A Change of Heart

I was a newly minted Registered Nurse, when I taught a young mother named Maria about the different methods of birth control.  Other Catholic Nurses refused the assignment saying it was against their religion. I was Catholic too, and at that time in my life, a rather rigid rule follower especially when it came to teachings about sexuality. I had swallowed the theory that artificial birth control was “ against the natural law “.  In case you never heard of this reasoning before, basically it’s the belief that preventing the sperm from reaching the ovum was interfering with nature and therefore evil. I went to an all girls Catholic Academy and an all girls Catholic Nursing School therefore I was well versed and thoroughly indoctrinated about “ the sins of the flesh”.  Nevertheless, I readily said “yes” when assigned this task.  I had a relationship with Maria and her young husband and their little toddler daughter.   They came to Clinic D at Downstate Medical Center every 3 - 4 weeks and sat with their baby girl in the Infusion room as she received the blood transfusion she needed to survive. She had a very serious medical condition known as Thalassemia Major. This is a generic condition (autosomal recessive inheritance) where if both parents are carriers of the recessive gene there is a one in four chance that the child born to them will have the disease.  Back in 1967, children affected with this disease typically died in their late teens or early twenties and their lives were severely impacted. I was the Infusion Room Nurse and I got to know these families quite personally.  Therefore when I was asked to instruct Maria in the different contraceptives that medical science had blessed us with, I knew what I had to do.  I didn’t hesitate, I had no doubt, I had not an ounce of guilt.   My thought process was clear and concise. Maria was 22 and her husband was not much older.  To ask them to risk another pregnancy and expose another child to this kind of disease and the suffering it involved was absolutely evil.  God is love ❤️ and he wouldn’t want that.  Moreover to ask a young married couple to spend the rest of their married life as brother and sister was truly against the “ laws of nature”.   I taught Maria with a clear conscience and a loving heart as I knew it was the right thing to do.