by: Kyle Digman
Seminarian of St. Pius

I recently got word from a friend of mine that she was being kicked out of graduate school. When I enquired as to why she was being kicked out she informed me it was not because of drugs, alcohol, misbehavior, or even academics. She was being kicked out because of her religious (Catholic) beliefs. This is a person willing to give up her prospective career for the sake of what she knows to be right. Here is the story in her own words:

When I was deciding upon Genetic Counseling as a future career, I prayed that God would lead me to where he wanted me to go. He ended up leading me to a school in Colorado to go to school to become a Genetic Counselor. I thought that this was my mission from Him and I knew that it would be difficult facing the many different ethical dilemmas that came with the job, but I felt called to be a support for families with familial cancer. Over Christmas break I found out that my first rotation would be in prenatal-a rotation that I would need to complete to continue through the program. Part of the prenatal genetic counselor’s job is to offer all of the options, including pregnancy termination. I told my director that I didn’t think that I could offer this option because of my Catholic faith and in a whirl wind of a week God gave me the opportunity to speak with the Bishop, Archbishop and a Catholic bioethicist of the archdiocese of Denver. The overwhelming conclusion (something that I knew but needed to hear out loud) was that I couldn’t offer termination because then I will be part of the process and will be condoning the act of abortion. I know that if I offered this option to a family and they proceeded with it, that would be on my conscience.

Life is beautiful and that week (of course the week surrounding Roe v. Wade) proved to me how pro-life I am, and how important these decisions are to all of us. I took a risk, knowing what the repercussions could be and told my director that I cannot offer pregnancy termination. I know that I put her in a difficult position but we are all called to stand up for our faith and be radical for our Lord; this was my opportunity. I was told that I could not get through the program without offering all of the options to the patients. Thus, the decision was difficultly easy. I knew what I had to do and just needed God’s grace.

I choose my faith, I choose my church, I choose our God. Jesus gave me more courage than I asked for and so I am no longer a student. God has granted me amazing peace through it all, peace of body, heart, spirit and mind.

What’s next? No idea! Prayers are always appreciated as I thought I knew what God was calling me to, but He is using me some way that is not clear to me yet — He really has a plan for us all. God bless!