Get to know the story of the American doctor who once performed abortions and after his conversion became a pro-life specialist!
Dr. John Bruchalski is known in the United States as a pro-life physician. His clinic operates as the country's largest, fully pro-life obstetrics and gynecology clinic. Tepeyac is a non-profit organization that cares for all women, whether they can afford the treatments or not. Dr. Bruchalski also takes time to travel across the country promoting the practice of Christ-centered medicine. However, this was not always the case;
get to know the story of the American doctor who once performed abortions and after his conversion became a pro-life specialist!
Dr. Bruchalski now encourages doctors and other health professionals to follow Christian principles that reflect the dignity of the human person and the unity of body and soul. However, at the beginning of his medical career, he had a completely different opinion. John was raised in a devout Catholic family, but he drifted away from the faith in his young adulthood. He believed that the Catholic Church's teachings on sexual morality would eventually move toward mainstream thought, and that everyone would recognize that abortion, contraception, and the sexual revolution were necessary for women's happiness.
He began his medical studies in 1983, and from 1987 he worked as a resident in obstetrics and gynecology. At that time, he already practiced the full range of reproductive medicine: contraception, sterilization, abortion, artificial insemination, embryo destruction, and even gained a reputation for his expertise in late-term termination of pregnancy.
"Medicine teaches you to never say you're wrong. This is especially true in the world of reproductive health care, where the lie lives that abortion, the death of the fetus, the killing of the child in the mother's womb is good medicine and healthy for humans.
said the doctor in an interview with him recently.
Dr. Bruchalski's conversion from an abortion gynecologist to a pro-life physician began when he witnessed the effects of abortions around him. He didn't see how happy they would be in women who had abortions or were on contraceptives, in fact; these devices only brought more broken relationships, more infections, more destruction, more brokenness into their lives.
Early in her residency, she and a friend made a pilgrimage to Mexico City to visit the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of unborn children. There he clearly heard a woman's voice asking him: Why are you hurting me? But John's heart was hard, and he concluded that his perception was influenced by the heat, that he must be imagining things, and buried the question deep within himself.
"I was as good at keeping babies alive as I was at ending a fetus's life"
said the doctor.
"I held the secular view that we only talk about life if the mother wants the baby and if the fetus is healthy. If the fetus is sick, we get rid of it.”
On the way to his conversion, he was also pushed forward by a shocking case: "once a pregnant woman came to me, who went into labor in the 23rd week of pregnancy. The woman found out that she was pregnant at all and did not want to keep the child. 'I want to get rid of him! Take it out of me!' - said the lady who was abandoned by her partner, who did not receive spiritual and financial support from home and was poor... so she wanted abortion due to the most common factors.
I performed an abortion on her, but the child was born alive. What does a failed abortion mean? A living baby fighting for survival.
I picked up the fetus in a bucket and first covered it with a towel so that the mother could not hear its cries, because the fetus was moving and moaning. According to the official procedure, if it is an unwanted pregnancy, the child's life must be terminated. So I tried to strangle him. Meanwhile, there was another woman in the next room who was also 23 weeks pregnant, but she wanted to keep the child, so we used all the medicines and methods we could with the doctors. I encouraged him to persevere.
Then I went back to the other room, picked up the aborted but alive fetus by the head, and because I felt it was heavy, I put it on the scale. It weighed 505 grams. In Virginia, if the baby weighs more than 500 grams, the neonatologist (newborn doctor) must be called. That's how I did it. When the doctor arrived in the room, she quickly assessed the situation and told me firmly:
'don't treat my patients like cancer!'
Then he left, they brought in the incubator with other doctors and fought to keep the fetus alive, which was successful. The fetus was translucent, hairless, and moaning. After I failed to monitor her for trying to kill her - following the procedure for failed abortions - this doctor worked to save her life. Something stopped in me there.
'Why did you do this?' the doctor asked me. 'Your mother didn't want to keep you,' I answered. 'So the definition of life is based on someone else? Hasn't history shown us that this is not a good thing? I know that you are Catholic and that you have fallen away from the faith. You must go to Medjugorje.' At this moment I broke.
I used to be told that abortion was safe, and then I was confronted with the data, the links between abortion and breast cancer, abortion and premature birth, abortion and cervical cancer, abortion and mental illness.”
Two days later, to Dr. Bruchalski's astonishment, his mother called and asked him to accompany her on a trip to none other than Medjugorje. John went with him, where a Belgian seer, who did not know him, told him that he had received a message from the Virgin; be the best doctor you can be, follow and spread the teachings of the Church and serve the poor daily. Everything became clear to the doctor and everything made sense; the evil of contraception, abortion and artificial reproduction, the truth of natural law and the teachings of the Church and the love of Jesus Christ. The direction of his future was forever changed.
After returning from Medjugorje, Dr. Bruchalski informed his hospital that he could no longer perform abortions, prescribe contraceptives, and engage in artificial reproduction. "Just keep quiet," his boss told him, rolling his eyes and saying, "I hope this isn't some kind of religious conversion." But Dr. Bruchalski didn't listen, and more and more of his fellow residents followed suit and stopped performing abortions.
After residency training and two years of work, he felt a strong calling to create his own practice. From an abortion doctor, he became a life-saving gynecologist who opened the Tepeyac Family Center in 1994, where he treats all women, regardless of their financial situation. Dr. Bruchalski and his clinic are caring for the second generation of mothers - one of the first babies, whose mother gave birth in the life-saving clinic, recently became a mother herself.
Source and featured image: 777
