New Job for Doctor Fired from Catholic/Adventist System over Aid-in-Dying Lawsuit
28 October 2019 | Dr. Barbara Morris, a Lakewood, Colorado-based physician fired from Catholic/Adventist-run Centura Health over an aid-in-dying lawsuit, has found a new job.
The Denver Post reported over the weekend that the geriatrician had accepted a job with Stride Community Health Center in Lakewood and that she will start in her new role in February.
According to ReligiousLiberty.TV, Dr. Barbara Morris and Cornelius “Neil” Mahoney, one of her cancer patients, filed a lawsuit on August 21, 2019, asking for a court statement “that Centura may not lawfully prohibit Dr. Morris from, or sanction or penalize Dr. Morris for, providing [medical aid-in-dying] services to Neil [Mahoney], including but not limited to, prescribing AID medication to Neil for use somewhere other than at a Centura Facility.”
Her employment with the system forbade the doctor from encouraging suicide or euthanasia even though Colorado law allows for such treatment under the 2017 “Access to Medical Aid In Dying” act. Morris was fired by Centura after filing the lawsuit.
The Centura network of hospitals, along with many other hospitals and clinics in the state, has declined to allow their physicians to provide aid-in-dying services. According to ReligiousLiberty.TV, the facilities have cited moral and faith-based reasons for the prohibition.
Doctors at the system are required to sign an agreement in which providers agree not to violate ethical and religious directives that, at Centura, consider suicide or euthanasia to never be morally acceptable.
Centura Health is a health system managed under a joint operating agreement formed in 2006 between Adventist Health System and Catholic Health Initiatives. Centura operates facilities in Colorado and Kansas.