Students

Becoming a Catholic OB/GYN and the Need for Others to Make the Journey

December 8, 2023

By Monika Barbara Potocki, M.D.

I was a third-year medical student, and I was in a quandary.

I had been fascinated by pregnancy since the moment I was told, at six years old, that there was a new life blossoming in a family friend’s tummy. As a high school student, I spent much of my free time reading birth stories online. And as a college student, I talked my way into volunteering at a maternity ward; the coordinator informed me that they usually did not allow volunteers in that part of the hospital, but when I mentioned that I would be happy merely to be within earshot of crying newborn babies, she laughed for a solid ten seconds and assigned me to help the registrar with her birth certificate paperwork.

Thus, I had always hoped to become an obstetrician and gynecologist (OB/GYN). But as a devout Catholic, I could not ignore the fact that the field of medicine I adored was filled with things that my beliefs strongly condemned: contraception, abortion, and in vitro fertilization (IVF).

I was reduced to a state of near-panic. Surely, sterilization had to be part of the required curriculum of OB/GYN residencies; how could I even hope to graduate if I declined to tie tubes? Perhaps I might be excused from performing abortion, but how in the world could I avoid prescribing birth control? Therefore, I embarked on a campaign to fall in love with another specialty – any specialty – that was not OB/GYN. But it soon proved to be fruitless. My rotations in psychiatry, interventional radiology, cardiology, internal medicine, family medicine, and surgery all had their good points, but I could not imagine myself working in any of them.

I was stuck. The only specialty I wanted to practice would be the hardest one for me to practice. And then, I had an unforgettable phone call with Dr. Cara Buskmiller, a CMA member and the founder of Conscience in Residency.

Dr. Buskmiller was, at the time, a Catholic OB/GYN resident with viewpoints very similar to mine. One by one, she answered my questions and allayed my fears. She advised me on the best ways to approach the residency application process. She informed me that it was possible to graduate without performing tubal ligations. I will never forget the hope I felt at the conclusion of our phone call. For the first time, I was convinced that while it would not be easy, becoming a truly Catholic OB/GYN was possible.

With that newfound confidence and guidance, I was able to successfully match to an OB/GYN residency. Despite training in a hospital that routinely provided abortions and contraception, by using the strategies Dr. Buskmiller had taught me, I was able to decline participating in ethically problematic procedures and prescriptions while still doing my fair share of work. Furthermore, I was pleasantly surprised by how many of my colleagues were open to having someone like me in their ranks, even though their worldview radically differed from my own.

As expected, I loved being on the Labor and Delivery floor, even at 2am on a Monday morning. I grew ever fonder of gynecological surgeries. After finishing residency, I went on to complete a fellowship in NaproTechnology, a subspecialty dedicated to helping women with infertility and other gynecological problems in ways that do not include the use of birth control and IVF. In the meantime, Dr. Buskmiller impressively completed a fellowship in Maternal Fetal Medicine and is currently finishing a second fellowship in Fetal Surgery.

Overwhelmed with gratitude for all the blessings I had been granted, I began mentoring medical students through Conscience in Residency. It is extraordinarily rewarding to be able to advise and reassure these future doctors, who are wrangling with difficult ethical issues, in the same way that I was once advised and reassured. With every email and phone call, Conscience in Residency slowly dismantles the myth that people with moral objections to certain aspects of contemporary medical practices cannot succeed in particular specialties.

But most importantly, there is another facet of this issue which goes beyond the rights of individual medical students and residents to choose specialties without fear of discrimination because of their beliefs: the rights of patients to have access to a doctor who understands their values.

Contrary to popular belief, there is a sizable population of women who do not want to be offered birth control at every gynecology appointment. There are a lot of couples who have just received a devastating prenatal diagnosis and want a physician who will recommend perinatal hospice rather than an abortion. And not everyone is willing to head to the local IVF clinic if they are experiencing infertility. However, as many of these women are not vocal about their religious or ethical commitments at their doctor’s office, the mainstream health care system is often unaware of how prevalent such patients are.

This underserved population desperately needs more faithful health care professionals. Consequently, opening the door for physicians with conscientious objections can be a win-win situation for both parties: patients with similar values will have doctors whom they trust, and physicians will be able to practice the specialty they are passionate about.

Dr. Monika B. Potocki is an OB/GYN and a graduate of the St. John Paul the Great Fellowship in Medical & Surgical NaProTechnology. She plans to practice in New Jersey.