c. 1999 Religion News Service
Pharmacist who refused to sell morning-after pill sues Kmart
(RNS) A pharmacist who says she was fired by Kmart for refusing to dispense a so-called “morning-after pill” has sued the retail company claiming she was wrongfully terminated.
Karen Brauer of Indiana filed her suit Thursday (Aug. 12), alleging the firing has caused her to lose earnings and professional standing.
The American Center for Law and Justice, a public interest law firm founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati on Brauer’s behalf.
“No employer should be permitted to hold an employee’s religious beliefs hostage in exchange for keeping their job,” said Francis J. Manion, senior Midwestern counsel for the ACLJ. “Both federal and state law makes it illegal to fire a person because of their religion. Kmart violated those laws when they fired our client because she refused to abandon her religious beliefs.”
Mary Lorencz, director of corporate media relations for Kmart, said the retailer could not respond specifically to the lawsuit.
“However, the company policy that we have provides that we reasonably accommodate an associate’s religious beliefs unless the accommodation would cause an undue hardship,” she said.
Kmart, which is based in Troy, Mich., also has a policy regarding pharmacists, she said.
“Our policy is that they discuss any issues around medications with their district manager and then we are able to accommodate the customer by having another pharmacist on another shift fill the prescription or another pharmacist at another store.”
According to the suit, Brauer was fired in December 1996 after she refused to dispense Micronor. She alleges she was given a choice of being fired or agreeing to a statement that she would fill any prescriptions regardless of her beliefs.
“Brauer holds the view that the deliberate, intentional termination of pregnancy is an immoral, unjustified destruction of a human life,” the suit states. “She further believes that, as a pharmacist, to dispense products having a major abortifacient mechanism is to participate in a medical procedure which results in abortion.”
Brauer, who worked in a Hamilton, Ohio, store, is seeking compensatory and punitive damages.
Man suspected in disappearance of O’Hair given 60 years in prison
(RNS) A man suspected in the 1995 disappearance of Madalyn Murray O’Hair has been sentenced to 60 years in prison for stealing more than $50,000 from her family’s atheist organization.
David Waters, 52, a three-time felon from Austin, Texas, was sentenced Wednesday (Aug. 11).
He had been on probation for the theft charge since 1995, but ended up back in court after federal authorities discovered 119 rounds of handgun ammunition in March in his Austin apartment.
“He knew what he was facing if he messed up,” said Assistant District Attorney Gregg Cox, who had sought a life sentence. “He went ahead and messed up and the judge gave an appropriate punishment.”
Federal authorities suspect Waters orchestrated the disappearance four years ago of O’Hair, her son Jon Garth Murray and adopted daughter Robin Murray O’Hair. No charges have been filed in that case.
Patrick Ganne, Waters’ lawyer, accused federal authorities of attempting to punish his client for the famous atheist’s slaying without having to bring him to trial, the Associated Press reported.
“No one has shown that she’s dead and there is every indication that she tried to make her escape and get away and transferred money to other countries,” said Ganne. “We don’t know what happened.”
When the O’Hair family members disappeared from San Antonio, along with $500,000 in gold coins, authorities questioned whether they had run off with their group’s money or been victims of foul play. Others suggested that the well-known atheist, who was 77 and ailing, had gone off to die quietly so Christians wouldn’t pray over her.
Pope says no to Macau visit before China takes over
(RNS) Pope John Paul II has turned down an invitation by the religious and political leaders of Macau to visit the Portuguese-run enclave before it is handed over to China in December.
A spokesman for the Roman Catholic diocese in Macau, seat of the Vatican’s oldest bishopric in the Far East, said the Holy See has formally declined invitations by Bishop Dom Domingos Lam and Governor General Vasco Rocha Vieira to visit.
John Paul is expected to visit the Far East sometime before the end of the year.
The Vatican gave no reason for declining the invitation but the church has been trying to improve its relations with China and a visit to Macau could have heightened tensions with the mainland government.
Last week, the Roman Catholic diocese in Hong Kong announced that Beijing had barred a visit by the pope to the former British colony. Church officials said the Vatican’s diplomatic ties with Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, prompted the action by Beijing.
Macau has about 25,000 Catholics, or about 6 percent of its population. The diocese was established in 1575.
In a separate but related development, the Vatican has confirmed it has had an “envoy” in Hong Kong since 1989 despite its lack of diplomatic ties with China, Reuters reported.
In a statement, the Vatican said the Rev. Fernando Filoni, an official at the Vatican’s embassy in the Philippines, has been charged with “monitoring the life of the church in Hong Kong and continental China more closely.
“The cleric lives in Hong Kong. It is not a diplomatic mission, but rather of a discreet presence that respects the situation.”
The Vatican has not had ties with China since 1949 and the Beijing government refuses to allow its Catholics to recognize the pope’s authority.
Update: Indonesian police deny killing rioters on church grounds
(RNS) Indonesian security forces have denied firing on civilians inside a church during Christian-Muslim riots that left nearly 100 dead in the nation’s violence-wracked Maluku province this week.
Witnesses said at least 24 people died when security forces fired on rioters in and around a Protestant church in a suburb of Ambon, the provincial capital. Benny Tamaela, the church secretary, said he saw security forces shoot at rioting Christians and Muslims as they fought on church grounds with spears, bows and arrows, and gasoline bombs.
Tamaela said most of those killed were Christians, the Associated Press reported Friday (Aug. 13).
However, a police spokesman denied anyone was shot at the church. He insisted the bodies of dead rioters were brought to the church after they were killed elsewhere.
Since July 24, nearly 100 persons have been killed and 455 have been injured in clashes between Christians and Muslims in Maluku province, one of several regions of Indonesia where violence has been widespread as a result of economic and political uncertainties. Since the start of the year, more than 400 people have been killed in the interreligious strife in Maluku.
German Jewish leader Ignatz Bubis dies
(RNS) Ignatz Bubis, a Holocaust survivor who headed Germany’s Central Council of Jews for the past seven years, died Friday (Aug. 13) at age 72.
A statement issued by the council said Bubis died after a short illness.
“The Jewish world has lost a great champion of human rights who embodied the Jewish experience from the depths of the Holocaust to the renaissance of Jewish identity and peoplehood,” said Elan Steinberg, the New York-based director of the World Jewish Congress.
Born in Wroclaw, which is now part of Poland, Bubis was 15 when he witnessed his father’s arrest at the hands of the Nazis, never to see him again. He also lost a brother and sister during the Holocaust.
Bubis spent much of the war working in a Nazi forced-labor munitions factory at Czestochowa, Poland. He returned to Germany after the war.
He was elected chairman of the Central Council of Jews, Germany’s leading Jewish communal group, in 1992 and was known for his efforts to counter neo-Nazi and other right-wing factions in Germany. Bubis recently told Stern magazine that, although a German citizen, he wanted to be buried in Israel because he feared his grave would be desecrated in Germany by extremists.
More than 500,000 Jews lived in Germany when Adolf Hitler came to power. Nearly 200,000 died in the Holocaust, and most of the rest left the country. Today, about 60,000 Jews live in Germany, the majority of them relatively recent economic immigrants from Russia and other former Soviet republics, according to the World Jewish Congress.
Quote of the day: American Muslim Council director Aly R. Abuzaakouk
(RNS) “For American Muslims, offering salat al-istiqa would fulfill a religious tradition as well as a civic duty.”
_ American Muslim Council director Aly R. Abuzaakouk, in a statement Aug. 12 urging American Muslims to offer a special prayer for an end to the drought that has gripped the mid-Atlantic region.
DEA END RNS
