WASHINGTON, D.C., January 19, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – One of the nation’s most prestigious pro-life medical clinics announced Thursday it will begin certifying other women’s health clinics as members of a new consortium called Pro Women’s Healthcare Centers (PWHC).
Tepeyac OB/GYN was founded by former abortionist turned pro-life advocate Dr. John Bruchalski. It recently opened a spacious, bright new office near the hospital where its doctors deliver babies in Northern Virginia. Tepeyac is known around the country and especially in the pro-life movement for its pro-life gynecologists and obstetricians and neonatal hospice program.
Bruchalski officially launched the PWHC initiative at Busboys and Poets, a restaurant across the street from the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, Thursday afternoon, the day before the 45th annual March for Life.
The PWHC alliance is a way for Tepeyac and its educational arm, Divine Mercy Care, to give their “stamp of approval” to other independent centers that provide a full range of pro-life women’s healthcare. The other clinics will remain autonomous and each PWHC will be certified “as a member of our consortium, as a member of our group,” Chaney Mullins, PWHC’s Operations Manager, told LifeSiteNews.
“We as a pro-life medical movement felt that we needed to have a true stake in the ground of flag-waving for ‘this is what excellence in women’s healthcare truly looks like,’” said Mullins. “And so when we came together and brought some similar centers together, we realized that we all had a lot in common.”
“We believe that children – pregnancies – are not sexually transmitted diseases,” Bruchalski told LifeSiteNews. “We basically don’t believe in shutting down pituitary glands in order to overcome medical problems.”
The PWHC consortium allows the centers to “collaborate to provide a real medical answer to the half-truth that the Planned Parenthood movement has spread,” he said. The care provided will be “the care that so many women are asking for: honest, cooperative, listening, patient.”
In order to receive the PWHC certification, a center must provide:
- Well-woman care
- Gynecology
- Pap smears
- STD testing and treatment
- Breast exams
- Maternity care
- Prenatal care at least through 20 weeks
- Miscarriage support
- Abortion pill reversal
- Hormone management services
- Postpartum check-ups
- Fertility awareness education and pro-life fertility services
- Corrective surgical options
“We want women to have the very, very best,” said Mullins. Each PWHC is “really, truly is a full-service women’s healthcare center” that cares for “body, mind, and spirit.”
And “all of our centers follow ethical guidelines that are completely life-affirming,” meaning they use fertility treatments that fix root problems rather than in-vitro fertilization (IVF), which often involves the destruction of very young human embryos.
Three centers are already fully certified – Tepeyac, Morning Star OB/GYN in Arizona, and Bella Natural Women’s Care in Colorado. Seven more are in the process of being certified and at least 20 are interested in becoming certified.
Christine Accurso, the Practice Administrator of Morning Star, told LifeSiteNews the mission of PWHC is about uniting pro-life health care providers “under excellent healthcare standards for women.”
“We’re not here to rebrand anything,” said Accurso.
Morning Star teaches four methods of Natural Family Planning – Creighton, Sympto-Thermal, Family of the Americas, and Billings – in English and Spanish. At least half of the Morning Star staff is bilingual. Morning Star’s one OB/GYN delivers an average of 30-33 babies per month.
This is why they’re hoping to hire another doctor soon, Accurso laughed.
The program allows clinics that began as pregnancy centers, medical centers, and fertility care centers to “interact with other centers” and then incorporate “the services and the best elements of all of those three models into one healthcare center,” said Mullins.
They must offer the “full gamut of comprehensive services.” For many applicants, this means just adding a few more treatments. And each certified clinic must treat paying and non-paying patients, like Tepeyac does. The certification process takes about 90 days and involves a visit, or visits, from two PWHC certifiers.
Mullins called PWHC “really revolutionary in the pro-life movement, in women’s health care movement, [and] in the medical world.”
She said one of the big advantages of the PWHC seal is “continuity of care” between independent healthcare providers across the country.
“Even though these centers are independent,” a patient recently transferring from one independent clinic to another “really felt like a seamless transfer of care.”
“They knew she was going to be getting the exact same kind of high-quality comprehensive women’s healthcare” at both places, explained Mullins.
“It’s so important for the medical world to realize that the abortion-driven narrative is not really women’s health,” she said. “We very much anticipate that as we’re going about this process, we’re going to get a lot of inquiries. In fact, we already have started to get inquiries from new areas that want to start a center from scratch.”