Florida Catholic | A Faithful Physician

OB-GYN practices Catholic faith at work

AMY M. FERRARA | FLORIDA CATHOLIC STAFF

Published: 10.26.07

PENSACOLA | When Dr. Damon Cudihy talks about natural family planning, his voice is like a rollercoaster that rises and falls with emotion and steadies itself again with a listing of facts. Listeners have no doubt of the connection between Cudihy’s Catholic beliefs and his obstetrics and gynecology medical profession.

“I want to be able to practice medicine in a way that I am promoting a greater responsibility for women and families,” the Pensacola resident said.

Courtesy Photo
Dr. Damon Cudihy and wife Lauren with their children John Paul, Teresa and Emilia.

To Cudihy, this responsibility means not prescribing birth control pills and other contraception to patients, but instead informing them about natural family planning, the method of birth control the Catholic Church supports. As a medical professional, Cudihy will also not participate in in-vitro fertilization because he feels it takes away from the natural union of a man and a woman. He will not perform abortions.

“There is a need for doctors who respect Catholic beliefs,” he added.

But Cudihy’s decision to remain faithful to the church while practicing obstetrics and gynecology has made his entry into the profession even more challenging.

After graduating from Florida State University in 1999, Cudihy applied for the U.S. military’s health professions scholarship program to help him continue his studies at the University of Florida College of Medicine. Because the Armed Services contributed to his tuition, Cudihy was required to serve in the Army after he graduated in 2003, and began his residency at a military hospital in Texas.

From the start, Cudihy said, he was honest with the director of the hospital about his desire to remain faithful to his Catholic beliefs. But he lasted only 28 of the 48-month residency program at the military hospital. Although the director tried to accommodate his religious beliefs by not asking him to prescribe contraception to patients, he did expect Cudihy to find patients a physician who would.

“It put me in a very difficult moral dilemma,” he said.

Department staff and supervising physicians also expected Cudihy to send patients who wished to be sterilized to a physician who would perform the procedure. Instead, Cudihy advised them not to have the sterilization.

“It wasn’t just a religious observance,” he said. He explained that when he took the Hippocratic Oath, he promised to do no harm. “A woman being fertile is healthy,” he continued.

Even though he resigned from the military hospital residency program, he still owed the Army his time. Following his resignation, he began two years of active duty service as a general practitioner or a general medical officer, understanding that he would spend at least a year in Iraq. Initially, the Army transferred him to Fort Rucker, Ala., to train as a flight surgeon. Before the flight surgeon course began in July 2006, he volunteered to go to Iraq in place of a peer, a female emergency room physician who was first given the assignment, and stayed in the country until Sept. 9, 2007.

His children, John Paul, Teresa and Emilia, are examples of why Cudihy continues to pursue a career as an OB-GYN physician even though some of the common practices go against his religious beliefs.

Next month, Cudihy will move his family to Buffalo, N.Y., where he will continue his residency program at the Sisters of Charity Hospital. He has finally found a place where he can practice pro-life medical care.

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OB-GYN practices Catholic faith at work

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