And now for something completely different — and utterly surprising: the story of a Georgia couple who reversed a sterilization procedure, and welcomed a bouncing baby boy:

Etched into David Hanson’s memory is the image of his wife, Catherine, having just delivered their sixth child by emergency C-section, being wheeled on a gurney away from the Catholic hospital in the state where they then lived to a nearby clinic that offered the sterilization procedure of a tubal ligation.

“It’s shocking to think that 24 hours after giving birth, she was going through the parking lot still wearing her surgical drapes,” he said.

The decision that he and his wife made for her to undergo the sterilization procedure came out of fear for Catherine’s health and after “a lot of pressure … about having such a large family,” particularly from their neighbor, who was the surgeon who performed the operation.

“It was hard on us to think about what harm might come to Catherine,” if she had another child, said David. He acknowledged the selflessness of his wife who “continued to have children without complaint.”

“We kind of resigned ourselves to it. I feel like it was my fault for being open to that. I was feeling like things were out of control.”

Catherine was unable to undergo the procedure at the Catholic hospital because tubal ligations, like vasectomies, are sterilization procedures that are contrary to church teaching since they permanently close the conjugal act to the possibility of procreation. In line with natural law, the church teaches that intrinsic to “the marital embrace” are two inseparable aspects: the unitive and the procreative. Translated another way, as many people who teach on this topic describe, sexual intercourse, a privilege of and gift to married life, is for “bonding and babies.” It speaks “the language of permanency,” Pope John Paul II wrote in the “Theology of the Body.” It’s a permanency that promotes a faithful, stable environment in which parents can raise their children.

When either the unitive or procreative aspects are separated from the conjugal act, disorder enters the relationship, which affects the marriage, family and society at large. Since sterilization separates the procreative aspect from the unitive this is why the church teaches against it. At the same time, the church supports natural means by which couples can space their children or refrain from having more children after prayerful consideration. It asks married couples to trust in God’s plan for their family.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church expounds, “‘Let all be convinced that human life and the duty of transmitting it are not limited by the horizons of this life only: their true evaluation and full significance can be understood only in reference to man’s eternal destiny.’” In other words, God has his plan that is beyond human understanding and couples, in faith, are asked to remain open to it.

For Catherine, who gave birth to six children in seven years, the sterilization procedure later came to mean that “society had prevailed.” She recalled thinking that her daughter’s “traumatic” birth was perhaps a sign to have the procedure.

“The doctor was in a hurry to do this tragedy. He rushed, and I regretted it. … At the time it happened all we cared about was our daughter. It didn’t hit me. We justified it. Where sin is involved there is justification.”

Then their youngest daughter turned 4.

“All of a sudden no one was crying,” Catherine remembered. “I kind of missed it and thought ‘no one needs me.’ It surprised me.”

Only after more than 10 years would Catherine and David begin to consider a reversal of the tubal ligation.

Read the rest to find out what happened, and how.

Photo: by Michael Alexander, Georgia Bulletin