By DEXTER DUGGAN
Part 2
OMAHA — Even before recorded history began, some of the greatest work was done, as the Bible put it long ago, “in the secret place” — the creation of new human beings in the mysterious womb.
Only in recent decades has ultrasound technology revealed the striking, real-time visual facts of prenatal development in the uterus that previously were speculated upon or intuited.
In rather the same way, great work to help couples with pregnancy problems goes on in semi-secrecy here in Nebraska’s largest city at the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction.
It’s not that the institute wants to hide the fact couples turn here to obtain information and help, or even travel sometimes long distances to Omaha. An educational video describes the institute as “a destination point for couples from around the world.”
However, its pro-life message is unwelcome to many in the secular media who don’t want to enlighten news consumers about medical advances in the three-story brick building bustling with activity on Mercy Road.
In harmony with the Catholic faith, the institute scientifically treats patients for problems including infertility, miscarriage, premature birth, premenstrual syndrome, and postpartum depression. Its services are available to people regardless of their religious belief. Information is on the web at www.popepaulvi.com.
The medical philosophy here is to try to discover the reason for reproductive problems so they can be healed, not simply brush them aside while employing a utilitarian approach like morally objectionable in vitro fertilization.
Thomas Hilgers, MD, director of the institute, says that much of what is considered reproductive medicine today centers on abortion, contraception, IVF, and sterilization.
Not only is the institute’s mission to help countless couples, but also to educate the medical profession however possible about such morally acceptable advances as Natural Procreative Technology — NaProTechnology.
A link at the Pope Paul VI Institute website says:
“After 30 years of amazing research, the mysteries of the menstrual and fertility cycle have been unraveled through the Creighton Model FertilityCare System (CrMS) and the new women’s health science of NaProTechnology. Now, a woman can know her cycles and use this information for the maintenance of her health, and couples can use this knowledge to plan their family and build their future as a couple. . . .
“In the CrMS, fertility is observed as a part of health, not disease. It is a system that is specifically not a natural contraceptive. Rather, it is a true method of family planning — a method that can be used in two ways, to achieve, as well as avoid, pregnancy. These principles make this system distinctly different from contraception, artificial or natural,” the link to the Creighton Model says.
A related organization, FertilityCare Centers of America, offers assistance to women around the world. It has 283 locations in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Nigeria, plus additional nations. Its website is www.fertilitycare.org.
Hilgers and his wife, Sue, founded the Pope Paul VI Institute in 1985, in response to Blessed Pope Paul’s appeal “to men of science and health-care professionals” to undertake morally licit research.
The Pope issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968 concerning birth regulation and in opposition to contraception, which brought gales of criticism against him from liberal establishments.
Paul VI was beatified on October 19 by Pope Francis.
Terri Green, an administrative assistant at the institute, said it was unusual that The Wanderer stopped by in November to write up the organization and an educational program that was under way cosponsored by the institute and Omaha’s Creighton University School of Medicine.
The annual educational program was accredited by the American Academy of Fertility Care Professionals. About 80 professionals attended from near and far.
“We have never had the local secular paper interested enough to do any kind of an article on the institute or Dr. Hilgers — they pretty much ignore us and have for many years,” Green said. “. . . Keep in mind, too, that [the educational program] has been done twice a year for many years; this class was their 37th consecutive class, so we’ve been around for a long time and the only local media that has ever covered us is the diocesan paper, The Catholic Voice.”
As she gave The Wanderer a tour of the institute on November 10, Green said, “I think we’re the best-kept secret in Omaha,” but word is starting to get out through social media like Facebook.
An institute administrator, Maxine Dancer, said, “We’re actually better known outside of Nebraska than inside of Nebraska.”
Dancer said its message “is something that has to go worldwide, and we are the solution.”
A Facebook description says the institute “is a multifaceted organization that dedicates programs of research, education, ethics, and service to building strong marriages, healthy families, and a Culture of Life in women’s health care.”
Green told The Wanderer that statistics aren’t kept about how many people come through the institute in a year, which includes three staff doctors among its personnel, but Hilgers sees patients five days a week and performs surgery four days weekly.
She said he wrote a copiously footnoted 1,244-page book, The Medical and Surgical Practice of NaProTechnology, “to hopefully silence the critics” of his work.
A wall covered with photos of infants born with the assistance of the institute is the “Miracle Baby Hall of Fame.” “This is our pride,” Green said.
The institute also has an ethicist and a psychologist on staff, she said.
The three-story building is bursting at the seams and a larger facility is “desperately” needed, Hilgers said, but securing funding is a challenge.
In another of his books, An Insider’s Look at the War on Women (Pope Paul VI Institute Press), Hilgers notes his own lack of success in trying to interest a newspaper to write about the institute’s positive work after the newspaper had given prominent publicity to an unmarried woman who was advised by a different fertility doctor to use in vitro fertilization. She subsequently gave birth to twins, whose biological father was unknown to her.
A two and a half page order form for some of the Pope Paul VI Institute’s technical brochures and booklets includes literature on ovarian cysts, ovulatory defects, evaluation and treatment of ovarian hormone dysfunction, laser surgery for endometriosis, polycystic ovarian disease, tubal microsurgery, and use of progesterone in pregnancy.
The Lost Generations
In a separate interview on November 11, the doctor’s wife, Sue Hilgers, said Blessed Pope Paul “knew there had to be some practical work” done so “couples could really live these teachings. . . . We have been field-testing the teachings of the Catholic Church.”
When couples see “this knowledge of fertility and reproductive medicine, it opens up a new dimension to them, to get to know the God who made them,” Mrs. Hilgers said. “. . . It changes them as individuals,” as well as their marriages and their openness to having children. “Pope Paul VI knew exactly what he was talking about.”
Because of protests against Humanae Vitae, she said, “We’ve lost two generations of doctors. . . . We’ve lost two generations of [financial] donors,” but younger people see the wisdom of that encyclical and have been fortified by the example of St. John Paul II.
“We now have young people going into medicine specifically to do this work,” as well as urging the generation that came before them to get involved, Mrs. Hilgers said. “Dad, you really need to be a NaProTechnology doctor,” the younger generation says.
This is important because “the pro-life movement has been stunted . . . by lack of pro-life doctors,” she said.
Speaking of the institute’s need to expand and to find additional financial donors, she said she’d be happy to give them a tour of the facility.
Catching Up
The Wanderer also interviewed two of the women attending the educational program on fertility care in Omaha that the institute and Creighton University’s medical school jointly sponsored November 8-15.
Regina Ng, MD (pronounced Nang), who works at a family practice clinic in Bakersfield, Calif., said she hadn’t learned in medical school about the scientific procedures being taught here, so “I need to catch up….
“A lot of doctors will say the exact thing I’m saying” about having missed out on this sort of education, Ng said. “…This could be the start of something beautiful.”
Ng said she senses women’s “frustration with the medical system….I want to bring hope, optimism, positivity….
“I’m a big patient advocate. This is something I want to bring to the table…increase confidence in the medical system….I just thank God for [my] being here….Everything’s for God’s great glory,” she said.
None of her patients know about NaProTechnology, Ng said.
Recalling that she “took the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm,” Ng commented that the World Health Organization said birth-control hormones “are class-one carcinogens.”
Elizabeth Martinez is a certified fertility care practitioner at Caritas Complete Women’s Care in Houston. Already an instructor in the Creighton Model for couples, she came to Omaha to learn how to teach other instructors to teach it.
“It’s a revolutionary approach to women’s health care….This is really a way to value the woman,” Martinez told The Wanderer. “…It’s the best-kept secret,” but it should be widely known.
The natural method is “not only cheaper, but it’s more effective….This is better and more successful,” she said.
People deserve to have answers for their situations, she said, not just to be told that birth control pills and in vitro fertilization handle the problem.
IVF is “cost-prohibitive for most women, and it doesn’t give them any answers” why they’re infertile, she said. Moreover, if they use low-effectiveness IVF to bear one child and then want another one, they have to go through the procedure all over again.
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