Letter to My Obstetrician 
p.12
By Lisa M. Contini, copyright 1994

DEAR DOCTOR,

Lately I've found myself counting my blessings more than usual. Looking 
at my three beautiful children I can't help but thank God for giving 
them to me, for their good health, and for all the joy and knowledge 
I've gleaned as a mother. Considering the unusual circumstances 
surrounding all three of my labors, I also thank God for leading me to 
such excellent medical resources.

I first met you at about the mid-point of my third pregnancy. After two 
weeks of making phone calls in search of a pro-life obstetrician, I was 
very relieved to find your practice. Aside from my conviction against 
financially supporting an abortionist by utilizing the "legitimate 
services" in his practice, I can't bear the thought of his killing 
hands touching me.

Not only am I grateful for your pro-life position, but for your medical 
expertise as well. After carrying her for eight long months, I almost 
lost my second child, Vanna. She turned from a beautiful rosy pink, to 
blue, to gray, seconds after birth. Instead of placing her in my 
eager arms, the nurses whisked her away from me and tried to rouse her 
from death's sleep. Before I had a chance to fully comprehend the 
gravity of her condition, a specialist had arrived and carried her out 
of the room. It was a good thing that his back was to me and that I 
wasn't able to see him performing infant CPR on her. Surely, I'd have 
followed him out of the delivery room, even though I still required 
medical attention.

Vanna tested positive for group-B strep, the bacteria that houses 
itself quietly in the host for years, but becomes life-threatening to 
the baby once the protective bag of waters breaks. And if you remember, 
unlike most women, my water breaks hours before my labor actually 
commences. Fortunately, Vanna was revived. She responded well to 
antibiotics and has filled my life with laughter and warmth ever since. 
Her doctor warned me that I was probably a carrier, and that this 
infection could be transmitted at birth to any other children I might 
bear.

Plagued with these memories, I was very fearful when I came to you in 
the midst of my third pregnancy. When I tested positive as a group-B 
strep carrier, my fear grew. It's awful living in fear. Due to the 
excellent care I received from you and your partner, my precious Gina 
was born in perfect health, even though my bag of waters had ruptured 
hours before.

But I'm grateful to you for much more. Even though I was nervous and 
full of questions, you were always patient and kind. You never rushed 
through my appointment, so I always felt as though I were the only 
patient you had to see that day. You were encouraging, and positive, 
and warm. You told me to pray. Then, when it was time for Gina to be 
born, even though my water had broken, and I wasn't in labor, and I 
knew I carried the infection, the fear that had haunted me for months 
was gone. I'll never forget you for that.


I guess that's why, in the months preceding Gina's birth, I felt so 
hurt when asked three times by you and your staff if I wanted my tubes 
tied. All during my prenatal care, you always referred to the child 
growing in my womb as a baby. You always acknowledged her humanity. 
You're a father yourself. Your daughter is Vanna's age. You value human 
life.

And I know that you also value your Catholic faith, perhaps as much as 
I value mine. Aside from life itself and the life of His Son, the 
greatest gift bestowed on us by our Heavenly Father is the power to 
generate new life. Our individual freedom to choose doesn't give us the 
right to refuse and reject God's gift. The Catholic Church concurs. 
What if Mary had refused God's gift, and His will for her?

Sterilization is the ultimate in non-abortive artificial birth control. 
The term "birth control," no matter what method is employed, always 
carries the same significance: no births and no self-control. The 
"freedom" it offers allows us to use another human being to fulfill our 
sexual desires whenever we want with absolutely no discipline and no 
responsibility (when birth control fails we say it's the method's 
fault, not the fault of the parties who are actually responsible). As 
the song goes, "What's love got to do with it?" We see it in 
relationships all the time, with married as well as unmarried partners. 
When one of them isn't getting all of his or her wants satisfied any 
more, the relationship is over. Birth control makes us self-centered 
because procreation, one of God's purposes for physical union between a 
man and a woman, is nullified.

Instead, our purpose becomes limited to self-gratifying physical 
pleasure. In this sense it truly cheapens the marriage bed. In fact, 
birth control and sterilization have widened the road to infidelity by 
making both parties in adultery "safe." But "safe" from what, Doctor? 
Safe from pregnancy. Birth control - I continue to include 
sterilization in this discourse - is the first step in treating 
pregnancy as a disease. We use birth control and sterilization as 
though they were preventive medicine. When a method fails (and 
sterilizations also fail), the pregnancy is further treated as a 
disease and is surgically extracted.

Look what this has done. The promise of birth control was to eliminate 
the need for abortions. Yet in this country alone abortion kills 1.6 
million preborn babies every year. In every country worldwide where 
birth control and sterilization are acceptable, the practice of 
abortion also flourishes. In Third World countries, Planned Parenthood 
is pushing uneducated, misinformed and under-informed indigent people 
into using birth control and into being sterilized as a means of 
population control. "Control" - there's that word again. Why can't we 
just leave control in the hands of God, where it belongs? In China, 
women are forced to have abortions if they become pregnant when they 
already have one child. The relationship between birth control (to 
include sterilization) and abortion cannot be ignored by anyone who 
professes to be pro-life. I'm hoping that in reading this, Doctor, you 
will examine that relationship. Perhaps you too are misinformed or 
under-informed. Please rest assured that if I didn't trust your 
commitment to life, or your sincerity, I wouldn't bother to write.

When my precious Gina was 14 months old, I found myself pregnant once 
again. I was thrilled and overjoyed to be nurturing a new life deep 
within me. But then one night, only six weeks after I conceived, I 
started to bleed. The next morning you examined me and said there was a 

50% chance that I would lose my baby. But you sent me home with much 
more. You assured me that if I did miscarry, it would be an act of 
nature and not something I could have caused. Of all the emotions I 
experienced during that time, I can't begin to tell you how grateful I 
am that I didn't have to deal with guilt. Again, you took plenty of 
time to answer my questions even though my appointment was unscheduled. 
And like all those other times, you were encouraging, positive, and 
kind. It was a horribly difficult time for me, and you really helped me 
through.

Later that night, about 24 hours after the bleeding had started, I had 
a miscarriage.

I had three appointments with you after that. The first was the 
hardest. I brought the stillborn baby with me to help you determine 
what additional treatment I might need. I placed my baby in the 
center of your gloved hand, and I watched as you gazed thoughtfully 
through the intact amniotic sac. Finally, you extended your hand closer 
to me and very gently said, "Look, Lisa, you can see your baby in 
there."

No doubt you've uttered similar words to dozens of grieving women. Yet 
I can't help but wonder whether you've ever really considered the 
significance of those words. By saying "your baby" instead of "embryo," 
or "fetus," or anything else, you acknowledged the child's humanity. In 
a very real sense, you assured me that it was all right for me to 
grieve, even with all the twisted, confused emotions I was 
experiencing. If I had delivered anything except a baby, there would 
have been no life lost, and no reason to grieve.

A moment later I found myself weeping uncontrollably, and too ashamed 
of it to raise my gaze from the floor. You put your arm around me. Of 
all the people who tried to console me in the weeks that followed, of 
all the people who hurt for me, I believe that you were the only one 
who hurt with me.

In the subsequent appointments, you continued to encourage and console 
me. You offered wise advice. You are blessed with the incredible gift 
of being able to say the right thing with very few words. I've found 
your wise counsel very powerful in my healing, slow though it was. No 
doubt I'll keep some of your words in my heart always.

I guess that's why my heart sank when you offered me artificial 
contraception. It seemed like such a contradiction coming from you. The 
baby I had just lost was a precious, cherished little life, yet a life 
that was meant to be, if only for a very short time. You acknowledged 
that. In contracepting, we snuff out life that is meant to be.

Had I accepted your offer, you would have given me any method of birth 
control I wanted, even an abortifacient such as the Pill, Norplant, or 
an IUD. I would have lost more babies - in "menstrual abortions," 
without my knowledge. When I suggested that you eliminate contraception 
from your practice, despite my apprehension about approaching you on 
such a sensitive issue, you were patient and kind. A less courageous 
man, or one who didn't value the truth as you do, would have asked me 
to leave.

At the time I had no idea how many lives were actually destroyed by 
abortifacient methods. From your response, I believe that you didn't 
know either. It doesn't matter how many, and in your heart you know 

that too. But the truth is that every woman using the Pill for seven 
years will lose at least one baby.[1] Using the lowest rate of 
breakthrough ovulation, experts estimate that oral contraceptives cause 
the death of at least 843,000 babies annually in the United States 
alone.[2] The death rate is obviously higher with an IUD, which never 
prevents fertilization; it only interferes with implantation. Norplant 
fails to prevent ovulation from 11% to over 70% of the time[3]: how 
many "menstrual abortions" per year is that?

I want you to rest assured, though, that I don't doubt your sincerity 
or motives. Although the contraceptive mentality is wrong, it is 
understandable as a normal part of our socialization today. Certainly 
in medical school, surrounded by accomplished physicians and professors 
and their writings, all praising the benefits of contraception and 
sterilization, and all avoiding the moral issue, it would be very 
difficult to avoid the infusion of this doctrine into your personal 
stock of values. If I were a doctor, I'd probably have accepted these 
teachings as well.

In fact, I did accept them, for a very long time. When I was a young 
girl, I was exposed to the contraceptive mentality, and accepted it as 
one of my values. My mother, a devout Catholic, used the Pill. Years 
later, as a matter of convenience, my father, also Catholic, was 
sterilized. The message of their activity, of their disobedience to the 
Church, rang loud and clear: "I know the Church forbids it, but in this 
area my opinion, my choice, outweighs Church teaching." Unfortunately, 
I've contracepted, too.

In spite of my confusion and ignorance, I finally decided to make 
Natural Family Planning (NFP) a routine part of my life. My decision 
had nothing to do with Church teaching. I was scared to death of the 
Pill because my mother got so sick from it, and I was opposed to the 
IUD because I knew it was an abortifacient. Norplant wasn't available 
at the time. The other methods didn't really appeal to me, and since 
I'm really a purist at heart anyway, I learned NFP. And it has worked. 
All four of my pregnancies were anticipated - not that it matters - but 
NFP really does work well.

NFP, when used properly, is not a method of birth control at all. It 
should be called "fertility awareness," for with it a couple can space 
the births of their children at reasonable intervals. Obviously, it 
does take some control to do this, as abstinence is required during 
those fertile times when delaying the birth of the next child is 
desirable. But NFP is not meant to exclude children.

I had absolutely no knowledge of the abortifacient effects of the Pill 
or Norplant until a few years ago. I've spoken to women who were using 
abortifacient methods but didn't know they were using abortifacients. 
Their doctors hadn't told them. The pharmaceutical inserts don't 
exactly volunteer the facts either. 

I'd been practicing NFP in my marriage for several years when I finally 
started to read some of the Church's teachings on the sanctity of human 
life, birth control, and sterilization. I couldn't help but admit that 
the Church has been absolutely right all these years. Knowledge 
overcomes ignorance, even confused ignorance like mine.

Despite all the abuses in medicine today, I do esteem, respect and 
appreciate good doctors like you. Not only are you among the most 
intelligent members of our population but, because of your commitment 

to healing, you continue to educate yourselves by reading and attending 
seminars. If Catholics were as well-read in matters of faith as doctors 
are in matters of medicine, we'd all be good Catholics. Doctors don't 
claim confused ignorance on medical issues; they accept their 
responsibility to utilize the available medical literature. Catholics, 
as a rule, don't do the same. We don't seek to increase our knowledge 
of the faith by reading the available literature. If we did, we 
wouldn't contracept or be sterilized, and Catholic doctors wouldn't 
sterilize their patients or give them contraceptives.

My miscarriage forced me to acknowledge how quickly and unexpectedly 
death can come. Confronting the reality of my own death, anticipated or 
sudden, I must also face the reality of final judgment. There I'll be, 
alone with all my sins, floundering badly for a halfway decent answer 
to that one hard question: "Why?" I can't believe that pleading 
confused ignorance will keep me from the eternal fires of Hell, not 
when the information I needed to clarify the matter was always mine for 
the asking.

Doctor, I come to you as a sister in Christ, genuinely concerned about 
your salvation. Confront the reality of final judgment. If you were to 
die tonight, how would you answer the question "Why did you sterilize 
My daughters and give them contraceptives when you knew it was wrong?"


May God bless you and guide you in all your endeavors.
1. John F. Kippley, "The Pill and Early Abortion," ALL About Issues, 
August-September, 1989.

2. Bogomir M. Kuhar, "Abortifacient Drugs and Devices: Do the Numbers 
Add Up?" Beginnings, May-June 1993.

3. Bogomir M. Kuhar, "Current Trends in Abortifacient Drugs and 
Devices," on the research of Thomas Hilgers, Ph.D., Human Life 
International's 12th World Conference, Houston, TX, April 18, 1993.

Lisa Contini lives in Texas.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------