Admitting that he “bought the lie” that abortion and contraception were good for women, Dr. John Bruchalski performed abortions during his residency as part of his medical training in obstetrics and gynecology.
Then, at the invitation of a friend in the medical field, he took a trip to Mexico City in 1987. During a visited to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, he heard a voice saying, “Why are you hurting me?”—but he pushed the voice out of his mind. But then a few years later, while on another pilgrimage, he finally realized the need to turn his life around and re-dedicate himself to God.
Considering himself a “wounded healer,” he founded the Tepeyac Family Center in Fairfax, Virginia in 1994, and six years later he started Divine Mercy Care. His practice places special emphasis on working closely with pregnancy resource centers and other areas of the pro-life movement to better serve women experiencing untimely pregnancies.
In a talk entitled, “Palpable Mercy: Going Beyond the Rhetoric to Engage the Heart of an Abortionist” given at the Pro-Life Action League’s “CONVERTED: From Abortion Provider to Pro-Life Activist” conference, Bruchalski discussed a recently completed speaking tour of 42 medical schools across the United States, during which he found the vast majority of medical students were eager to listen to him.
He attributes this success both to the carefully worded titles of his presentations—like “How ‘Pro-Choice’ Are We?”—and his willingness to patiently listen to pro-choice medical students explain where they are coming from.
In his talk, Bruchalski also reiterated a point emphasized by many of the other conference speakers: “Conversions happen on God’s time when we make ourselves instruments of God’s love and mercy.”
You can watch all the videos from the CONVERTED conference right here.
NOTE: The audio of this talk is also available as an MP3 download here.
