January 1, 2023, my first day of retirement. It seemed unbelievable after more than 40 years of uninterrupted work as a primary care physician. So many joys, satisfactions, reconsiderations, studies, rectifications; all for the good of the patient.
Only one unpleasantness that sadly accompanied me throughout that time: the demand for contraceptives by many users of the National Health System and the obligatory - and unpleasant - refusal that a doctor, whether Catholic or not, must express.
Indeed, it is unpleasant because, despite the desire to help in everything that we physicians have by vocation, we know that after the refusal to prescribe these products, there follows a moment of uncomfortable tension between the physician and the client, whose countenance becomes sullen, harsh, hard, warning of a very possible rupture of relations.
Although I have always tried, when the case arose, to ensure that my reasoning against such a proposition included an absolute openness to the patient for any other health problems she might need from me, it was usually little or no consideration:
- "Then who can prescribe for me?"
This has been the most common response.
-Well, I have the right.
-Well, you have a legal obligation to prescribe it to me".
-Well, I'm going to report it," he said.
In all cases I stood my ground by then stating what I believe to be the unequivocal argument, for us physicians, to make in the face of the demand for contraception: "My commitment, my duty, is to the sick person and at this moment you are not presenting me with a disease."
Medicine and contraception
Ours being a beautiful and exciting profession, I do not understand how we have allowed ourselves to be used for a matter such as this that belongs more to Sociology than to Medicine.
Yes, of course, we must warn of the possible side effects and concomitant risk factors, but deontologically it is a subject that does not concern us, and yet I have been able to experience how they have been using us: they have tricked us, to put it vulgarly.
However, we have never been united on this issue because there are many colleagues who advocate contraception and are willing to facilitate it.
Induced abortions and contraceptives
The highest health authorities are constantly associating contraception and the use of abortion to medical practice.
For example, if you look up the word "abortion" on the World Health Organization's website, you will find this first general statement: "Abortion is the most common form of abortion in the world".The abortion is a standard medical procedure. Nothing could be more hypocritical; and a few lines further on he says: "Every year cause about 73 million abortions worldwide". Nothing could be truer.
Likewise, in a WHO publication dated September 5, 2023, referring to contraceptives, it is stated that "of the 1.9 billion women of reproductive age (15-49 years) worldwide in 2021, 1.1 billion were in need of family planning; of these, 874 million were using modern contraceptive methods".
WHO understands as modern those based on the administration of hormonal or anti-hormonal products, whether by oral, injectable, gynecological, transcutaneous or subdermal routes; intra-uterine devices (IUDs), the Pill, etc. of the day afterThe use of condoms (male or female), male or female sterilization and some natural methods of proven efficacy.
Among this diversity, quite a few of them have a strong anti-implantation potential, i.e.: abortifacient. Although food for thought, it is not the purpose of this article to go into specific details in this regard.
A non-integral love
"We love each other, but now it's not convenient for us to have children. We are not going to give up having relations for that reason". This could summarize the most common argument of most of the couples around us.
Let's make a brief analysis of this "we love each other": Do you love the whole person of your partner? Obviously not.
There is an aspect of her person that you have long and sometimes definitely detested: it is her fecundity, her capacity to be an agent of procreation willed by God, which constitutes an essential aspect of her humanity. And this is true for both. But one avoids going deeper because one does not want to renounce the pleasure and the emotion that the act entails.
In contraceptive love there is only a partial, self-interested, complicit donation, which completely obscures the meaning of a singular action of great transcendence. Therefore, it cannot be called an act of love because it lacks total surrender, complete donation and acceptance of the totality of the other. It is, therefore, an imposing, selfish, unloving act, because it inflames the sensitive, but empties it of its inherent procreative content.
I do not forget what my father-in-law, may he rest in peace, who had 10 children and a good sense of humor, used to say when someone made this observation:
-It's just that you like children so much".
-No," he replied. The one I like is my wife."
How many cries, how many depressions, how many disillusionments have we primary care physicians seen in the office caused by this lack of love between couples!
"Doctor, I gave it all to him," said a girl who kept sobbing because after several years her boyfriend, with whom she had been having sex, had left her. From this I learned a piece of advice that I have often repeated to young women: Don't give what is not yours to someone who is not yours.
Change of mentality
Contraception has brought about important changes in social behavior, starting with the "Hippie" movement of the 1960s, until it triggered a brutal drop in the birth rate throughout the world and also an alarming increase in divorces, with all that this entails in terms of suffering for parents, but above all for children.
They may not be as sensitive when they are young, but for an older child or adolescent, the divorce of their parents is a cruel betrayal of them. Their mental health deteriorates very seriously and no argument is of any comfort to them; I have seen this many times in my practice.
But contraception, along with alcohol and drug use, is also at the core of the current move This is another of the great scandals of our time.
I think a 10 -11 year old girl who starts having a pre-school gang should have a pre-school gang.moved, If you have not received a thorough moral education on the true meaning of human love, you are lost. And I am afraid they are the majority.
-Don't bring me a fait accompli - that is, a pregnancy. Protect yourself. This is what a father said to his teenage daughter. I interpret it as: "let yourself be abused, but...".
Sexual morality
Because, who educates young people and adults today by courageously insisting on the sexual morality willed by God, the parents, the parish, the school, or no one?
I would answer -with much regret- that nobody or almost nobody and, of course, girls and boys reach maturity lacking any moral doctrine and exposed to the consequences of this mushy game that, frustrating so many expectations, ends in mistrust between man and woman, in the disenchantment of life and in unhappiness because they do not know how to "work" love.
God's grace has not diminished, the admirable doctrine proposed by the Catholic Church on sexual and marital morality must be proclaimed more and more. to bring joy to disillusioned hearts.
Let us be those courageous "heralds of the Gospel" proposed by St. John Paul II.
As for me, I am going to try to put the world to rights and I have already registered in my parish as a retired catechist. I will try to face this new stage with wisdom but without letting myself be carried away by pessimism, on the contrary, I will put all my illusion. I will have to learn some pedagogy. The grace and efficacy are God's will. I hope not to disappoint him.
Physician
