Angelus News | January 26, 2024 | Vol. 9 No. 2

Bermpohl established a mentorship
program which pairs up more experienced
couples with those new to
grief, expectation, and disappointment.
“Community is key,” she said.
Chris O’Neill, director of the Office
of Marriage and Family Life for the
Diocese of New Orleans, said his team
tries to address infertility in marriage
preparation.
“We try to emphasize how a child is a
gift,” he said. “We share with couples
that you love each other and attend
to a life that you share together, and
that life starts to bear fruit. It may
or may not include children. The
commitment is not to build the life
you want — it’s to love each other with
everything you have and to let the marriage
take the shape that God grants.”
How and when the Church speaks
about infertility is a topic which Melissa
Moschella, associate
professor of philosophy at
The Catholic University of
America, thinks a good deal
about.
“The places where the
Church talks most directly
about infertility are in documents
concerning ethical
issues about reproductive
technologies,” she noted,
citing Donum Vitae (“The
Gift of Life”) and Dignitas
Personae (“The Dignity of
the Person”).
Moshcella believes there
are limitations to that
treatment, because infertility
is never explored as its
own topic. And while the
Church expresses sympathy
for couples who desire to
have a child, it has not yet
offered a comprehensive
theological look at marital
fruitfulness outside of
forming a family through
procreation or adoption.
In her courses exploring
the ethics of reproductive technologies,
Moschella has begun presenting students
with information about fertility
awareness-based methods of family
planning. “Most of my female students
have never heard of these. Most don’t
understand how their cycles work or
what the signs of fertility are,” she said.
“The fact that things can actually be
treated is new to them.”
***
The good news is that Catholic physicians
have been advancing treatment
for infertility for decades.
Gilbert is a part of a health care practice
that specializes in Naprotechnology,
an approach to fertility pioneered
by Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers, the director
of the Saint Paul VI Institute for the
Study of Human Reproduction and the
National Center for Women’s Health
in Omaha, Nebraska.
With colleagues at the St. Louis
University and Creighton University
Schools of Medicine, he developed
what is known as the Creighton Model
FertilityCare System. Beyond helping
to address infertility, this method
is used to treat repeat miscarriage,
postpartum depression, premenstrual
symptoms, and preterm birth.
Unlike mainstream endocrinology
and fertility medicine, which uses a
standard 28-day cycle to evaluate hormonal
imbalances in women, Naprotechnology
looks at each individual
woman’s biomarkers to create what
Gilbert calls a “total hormonal profile.”
“Standard fertility medicine will
spend three months prescribing
medicine to strengthen ovulation and
then move onto IVF,” Gilbert said.
“Naprotechnology seeks to restore
fertility by getting to the root cause of
the problem.”
The practice involves an analysis of
all of the hormones involved in a women’s
cycle (not only those related to
ovulation), robust testing of the thyroid,
surgical interventions, and identifying
causes of inflammation or insulin
resistance.
Gilbert noted that physicians are starting
to acknowledge that the Western
diet and lifestyle is contributing to the
issue.
“As far as male infertility is concerned,
alcohol, drugs, high blood
pressure, and cholesterol can all contribute,”
she said. “For women, there
are a lot of endocrine disruptors
in our diet, cosmetics,
and the containers we drink
and eat out of.”
Gilbert says the widespread
prescription of the birth
control pill to girls, who
often stay on it until they
are ready for childbearing, is
contributing to the problem.
Some studies indicate
that the pill interferes with
the production of cervical
mucus, which is important
for fertilization.
But a bigger issue is that the
pill is widely prescribed to
relieve painful symptoms of
menstruation, which are often
indicative of underlying
issues like endometriosis. Because
the condition advances
even when symptoms are
Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers, ameliorated, women come
director of the Pope Paul off the pill after a decade or
VI Institute on the Study of more to find that they had
Human Reproduction. | CNS been unknowingly masking
an underlying condition.
While not all of her
patients conceive, Gilbert finds satisfaction
that almost all of them say that
they are thankful to have “found someone
to take them seriously, listen to
them, and give them a real diagnosis.”
***
Many women report that they simply
want someone to acknowledge they
22 • ANGELUS • January 26, 2024