Two medical students who are actively involved in pro-life organizations at Ohio State University (OSU) say it’s a constant challenge to express their support of Catholic teaching on the dignity of life because most of their peers disagree with their position.
“The majority of my fellow students oppose the Catholic Church’s beliefs on matters such as abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide. Many have become part of the ‘cancel culture,’” which seeks to ostracize opposing views rather than discuss them, said Grace Hobayan of Lima.
“There’s a lot of one-sidedness on campus when it comes to certain health-care areas, particularly those involving oral contraception, reproductive health and end-of-life issues,” said Brendan Sieber of suburban Pittsburgh.
“Catholic teaching has consistently been in support of life and disagreed with the majority opinion in those areas. If you express that disagreement, it’s as though you don’t have an opinion.”
Hobayan and Sieber are second-year students at the OSU College of Medicine and anticipate receiving their medical degrees in 2024. They received Bachelor of Science degrees in 2020 – Hobayan from the University of Pittsburgh, where she majored in biomedical engineering, and Sieber from John Carroll University in suburban Cleveland, where his major was biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology.
The two are co-presidents of the OSU chapter of the Catholic Medical Association (CMA) and belong to the university’s Med Students for Life organization, which Hobayan serves as president.
The student CMA chapter has 46 members. It meets monthly on campus and takes part in several activities in cooperation with the association’s Columbus professional chapter. These include a yearly White Mass for medical professionals in October at Hilliard St. Brendan the Navigator Church and an annual renewal of physicians’ Hippocratic Oath, which for 2,500 years has stood as a model for medical ethics.
The CMA’s modernized version of the oath has eliminated the original document’s reference to the Greek gods and updated it to make it more applicable to modern medicine, while retaining its original prohibitions of abortion and the taking of a human life.
Sieber said the student CMA also sponsors a welcome-back barbecue at the start of the fall semester and hopes to begin a Bible study. Hobayan said Med Students for Life is more loosely organized than the CMA chapter, is open to students of all faiths and meets once or twice a year.
Last April, it presented a talk by Dr. Christina Cirucci of Sewickley, Pennsylvania, on the effects of chemical abortion. Hobayan said the doctor’s message was particularly timely because it was delivered while first-year medical students were studying the reproductive system.
This April, the group will host Dr. Steve Hammond, a former abortionist from Jackson, Tennessee, who will speak on “Do We Need Abortions to Save the Lives of Women?”
The Catholic Medical Association of Central Ohio and the Diocese of Columbus co-sponsor members of the CMA student chapter who attend the association’s national educational conference, which took place last year in Orlando, Florida.
The students sent there were Hobayan, Sieber and Brandon Wolters, who attends the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine. The event brought together about 570 medical professionals in person, plus about 130 who attended online, for talks on all phases of medicine and the Catholic approach to healing.
“The convention was a huge benefit to me because it showed what the authentically Catholic response is to many ethical situations that come up all the time in medicine,” Sieber said. “Science and medicine can work hand-in-hand and complement each other, which is something people tend to overlook. The theme of the event was ‘The Joy of Medicine.’ In this year where COVID has tested everyone in the medical profession, it reminded us of the joy our vocation can bring to the patients we serve and to us.”
He said the most memorable talk he heard at the convention was a scholarly debate moderated by Dr. Ashley K. Fernandes, a pediatrician, bioethicist and associate professor at Ohio State who serves as faculty adviser for both student groups, on the ethical and moral implications of the criteria that determine brain death.
“Just getting to meet other medical students who share my beliefs and to be able to talk about those subjects without having your opinions be met with hostility was a wonderful opportunity,” said Hobayan, who said she comes from a medical background.
“Probably my biggest influence was my mother, Dr. Vivian Hobayan, who is a rheumatologist in Lima. Her faith guides her practice,” she said.
“I’ve wanted to be a doctor since I was very young, then in high school I had a geology teacher who got me interested in engineering. I teetered between medicine and engineering and ended up majoring in biomedical engineering at Pitt because it involves a little of both.”
Biomedical engineering combines the principles of biology and the tools of engineering to create useful products such as prosthetic limbs, orthotic inserts for people with foot problems and catheters. Its principles also are used in areas such as tissue engineering, genetic engineering, agriculture and food sciences.
Hobayan said that besides learning more about biomedical engineering, she is considering a career as a dermatologist.
Sieber said a family member, in this case his grandmother, also influenced him to consider the medical profession. “She put herself through nursing school and eventually became a manager at Western Psychiatric Hospital in Pittsburgh,” he said.
“I just wanted to emulate her. Then I went to John Carroll (a Jesuit college) and fell in love with the Ignatian spirituality practiced there and its emphasis on social justice.”
He has made three missionary trips to rural villages in Honduras – two while at John Carroll and one while attending OSU. “More than anything else I’ve done, those experiences have impressed on me the value of each individual and of treating everyone with dignity,” he said.
“Providing the people there with water filters that were able to prevent diabetes and hypertension was so satisfying, yet made me wonder why we still have this type of chronic illness in many places where a solution would be so easy.”
His mission trips “set my soul on fire to pursue the practice of medicine,” Sieber said. He said he is attending the OSU medical school “because I recognize the opportunities which can result from going to an institution that’s a national leader in many areas.”
Knowing the university has an active CMA chapter also influenced his decision to come to OSU. “I sought the CMA out to develop me into the physician I want to be,” he said.
Ohio State’s medical school is one of seven such institutions in Ohio, none of which is affiliated with a Catholic university. The closest Catholic university to Columbus with a medical school is Marian University in Indianapolis, which has a College of Osteopathic Medicine.
“As I continue my studies and eventually enter the medical profession, I hope to take the morals and ethics and the principles of Catholic social teaching instilled in me since I was a child and have them influence and improve whatever sphere of medicine I join,” Sieber said.
“Before I see a patient, I want to say the Serenity Prayer made famous by Alcoholics Anonymous – ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.’ Every time I’m with a patient, I can see Jesus in His humanity and suffering in the face of that person, and I ask for God’s help to inspire me to be the best physician I can be.”
“There are a couple of phrases I always want to keep I mind in my medical career,” Hobayan said. One is ‘It’s not what you gather. It’s what you scatter that counts.’ Another is one I heard at a homily in Pittsburgh: ‘Whatever you do, direct it back to God.’
“That’s what I hope to do by serving patents and seeing Jesus in their faces. He was the Great Healer – a doctor, an ophthalmologist, an otolaryngologist, all in one – and I look forward to doing some of His work.”
