A lab technician says her bosses at a Catholic hospital on Long Island fired her over her beliefs as a fundamentalist Christian after she started a program to give miscarried fetuses a proper burial.
Penny Bartell-Schlachter claims in her discrimination lawsuit against Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip that the medical center at first supported her efforts to change the industry standard of throwing the fetuses in the trash.
Starting in 2009 the devout lab tech would wrap the fetuses in baby blankets and perform burials, the Suffolk County suit states.
But Bartell-Schlachter, 58, says coworkers started ridiculing her act as “hokey,” “odd” and “strange” — and she claims she was denied a promotion as a result.
She was eventually demoted and then ousted in May 2013, the suit says, on grounds she violated privacy policies by taking photos of the fetuses during burial preparation.
The Centereach, LI mother told The Post her firing came after she showed a digital photo of one of the fetuses to a supervisor who was uncomfortable with the image, telling her, “I don’t like that.”
Bartell-Schlachter believes management “retaliated against her for her faith,” according to her suit.
She claims the photos did not violate federal medical privacy regulations because she never disclosed patient identities.
Since she started the burial campaign with nuns from the hospital’s pastoral center, Bartell-Schlachter believes the group has laid to rest almost 280 fetuses.
“My goal was to leave a legacy that lost babies like this would be buried,” she said. “It’s only proper for their parents to know where their babies bodies have gone.”
A granite memorial was donated by the Catholic Diocese of Rockville Center and is located just inside the entrance gates at Queen of All Saints Cemetery.
“What Ms. Bartel-Schlachter did for the hospital was something that was very important, particularly from a religious standpoint. To pull the rug out from under her now is just not right and it’s not Christian,” her attorney, Steven Morelli told The Post.
Colleen Valdini, a spokeswoman for Good Samaritan said, “We can confirm that Penny Bartel-Schlachter was terminated on May 17, 2013. We do not comment on current pending litigation, but we can tell you that her termination was legitimate and had nothing to do with religion.”