Considering the massive amount of misinformation purposely spread by pro-abortion propagandists since the overturn of Roe, I would like to review a recent, must-read interview that discusses the most debated hard-case issues.
The subject of the interview by author and professor Charles Camosy was Dr. John Bruchalski, a pro-life OB/GYN. What is unique about Bruchalski is not only that he is a Catholic expert in high-risk pregnancies, but also that he used to perform abortions. https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/life-affirming-care-and-the-hardest?r=na2ey&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Bruchalski said that he was “seduced by the new opium of the liberated: elective abortion on demand.” He went along with the idea that women were constrained by their fertility because “modern gynecology residency programs embody” this belief.
Thus, the abortion mentality created a disconnect of logic and programmed it into his training. However, Bruchalski was able to change his thinking through “meaningful relationships, science, and grace.”
Bruchalski operates his own “life-affirming” practice that offers fertility counseling and natural family planning. He is supportive of families that have received an adverse prenatal diagnosis for their child, including offering perinatal hospice.
Elective Abortions Built on Fear
Obstetricians frequently advise abortion instead of treating conditions that threaten the baby or the mother because, Bruchalski said, it can be medically and legally risky. They are thinking of themselves instead of their two patients.
These physicians can really ignite the fear of women facing an unwanted or high-risk pregnancy or a life-limiting prenatal diagnosis by offering elective abortion as the “merciful and medical” solution warns Bruchalski.
After all, abortion generally results from fear, “particularly fear of suffering. It is so sad when we propose killing the unborn child in order to try to prevent any suffering at all.” Doctors must speak honestly to the patients about risks and benefits to establish trust, Bruchalski advised.
Sound medical treatment provides the patient with information; competency and compassion; it does not instill fear but mitigates it. Rather than robbing our patients of an opportunity for courage, or underestimating their capacity to face suffering, we need to speak the medical truth and encourage them.”
Part of that truth: “Elective abortions are never medically necessary, and they don’t undo trauma or eliminate suffering.”
Treatment That Cares Not Kills
Bruchalski contends that there is no reason for the recent confusion about what can be done when the mother’s life is in danger. “We have been treating these conditions without elective abortion before Roe, during Roe and now after Roe, successfully and competently.”
Pro-abortion claims that pro-life laws would just let the mother die are fearmongering. “I never choose the baby over her. I will also never kill her baby because her baby is my patient as well,” Buchalski stated.
“The life-affirming approach is to get both mother and baby as far along in the pregnancy as possible, if it is safe. Most diseases in mothers develop to a life-threatening status after the child is viable and can go to the NICU.”
In other words, you don’t need to end the baby to end the pregnancy. Delivering early is not abortion, despite pro-abortion claims to the contrary, because there is no intent to kill the child. The child might die from complications of prematurity, but that was not the intent of the physician.
Bruchalski further confirmed that miscarriage management (spontaneous abortion) and ectopic management (therapeutic abortion) are not elective abortions because the intent is different, and the target of the treatment is the disease, not the child.
Bruchalski emphasized that, over the last five decades, the understanding of gestational complications has improved significantly. OB/GYNs “can do their best to treat the disease with an integrated, holistic approach to the language of the feminine body.”
As to pregnancies resulting from rape, Bruchalski has found that “Abortion does not alleviate but will likely compound the trauma of rape.” Further, elective abortion can be used to cover up the crime or leave it unreported.
The brutal violence of rape has already damaged the heart, mind and soul of the victim, Bruchalski said. “Turning her against her unborn child in an elective abortion will not fix that and has a significant chance to compound the trauma. Trauma piles up.”
Challenges and Opportunities
“Protecting our conscience-based, scientifically sound, medical treatment that does not involve elective abortions is paramount in fighting the discrimination coming from licensing boards in the states to coerce or punish us into providing or referring for elective abortions,” Bruchalski declared.
However, for both physicians and mothers: “Obstacles can become opportunities. Grace does the hard work.”
This author highly recommends reading the entire interview with Bruchalski to learn more about his amazing journey to becoming pro-life and to fortify your knowledge against pro-abortion lies about medical pregnancy procedures.
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