greater, and is an additional burden to the hospital and to the hospital patients. By so concluding, the District Court reads into former section 69-5223 provisos that the legislature itself did not see fit to include. Instead, the legislature said,  All persons shall have the right to refuse . . to participate in sterilization ... The statutory right is unqualified, and it may not be qualified or limited by the District Court on other considerations. It is noteworthy that the hospital does not attack the validity or constitutionality of section 69-5223. By accepting the statute as constitutional, the hospital must accept the statute in the way it is written, which in this case means it applies to all persons irrespective of their geographic location and the discomfitures that might result from the exercise of the statutory right. Secondly, the District Court concludes that the right of Swanson under the conscience statute is far outweighed by her inability to maintain herself as an effective employee of the defendant. We assume this means that by exercising her right of refusal, the employment duties that Marjorie Swanson would ordinarily perform in the operating room must be handled by someone else in sterilizations and therefore she is not an effective employee. Again, former section 69-5223 admits of no such limitation or qualification, nor may the statutory rights of Marjorie Swanson be so weighed because to do so would emasculate her statutory rights.