Local

Dr. Bruchalski, a giver-of-life

Katie Scott | Catholic Herald

Dr. John Bruchalski, founder of Tepeyac Family Center, works in his Fairfax office. Bruchalski began the obstetrical and gynecological practice 20 years ago to serve the poor and women in crisis pregnancies.

1418221915_3337.jpg

What is the weight of a human life?

The scale in the delivery room was supposed to tell Dr. John
Bruchalski. Would the baby, born prematurely to a mother who
didn’t want it, weigh less than 500 grams and therefore be
classified as “medical waste”? Or would the numbers read
ever-so-slightly higher, declaring the baby “viable”?

As the scale tipped to 505 grams, Bruchalski hit the button
to elicit the aid of nursery doctors.

That moment and the ones that followed would become part of
three pivotal experiences – two included the not-so-subtle
prodding of Mary – that led Bruchalski to abandon his work in
abortions and artificial fertility methods and instead build
a medical practice that supports patients holistically.
Health care for women, he realized, is not about fertility
rights; it’s about relationships.

Breaking the ‘chains of fertility’

Bruchalski always knew he wanted to be a healer. “I wanted to
care for people, I wanted to meet their needs,” he said
during a recent interview in his Fairfax office. At 54, white
has begun to creep into the gray beard that frames his
frequent smile. Bruchalski has a gentle manner and a voice to
match.

Raised in a Polish Catholic family in northern New Jersey, he
was dedicated to Mary as a young child and loved saying the
rosary, even as he slowly abandoned his faith.

“I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the mother of
God,” he said.

Bruchalski attended Catholic schools, but he recalls the
catechesis of the 1960s and ’70s as “a little relativistic.”
As a high schooler asking big questions about life, the
“priests didn’t seem very happy and didn’t have the answers,”
said Bruchalski.

In college, he began to see his female friends’ “struggle
with fertility” as something to be solved, he said. “I saw
everything in terms of rights. I thought I needed to liberate
women from the chains of their fertility if I was going to go
into medicine.”

So, after graduating from the University of South Alabama
College of Medicine in Mobile, Bruchalski completed his
residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Eastern Virginia
Medical Center and the Jones Institute for Reproductive
Medicine in Norfolk. The Jones Institute created the first
American “test-tube baby,” one created through in vitro
fertilization, in 1981.

The institute was on the cutting edge of contraceptive
research and development, and Bruchalski was learning how to
build embryos and destroy and prevent pregnancies.

Thinking in terms of how to control a woman’s fertility
forces you to “see a woman’s body as much like a machine and
its parts,” which can be manipulated as desired, Bruchalski
said.

He did feel some growing doubts about his work. While he was
trying to alleviate suffering, he was seeing an increasing
number of sexually transmitted diseases and a sense of
brokenness in his patients.

A pierced heart

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.”

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.

The Catholic woman added, “Oh, and by the way, I just got
back from a place called Medjugorje. I think you’d love it.”

Medjugorje, located in Bosnia-Herzegovina, is a site where
reported Marian apparitions draw pilgrims from around the
world. The Vatican has not yet recognized the alleged
apparitions, but has said Catholics are free to pray there.

Just two days after the unsettling interaction, Bruchalski
received a call from his mother asking if he wanted to go on
a winter vacation to Yugoslavia, including a trip to
Medjugorje.

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.

Medicine as mercy

Returning to the states, Bruchalski told his boss he could no
longer perform abortions, in vitro fertilizations or
prescribe contraception.

He read the works of St. Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun who
promoted devotion to the Divine Mercy, and St. John Paul’s
writings on the theology of the body. Eventually, he returned
to the Catholic Church.

Bruchalski, now a longtime parishioner of St. Joseph Church
in Herndon, came to understand all the things that were
missing in his previous efforts to help women.

“I saw the science behind (natural family planning) and the
practical reasons why our church teaches certain things,” he
said. “They weren’t laws anymore, they were actually ways of
living a full life.”

In order to fulfill the call to “see the poor daily,”
Bruchalski and his wife, Carolyn, started
Tepeyac Family Center
in their basement 20 years ago.
Their goal was to establish an affordable obstetrical and
gynecological facility that combined excellent medicine with
the healing presence of Jesus, reaching out especially to
those in crisis pregnancies and to the poor.

“Seeing the poor is the pumice, it’s the friction that keeps
you honest in life,” he said. “Once you stop seeing the poor,
medicine becomes a commodity.”

Located in Fairfax, the nonprofit has five doctors and
delivered close to 700 babies this year. At least 50 percent
of patients are not Catholic.

“We don’t proselytize,” said Bruchalski. You meet people
where they are, and by your example, witness and joy, you
radiate the beauty of the faith, he said.

In the late 1990s, Bruchalski founded Divine Mercy Care,
which serves as an umbrella organization to support Tepeyac.

Bruchalski now is an expert on NFP, gives countless talks and
has received multiple awards, including the People of Life
Award from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2007.

Although he’s had his own share of health problems, including
cancer 17 years ago, he quickly brushes them off, preferring
to keep the focus on his patients.

Bruchalski speaks lovingly about his faith, but the best
expression of it is in his medical practice and his belief
that each life is beyond measure – or weight – and that he is
one small instrument of healing.

“Medicine is an act of mercy, and health care is based on
relationships,” said Bruchalski. “Only when you rest in Jesus
are you truly healthy. Jesus is the Divine Physician. When
you can abide in the heart of Christ and have a relationship
with Him, you’re healthy – body, soul and spirit.”

Find out more

To learn more about Tepeyac Family Center, go here.

Related Articles