Testimony from the Gynaecological-Obstetrical
Frontline
THE FUTURE OF OBSTETRICS AND GYNAECOLOGY: The Fundamental Right To
Practice and be Trained According to Conscience: An International Meeting
of Catholic Obstetricians and Gynaecologist
Organised by the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations
(FIAMC) and by MaterCare International
(MCI)
Sponsored by the Pontifical Council for the Health Pastoral Care ROME, June
17th-20th, 2001
Reproduced with permission
I first like to thank the organizing committee for inviting me to
address this distinguished audience.
As the general theme of this international meeting and workshop is, :
"the fundamental right to practice, on the one side, and to be trained
according to conscience", on the other side, I accordingly, would like to
give you a double testimony from the gynaecological-obstetrical frontline.
The first one will be my own experience as a gynaecologist in a Catholic
hospital, this to illustrate the practice side. The second testimony will
tell us something about training according to conscience at a Catholic
University.
At the end of Residency training in the U.S.A., in 1968, I started as
head of the department of Ob. Gyn. at the St. Joseph hospital in Bruges,
Belgium, this being a private Catholic hospital. In 1988, after a merger
between our hospital and the other Catholic hospital in the city, St. Luke,
I was soon forced to join the 4 colleagues of the bigger St. Luke hospital
and to share alike in a common financial pool.
Since a fair amount of their income was the result of contraception, and
surgical sterilisation, I refused to join the pool, for obvious moral and
ethical reasons. According to my conscience, I could not accept any part of
that income.
I soon was dismissed, losing hospitalisation and surgical privileges. The
letter of dismissal was signed both by our Mother Superior of the St. Joseph
hospital, and the Executive Director of St. Luke, a Reverend Canon, who at
the same time was one of the secretaries of our Bishop. But wonderful are
the ways of the Lord Who will never abandon those who surrender to Him in
trust. I was indeed immediately, granted full privileges in our
"pluralistic" City Hospital; and although the medical director was a
convinced atheist, I could perform my medical duty according to the
Evangelium Vitae principles until my retirement this year, on April the
first. . .