Dr. John Bruchalski, is a former abortionist and now pro-life OB/GYN in Virginia. He once did abortions early in his career following medical school, but then an amazing thing happened.
Bruchalski is the founder of the Tepeyac Family Center in Fairfax, Virginia which is one of the only all pro-life OB/GYN health care practices in the nation. Now that he is pro-life, he is a dynamic and engaging speaker whose story and style reaches people on all sides of the culture battle and shows them the value of an evidence-based approach to medicine and the value of treating the whole person.
But it wasn’t always that way. It took a spark of the divine for him to get out of the abortion business. From the Catholic Herald:
As Bruchalski grappled with his desire to help women and the deep-down feeling something was wrong, he also struggled to push aside a memory. In between medical school and his residency, he’d gone with a friend to Mexico City and visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, located on Tepeyac Hill and the site where Our Lady appeared in 1531 to St. Juan Diego.
There, in front of the image on the tilma, or cloak, of St. Juan Diego, he heard a voice.
“A very clear American voice said, ‘Why are you hurting me?’” Bruchalski recalled. “I heard it clearly, distinctly.”
Not ready to take in what it all meant, he told himself, “I can’t deal with this.”
Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was lacking in his life and work. He began attending an Assembly of God church and volunteering at its crisis pregnancy center. “Meanwhile, I’m going back to my residency and I’m terminating pregnancies,” Bruchalski said. “It became a little schizophrenic.”
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Around that time he delivered the baby that weighed 505 grams. Following the delivery (the baby did not survive), a neonatologist who’d never spoken to him before came up and said: “I’ve seen you with your patients. On one hand, you take such good care of them, and on the other hand, when they don’t want the baby, you give me garbage. These are children, and they deserve better.”
The words pierced his heart.
Bruchalski wasn’t ready to get out of the abortion business yet, it took another divine act during a trip to Yugoslavia to finally move him to act:
At Medjugorje, a young woman from a Belgium pro-life group approached him and said, “I have some messages for you from the Blessed Mother. You’re a doctor, and you’re supposed to help. Open up your diary.”
“Excuse me? Are you crazy?” asked Bruchalski.
But she persisted, and he finally relented, jotting down notes as she spoke.
“In health care, practice excellent medicine, see the poor daily and follow the teachings of my Son’s church,” the woman said. “If you can do those three things, you will help my Son renew the face of the earth.”
“All of a sudden, the scales came off my eyes,” Bruchalski said. “I began to cry. I started telling Jesus I was sorry about everything I’d done. I realized that what I’d done up to that point was not helping people. I was compounding their problems.”
The words scribbled that day into his diary, which he still has, soon became lived acts.
“If the majority of OB/GYNs are pro-choice, then why do only a slim minority actually do abortions? Why is it that the overwhelming majority, who claim they are for abortion, won’t perform them?” the pro-life doctor once asked during a presentation to students.
Thankfully, he’s in that minority now.
