A Catholic mental health worker who was fired by the NHS after giving a work colleague a booklet about the 
effects of abortion on women’s mental health has taken an unfair dismissal case.
Ms Margaret Forrester (pictured) has issued an Employment Tribunal claim for unfair dismissal, direct and indirect religious and belief discrimination, and religious and belief harassment.
She is being represented by the Thomas More Legal Centre, a UK charity which defends freedom of speech, conscience and belief and to represent individuals in cases involving discrimination on grounds of religion or belief.
Ms Forrester is also considering bringing a Civil Claim under the UK’s Human Rights Act for breaches of Article 9 (freedom of Religion) and Article 10 (Freedom of Speech).
Ms Forrester discussed the booklet, called Forsaken, with family planning staff at the health centre where she worked because she felt that the NHS was failing to give patients information about the risks of abortion or telling them of options other than terminating a pregnancy.
But after a six-month disciplinary process, during which Ms Forrester had to fight her own case and became ill, she was found guilty of “gross professional misconduct” and fired.
She has spoken out over the “scandal” of what she says is the pro-abortion culture in the medical profession and claimed that Christians were “an easy target” for “politically correct” bureaucrats in the NHS.
“The NHS has a pro-abortion stance which comes from a secular religion. It is a belief system which is aggressively anti-Christian,” she said.
Ms Forrester’s difficulties began on Nov 2 last year, when she had an informal conversation with a colleague in her role as a psychological wellbeing practitioner in Westminster, central London.
The 40 year-old, from Battersea, south London, was worried that women seeking medical advice for a “crisis pregnancy” were routinely offered abortions without consideration of other options, and with no meaningful discussion of the risks.
“Women would be coming in crisis — anxious, depressed, alone,” Ms Forrester said. “As an example of the patients I was concerned about, I showed my colleague a copy of a pamphlet called Forsaken, which details five true stories of women who had an abortion, were traumatised and were not informed of the potential consequences or alternatives.”
But a week later, after her managers found out, Ms Forrester was suspended from her duties at Central North West London Mental Health Trust. Last month, after a series of lengthy hearings and an unsuccessful appeal, she was sacked.
Her legal representative says that it is important to note that Mrs Forrester was never alleged to have given this booklet to a patient or to have failed to carry out her professional duties correctly.
She was found guilty of gross misconduct solely because she gave a work colleague the as part of a general discussion on abortion.
According to Neil Addison, who heads up the Thomas More Legal Centre, the NHS found Ms Forrester “guilty of “gross misconduct” the exact wording of the disciplinary charge being that she had “distributed materials which individuals may find offensive”.
In her claim to the Employment Tribunal claim this allegation is described as being “so vague as to be meaningless” and a breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights which protects freedom of speech.
Mr Addison said: “The NHS is claiming that Mrs Forrester was dismissed because she would not attend work however the reality is that as part of the disciplining of her the NHS told Mrs Forrester that she was to be moved to a different job even though she objected to the move and wanted to continue with her normal work. The dismissal therefore happened solely because of the NHS’s totally unreasonable response to her expressing an anti-abortion viewpoint to a colleague.”
Ms Forrester said that the NHS was “not holding a neutral stance at all” on the issue of abortion, and said that those who said there were alternatives to abortion “are being bullied and maltreated”.