I found last Thursday’s story on Florida Catholic to be quite inspiring: More Catholic doctors scrub contraceptive scripts. [Thanks to James H. at Opinionated Catholic for bringing it to my attention.]
The story focuses on Drs. Rebecca and Benjamin Peck in Ormond Beach, Florida, USA. In spite of being Catholic, they had prescribed contraceptives to patients in the past. However, they stopped doing so recently.
Last fall, the husband-and-wife team issued a letter to patients describing the side effects of using the pill, which include increased risk of breast and cervical cancer, heart disease, blood clots and death. The pill can also have an abortifacient effect because it does not keep sperm from meeting the egg. Though the principal way the pill prevents pregnancy is by preventing ovulation, it also thins a woman’s uterine lining, making it difficult to impossible for a fertilized egg to implant.
The reaction to the Peck’s decision has been positive:
About 90 percent of the Pecks’ 4,000 patients supported the doctors’ decision to stop prescribing contraception, the Pecks said. Heidi McCarthy, who has been a patient for more than two years, said she is honored to have Rebecca Peck as her doctor.
“In today’s politics of medicine, there are very, very few physicians who will stand up for what they believe in from an ethical standpoint; basically, they take the American Medical Association’s recommendations of everything,” McCarthy said. “(Rebecca Peck’s) decision was partly because of her religious beliefs but also because of her medical-ethical beliefs, and that is tantamount to the Hippocratic oath of first, do no harm.”
These doctors are taking their faith seriously and putting it into practice: something all of us need to do every day. Dr. Rebecca Peck said it well: “I think Catholics have to get back on the ball. God’s calling us all to live the truth. You’ve got to make a stand.”
