New health care practice conforms to church teaching
For Dr. Robert Lawler, the decision to conform his obstetrics and gynecology practice to the teachings of the Catholic Church came down to one thing: "I want to go to heaven," said Lawler.
Lawler and Dr. Anthony Caruso recently opened Downers Grove OB-GYN, 1121 Warren Ave., Ste. 200, in Downers Grove, with Dr. Anthony Caruso, a reproductive endocrinologist who also has forsworn procedures that conflict with church teaching.
Lawler, a parishioner of St. James-Sag Bridge, and Caruso, who attends St. John Cantius, both came to the realization that they needed to bring their professional lives into line with their beliefs after they started practicing medicine.
For Lawler, who went into practice about 15 years ago, the realization came with the help of urging by his wife and others.
"I was finding pamphlets about 'Humanae Vitae' (Pope Pail VI's 1968 encyclical confirming the church's teaching against artificial contraception) in my golf bag," he joked.
At first, he thought, not performing or referring patients for abortions was enough. As for prescribing birth control pills, he said, everybody did it, it must be OK," he said. "There's not many of us who feel it's important to be Catholic 24/7."
Then he came to understand that whatever anybody else was doing, it was definitely no OK.
"I had visions of meeting the Lord at Judgment Day and him saying to me, "OK, Robert, what part of "Intrinsically evil" did you not understand about contraception?" Lawler said.
At the same time, he said, younger and younger girls were coming in, with their parents, and asking for contraceptives.
"I would no more hand them contraceptives than I would a pack of cigarettes," he said. "People said they will do it anyway; I said how about a little less birth control and a little more self-control?"
So he stopped prescribing birth control and performing sterilizations, while remaining in a general OB-GYN practice where other doctors provided those services.
In the beginning, he said, it wasn't easy.
"That first day when I told patients I would no longer be prescribing birth control was a very long day, and it was a very long year," he said. "People weren't shy about sharing what they thought of the Catholic Church or this Catholic doctor." ...
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