Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E321: The Hidden Superpowers of the Pregnant Body w/Dr Christina Francis | Lila Rose Show

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E321: The Hidden Superpowers of the Pregnant Body w/Dr Christina Francis | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  When a woman goes through a full term pregnancy and then she
• 0:03
  breastfeeds afterwards, her body converts the majority of her
• 0:06
  breast tissue into a very cancer resistant type of tissue.
• 0:10
  Which is why we see that the more pregnancies a woman has and
• 0:12
  the longer she spends breastfeeding, the lower her
• 0:15
  risk of breast cancers. Is it true that a woman's body
• 0:17
  changes with a pregnancy and after delivery?
• 0:20
  100%. But why is that a bad thing?
• 0:23
  And pregnancy is not a problem to be solved.
• 0:26
  It's not a disease to be treated.
• 0:28
  If we truly cared about Women's Health and saving women and
• 0:31
  taking care of them as quickly as possible, we do deliveries.
• 0:33
  We don't do abortions and every doctor knows that.
• 0:36
  That's the thing. Oftentimes families, women are
• 0:38
  manipulated into that decision because they're told your baby
• 0:41
  is suffering and you don't want your baby to be in pain.
• 0:44
  That baby is not suffering inside of a mom.
• 0:47
  There is no evidence whatsoever. There was a study recently that
• 0:51
  showed that women who have children into their 40s are more
• 0:54
  likely to live much longer into their 90s.
• 0:57
  Is this true? Yes.
• 0:58
  The bottom line is we weren't meant to do pregnancy or birth
• 1:01
  alone. This is women's superpower.
• 1:06
  What if everything that you've been told about pregnancy is
• 1:10
  wrong? Today, Doctor Christina Francis,
• 1:12
  an OBGYN who has delivered babies from rural Kenya and
• 1:16
  fought for moms across America, is here to flip the script.
• 1:19
  From the hidden superpowers of the pregnant brain to the real
• 1:23
  dangers of abortion pills being mailed to your doorstep, to why
• 1:26
  pregnancy doesn't break a woman's body but actually builds
• 1:29
  it, this conversation will challenge everything our culture
• 1:32
  thinks it knows about the female body.
• 1:34
  If you're not already following us, hit that subscribe button on
• 1:37
  YouTube and subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast
• 1:40
  app and join us over on Sub Stack through the links in the
• 1:43
  description. Welcome back to the Lila Roe
• 1:45
  show. Doctor Christina Francis,
• 1:47
  welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:49
  It's so wonderful to be here. Doctor Francis, you're an OBGYN
• 1:52
  who has devoted her life caring for mothers and babies, whether
• 1:56
  it's in rural Kenya or here in the United States.
• 1:59
  What are some of the most surprising things about
• 2:01
  pregnancy that most people may not know, but that they should
• 2:04
  know? I think what gets lost in our
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  current cultural narrative that just makes women so fearful of
• 2:13
  pregnancy. And certainly since the Dobbs
• 2:15
  decision, I think the the overriding cultural narrative
• 2:18
  has been pregnancy is extremely dangerous.
• 2:21
  There's all these complications. That's why we need abortion
• 2:24
  laws. You know, this is kind of become
• 2:25
  the the prevailing narrative. And certainly as an WBGYN who
• 2:30
  now works exclusively in the hospital, so I'm managing high
• 2:34
  risk pregnancies. I'm very aware that there are
• 2:37
  complications that happen during pregnancy.
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  But thankfully those are the exception.
• 2:41
  They're not the rule. And I think that's what people
• 2:44
  need to understand the rule or the the most common experience
• 2:49
  is that pregnancy actually greatly benefits women and
• 2:52
  motherhood as well. Not just from the fact that at
• 2:55
  the end of it, hopefully mom gets to take home this amazing,
• 2:59
  beautiful little baby, but also it has ramifications, good
• 3:03
  ramifications for her health long term.
• 3:05
  So it decreases cancer risk. It can decrease the risk of
• 3:09
  autoimmune disorders. We know that women who are
• 3:13
  pregnant, but then also women who mother not through
• 3:16
  pregnancy. So adoptive moms actually tend
• 3:19
  to have longer life spans, lower rates of depression and anxiety.
• 3:23
  And so there are long term health benefits to women that
• 3:27
  most most women don't know about.
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  They're not talked about in their doctor's offices, which I
• 3:31
  think is a real travesty. All right.
• 3:33
  I'm so excited to unpack all of this because you don't typically
• 3:36
  hear what you're speaking to about the advantages or the
• 3:40
  positive, the benefits of pregnancy and of parenting.
• 3:44
  Quite frankly, we hear a lot about the negative today.
• 3:46
  So I'm excited to have you set the record straight here with
• 3:49
  your work, your expertise and this new campaign that you're
• 3:53
  running. Think pregnancy.
• 3:55
  So first of all, the term pregnancy brain.
• 3:58
  I remember being pregnant for the first time and you know,
• 4:01
  people saying, oh, pregnancy brain.
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  It's when you forget, you're forgetful or you just feel
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  overloaded or whatever it is. But there's a lot that happens
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  in the brain during pregnancy, and it actually is an upgrade.
• 4:12
  Yes. Can you share how it's an
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  upgrade? Yes, pregnancy.
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  Brain, yes, absolutely. It's really amazing under the
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  influences of many of the hormones that increase in a
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  woman's body during pregnancy. So estrogen, progesterone, even
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  oxytocin, those actually are inducing changes, permanent
• 4:31
  changes in a woman's brain that are leading to that experience
• 4:34
  of pregnancy brain during the pregnancy, but that are actually
• 4:37
  restructuring her brain so that she can be a mom, so that she
• 4:42
  can take care of her child and actually will have long term
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  benefits for her. So it's something called
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  neuroplasticity. So it's actually the neural
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  connections within a woman's brain are changing under the
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  influences of those hormones so that she can be more empathetic.
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  I mean, think about it. I know you have young children.
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  You know, if your brain had it changed during your pregnancy in
• 5:04
  order to make you more empathetic, it would be much
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  harder to get up with your baby in the middle of the night when
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  you're sleep deprived, you know, and things like that.
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  So those structural changes that are happening are making it
• 5:14
  possible for a mom to be able to bond with her baby better, to be
• 5:18
  more empathetic, which of course then that changes her outlook on
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  life, you know, permanently. Women become more empathetic
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  after they become mothers, not just because they have that
• 5:28
  bonding with their child, but because of those structural
• 5:31
  changes that their brain has gone through.
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  Also, it makes women better able to multitask.
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  You know, I think any woman that's a mother knows that their
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  ability to multitask expanded exponentially once children were
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  introduced. And the interesting thing is
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  then that actually has benefits if if that mom decides to go
• 5:50
  back into the workplace outside of the home.
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  Studies have actually shown that mothers actually make better
• 5:57
  managers out in the workplace because of that ability to
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  multitask. So, so those are just a couple
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  of the the benefits of that, that changing that restructuring
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  of a woman's brain during pregnancy.
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  And that's why she gets that pregnancy brain because there's
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  a lot going on up there during pregnancy.
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  But again, I think if women can understand there's a reason for
• 6:16
  all of this and it actually is benefiting me long term, then
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  hopefully that can make that part of pregnancy a little bit
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  easier to tolerate. It's so encouraging what you're
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  saying and I relate to it so deeply because I feel like since
• 6:28
  becoming a mother I have gotten better in most categories.
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  I don't want to say every because it sounds very
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  braggadocious or whatever, but I feel like my children have
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  blessed me with the gift of more patience.
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  Yes, better multitasking, prioritization.
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  Like the things that don't matter as much don't matter as
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  much. If I could rewind 10 years or it
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  would be 7 years before we had our first child, who's now 6.
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  And I know I'm a better woman today and I credit God's grace,
• 6:56
  my husband's patient leadership, and my beautiful kids with that.
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  And what you're describing are just some examples of it.
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  What are some other ways that a woman's relationship to her body
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  change? It change because of pregnancy
• 7:10
  and child's birth. Yeah, absolutely.
• 7:12
  Well, I think this is a really important thing to talk about
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  because one of the things that is used to make women fearful
• 7:20
  about having children is your body is going to change and it's
• 7:24
  going to change permanently and it's going to be different and
• 7:27
  you should be fearful of that. Is it true that a woman's body
• 7:30
  changes with a pregnancy and after delivery 100% and it
• 7:35
  changes permanently, You know, it doesn't go back to the body
• 7:37
  that it was before pregnancy, But why is that a bad thing?
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  And I think that's what we need to talk about and reframe for
• 7:44
  women. It's not a bad thing.
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  I think part of it is we can never fully understand what
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  things are going to be like if we haven't experienced it yet.
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  And so part of it is it has to be a little bit of a reflection
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  back that women look back and say, yeah, things are different
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  for me. But man, as you just said,
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  they're so much better. And I could have never imagined
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  that they were going to be this much better, even through the
• 8:06
  hard times and things like that. So yes, a woman's body goes
• 8:10
  through changes. And you know, some of those may
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  be a little bit challenging after a pregnancy and a
• 8:16
  delivery, but so many of them are going to be better.
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  So one of the things is a woman's breast tissue goes
• 8:22
  through changes as she continues through a pregnancy and then
• 8:26
  hopefully as she breastfeeds. It's one of the reasons why
• 8:29
  breastfeeding is so important, not only because it has benefits
• 8:32
  for baby, but also because when a woman goes through a full term
• 8:35
  pregnancy and then she breastfeeds afterwards, her body
• 8:39
  converts the majority of her breast tissue into a very cancer
• 8:43
  resistant type of tissue. Which is why we see that the
• 8:46
  more pregnancies a woman has and the longer she spends
• 8:49
  breastfeeding, the lower her risk of breast cancer.
• 8:52
  So that's just one way in which a woman's body changes, but it
• 8:56
  benefits her long term physically and, and her long
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  term health. And it's manifest, you know,
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  just to kind of highlight how maybe an annoying pregnancy
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  symptom actually means that you're going to have these
• 9:08
  health benefits. It manifests itself in the fact
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  that women have a lot of breast tenderness early in their
• 9:13
  pregnancy because they're multiplying that breast tissue
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  to get ready to breastfeed a baby.
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  So that might may seem annoying or troublesome in the beginning.
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  But again, if we can help women understand, no actually this is
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  a good thing and it's going to give you long term health
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  benefits, then hopefully that'll help her understand that change
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  a little bit better and, and feel good actually when her body
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  is going through those changes. How does breastfeeding and also
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  the changes during pregnancy help protect women not just from
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  breast cancer like you're talking about, but also uterine
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  and ovarian cancer? Yeah, absolutely.
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  So we know that even just with one pregnancy, a woman reduces
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  her risk pretty significantly of both ovarian and uterine
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  cancers. But we also see additional risk
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  reduction with each additional pregnancy.
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  There's a couple different reasons for that.
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  One, especially for ovarian cancer, is that we see the
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  highest risk in women who basically their ovaries are
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  working around the clock for longer periods of time.
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  So women that start having periods at a younger age don't
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  go through menopause until a later age and have no
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  pregnancies. That means that their ovaries
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  are working constantly for all of those years.
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  So those are women that we see some of the highest risk of
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  ovarian cancer in. People need to understand that
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  because then you can understand why pregnancy would provide a
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  protective benefit because essentially during pregnancy,
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  your ovaries kind of quiet down and shut down for the duration
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  of the pregnancy and and then at least initially during
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  breastfeeding as well. And so that that quieting down
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  of the ovaries is what can lead then to a risk reduction in
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  ovarian cancer. The other thing is those
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  hormones that come from the ovaries play a role in the
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  development of uterine cancer, but also when you're not having
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  an overgrowth of the lining of the uterus, which of course
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  you're not during a pregnancy and then during breastfeeding,
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  that reduces your risk of uterine cancer.
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  So those are just some of the health benefits of of pregnancy.
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  And of course, you are well aware in our current culture,
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  many women are delaying childbearing for a variety of
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  reasons. They're pursuing careers.
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  They're thinking, I have plenty of time to get pregnant.
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  Not only does that impact their their fertility rate and they
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  may not be able to get pregnant if they wait too long to start
• 11:27
  trying, but also they don't get this risk reduction in their
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  cancer risk that they would have gotten had they had pregnancy
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  earlier. I do think there's in addition,
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  the flip side of what you're saying, though, is fear.
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  Fear around not just having a baby in your 20s, but for those
• 11:41
  women who might get later, fear about having children later
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  because they say, oh, now you're a geriatric pregnancy, you are
• 11:48
  now at higher risk. And so it's actually not good
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  for you to have babies into your 40s.
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  What would you say to that? Yeah, absolutely.
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  And I totally agree with you that and I, if I could change
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  there's a few medical terms that if I could take them out of our,
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  our lexicon as physicians, I would and one of them is
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  geriatric. I think that's one of the most.
• 12:07
  You are geriatric. Terms.
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  Exactly. Exactly.
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  Another baby. I'm a geriatric.
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  You are a geriatric pregnancy, that's right.
• 12:13
  I think that's such an awful term to use.
• 12:16
  You know, we do know that there are some health risks associated
• 12:19
  with pregnancy that do increase in in absolute incidents after
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  the age of 35. But like many things, I think
• 12:27
  that risk oftentimes is overblown.
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  And you're right. And then women feel very fearful
• 12:31
  to even try to get pregnant at that they.
• 12:33
  Say it's too dangerous. I mean, I've actually heard
• 12:35
  women say I don't want to have kids in my 40s because it's too
• 12:38
  dangerous. Right, right.
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  Absolutely. And is there risk involved?
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  Yes, just like there is with anything.
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  But we can mitigate those risks oftentimes through, you know,
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  lifestyle interventions or if a woman has a chronic medical
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  condition, if we're treated being that and get it under
• 12:54
  control well before she becomes pregnant or early in the
• 12:57
  pregnancy, we can mitigate a lot of those risks.
• 13:00
  And so I think it is definitely this narrative that a lot of
• 13:05
  women buy and believe that they absolutely should not get
• 13:08
  pregnant after the age of 35 because the risk would be so
• 13:12
  high. Again, these are exceptions.
• 13:15
  They are not the rule. The the rate of them does
• 13:18
  increase slightly over what it would be if you're less than 35.
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  But I've had many, many patients who have had perfectly healthy
• 13:25
  pregnancies and deliveries into their 40s.
• 13:28
  I had one, even one time, I remember she came into my
• 13:30
  office, she thought she wanted me to do labs because she
• 13:34
  thought she'd probably gone into menopause.
• 13:35
  She was 51. And it turned out she was
• 13:37
  pregnant and she had a perfectly healthy pregnancy.
• 13:41
  It was a total surprise, of course, in shock to her.
• 13:44
  But yes, you know, those, again, those can be managed.
• 13:47
  They can be managed well. And that's our job as physicians
• 13:49
  is to partner with our patients and help them through those
• 13:52
  times. But yes, I absolutely think that
• 13:54
  we should be supporting women beyond 35 have perfectly healthy
• 13:59
  pregnancies. I heard there was a study
• 14:02
  recently that showed that women who have children into their 40s
• 14:05
  are more likely to live much longer into their 90s.
• 14:09
  Is this true? Yes, absolutely.
• 14:11
  I saw the same study so and I think it speaks to the fact that
• 14:15
  first of all, if a woman becomes pregnant at that stage in her
• 14:19
  life, it is likely that she is has a little bit better just
• 14:24
  sort of health status kind of going into it that her body is
• 14:27
  able to get pregnant, which is wonderful.
• 14:30
  But also, we know that pregnancy oftentimes serves as a motivator
• 14:34
  to women for either stopping unhealthy behaviors or not
• 14:38
  starting unhealthy behaviors. So I've had many patients who
• 14:42
  were heavy smokers or maybe they were drinking a lot of alcohol
• 14:46
  that when they or doing drugs that when they became pregnant,
• 14:49
  because they now have this other person to think about and that
• 14:52
  other person's health to take into consideration that actually
• 14:56
  motivated them to stop that unhealthy behavior that maybe
• 14:59
  they had tried to stop many times before and were unable to.
• 15:02
  So we know that being pregnant, but also then being a mother and
• 15:06
  having children to think about, you don't want to leave your
• 15:09
  children without a mother. That also motivates many women
• 15:12
  to healthier behavior, healthy, healthier choices.
• 15:15
  And we just see in general as well that women who have
• 15:19
  children tend to have a little bit longer lifespan.
• 15:22
  And so I think that the study that came out recently that
• 15:24
  showed, you know, women having children later on in life speaks
• 15:28
  to exactly the opposite of this narrative that's out there, that
• 15:32
  if women get pregnant after the age of 35, they're going to, I
• 15:35
  think that there are women who legitimately feel they'll die if
• 15:38
  they get pregnant after that age.
• 15:40
  You know, and, and that's exactly the narrative that we
• 15:43
  are trying to flip right now to say, again, not being, not
• 15:47
  minimizing and not being ignorant of the fact that yes,
• 15:50
  there are complications that can rise in pregnancy.
• 15:53
  But thankfully, medical science has advanced so tremendously
• 15:57
  that now there are so many conditions that we can treat in
• 16:00
  pregnancy that we can still get good outcomes for mom and baby.
• 16:05
  But remembering that those are the exception, they are not the
• 16:08
  rule. The rule is that most
• 16:10
  pregnancies actually go very well and confer health benefits
• 16:14
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• 17:49
  Beyond the science, what in your view is the most beautiful or
• 17:52
  awe inspiring thing about how a woman's body is designed for
• 17:55
  pregnancy? Well, to answer that, I think I
• 17:59
  have to tell you the story of how I would say my profession
• 18:02
  chose me. I didn't choose my my profession
• 18:06
  or my specialty of OBGYN. So I was a second year medical
• 18:09
  student and hadn't even considered the field of OBGYN.
• 18:13
  Actually was thinking about family medicine maybe.
• 18:16
  And I was shadowing a family medicine physician and he got
• 18:19
  called to the hospital to deliver one of his patients.
• 18:22
  This was a woman I'd never even met before.
• 18:24
  And so I went to the hospital with him and I was standing in
• 18:27
  the back of the room watching the delivery.
• 18:29
  And it was the first delivery that I I was in the room when
• 18:32
  one of my sisters was born. But I was young and, you know,
• 18:34
  so didn't watch the delivery. So it was the first delivery I'd
• 18:37
  seen. And when the baby was born, I
• 18:41
  just started crying. I thought it was the most
• 18:43
  miraculous and beautiful thing that I had ever seen.
• 18:47
  And this you're going to make me cry.
• 18:50
  This older seasoned labor and delivery nurse.
• 18:52
  She was back at the baby warmer, waiting to take the baby over to
• 18:55
  the warmer. And she leaned over to me and
• 18:57
  she whispered in my ear and she said, oh, honey, if this makes
• 19:01
  you cry, you need to do this for a living.
• 19:03
  And I've wished so many times since that I could find her and
• 19:07
  tell her you changed the course of my life, which is that one
• 19:11
  thing that you said to me, you know, And I think it was the
• 19:13
  Lord speaking through her, obviously.
• 19:15
  But, but I, I wanted to tell that story because for me, it
• 19:19
  just encapsulates the awe and really the miraculous nature of
• 19:24
  pregnancy and, and childbirth. And to see as you learn, as I
• 19:30
  went through medical school and I learned about human
• 19:33
  development and Embryology and you see the amazing intricacies
• 19:38
  that happen, the amazing timing and coordination that has to
• 19:42
  happen. I mean, honestly, when you learn
• 19:43
  about it, you're like, how on earth does pregnancy even
• 19:46
  happen? And things go right?
• 19:47
  Because so many things have to go right, you know, for that
• 19:50
  baby to develop how he or she is supposed to.
• 19:53
  But of course, that's what happens in the vast majority of
• 19:55
  cases. And then the first time you see
• 19:58
  that baby on an ultrasound to see even at 6-8 weeks, I always,
• 20:02
  I always refer to baby as peanut because they do in the
• 20:05
  beginning, they look like, and I always say, look at your little
• 20:08
  peanut in there. You know how he or she's moving
• 20:10
  around and you see the heart beating it just.
• 20:14
  And then you just see how mom's body grows and changes to
• 20:18
  accommodate that in such amazing ways.
• 20:22
  It, it just, I don't, I don't know how any OBGYN couldn't be
• 20:26
  supportive of that. I don't have any OBGYN supports
• 20:30
  elective abortion that intentionally destroys that life
• 20:33
  that you just see the the beauty and the wonder of the
• 20:35
  development of that life. And then as we see how women's
• 20:39
  bodies accommodate and change and grow and to support that
• 20:44
  baby is just really amazing. One of the things I love to talk
• 20:48
  to patients about. And again, this is another
• 20:50
  aspect of man. I know for pregnant women, it
• 20:53
  feels awful. And then often times in the
• 20:55
  third trimester and at the end of pregnancy when your hips hurt
• 20:58
  and your pelvis just feels so heavy and it just everything
• 21:02
  feels different and walking feels different and all of that.
• 21:06
  And I know that it's hard, but what I tell him is this is
• 21:09
  another sign that your body, without you having to tell it
• 21:12
  what to do, your body is getting ready for that baby to come out.
• 21:16
  And it's because a woman's body starts making a hormone called
• 21:19
  relaxing, which does exactly what it sounds like.
• 21:22
  It relaxes things. So our pelvises are typically
• 21:25
  fixed joints. So they're, you know, multiple
• 21:28
  bones. But the the joints aren't like
• 21:30
  our hip joint that is meant to move.
• 21:32
  Your pelvis is supposed to be very fixed.
• 21:34
  But that would be a problem for childbirth because during
• 21:37
  childbirth your pelvis needs to expand to allow that baby to
• 21:41
  move through the pelvis and through the birth canal to be
• 21:43
  able to be born. And so a woman's body makes a
• 21:46
  hormone called relaxin that relaxes those pelvic joints.
• 21:51
  Unfortunately, that doesn't just happen right at the moment of
• 21:53
  childbirth. So it means that those those
• 21:55
  joints get a little bit loosey goosey there towards the end of
• 21:57
  pregnancy. But there's a reason for that.
• 21:59
  It's because of the way women's bodies were made that they were
• 22:02
  made to then start to change to accommodate that delivery, which
• 22:06
  I just think is amazing. It is truly amazing.
• 22:09
  Yeah, I I remember my husband when he saw me give birth for
• 22:13
  the first time. So I got to hear it from his
• 22:15
  eyes because I'm you're when you're in the experience, you
• 22:17
  are in 1000%. You're not like what it looks.
• 22:20
  Like, you know, you're like. You're in it so, but the actor
• 22:23
  is like, what was it like? Because he's on the other end,
• 22:24
  like watching the birth and he was like, it was the most I
• 22:29
  don't remember the word. I know at one point he said it
• 22:32
  was like almost like a sci-fi film.
• 22:33
  Like does this really happening where my wife is able to bring
• 22:36
  this life into the world? And he just talked about it
• 22:38
  being like a flower. He was like he was just blown
• 22:40
  away. He said it was the most
• 22:41
  incredible thing he has ever witnessed in his whole life to
• 22:44
  watch his son, our first be born and just the the majesty of this
• 22:50
  little body, my body, like our bodies being able to do this,
• 22:53
  bring another body into the world.
• 22:54
  And then immediately he comes up, he tries to starts
• 22:56
  breastfeeding. Like even that magic of like,
• 22:58
  yes, God's design there. And it's just, it just gives you
• 23:02
  a experience of awe. Yeah, one of my favorite things
• 23:06
  actually is to watch the dads, you know, because most moms, I'm
• 23:10
  not diminishing moms reactions at all, but most moms have
• 23:13
  fairly similar reactions. You know, I mean, they're, like
• 23:16
  you said, they're in the midst of it.
• 23:17
  They are in it. It's this really intense
• 23:20
  physical moment. Exactly.
• 23:21
  And, you know, and then most moms burst into tears as soon as
• 23:24
  the baby's out, you know. And so again, not diminishing
• 23:27
  that because it is a beautiful reaction, but dads have really
• 23:30
  different reactions. All of them do, though.
• 23:32
  I love that you said that about your husband because, yeah, it's
• 23:35
  just really neat to see. And especially with first
• 23:38
  babies, to see that family unit sort of manifest itself for the
• 23:42
  first time is really, really a special thing to be a part of.
• 23:46
  So it sounds like you see you've seen a lot of different
• 23:48
  reactions, probably everything from like just quiet awe to
• 23:51
  tears to like super excited. Like what what?
• 23:54
  I'm just curious like for the from your eyes looking at that
• 23:58
  man. I love those videos too of the
• 24:00
  woman walking down the aisle and the cameras on the.
• 24:02
  Man, so you get to see him. Experience his ride coming down
• 24:04
  the aisle for the first time and the only time.
• 24:07
  But to see his baby being born. What what?
• 24:11
  What do you see in the spectrum of men's reactions in that
• 24:14
  delivery? Room yeah, Oh my goodness, such
• 24:16
  a spectrum so you know from passing out which that has
• 24:22
  happened many. Times and said it was like
• 24:24
  intense you know like. Well, it does for me.
• 24:26
  It's a. Different kind of intense for
• 24:28
  you, but. We had dads pass out.
• 24:30
  I always warned dads ahead of time.
• 24:31
  Like, I've already taken care of two patients.
• 24:33
  I don't need a third. So if you feel like you're
• 24:35
  getting fat, please sit down. That's right.
• 24:37
  So that happens sometimes there's something.
• 24:38
  Yeah, exactly. But from that to just being
• 24:43
  speechless to I've had dads now. One of my favorite things to do
• 24:48
  actually, And I've done this especially with a lot, one of my
• 24:50
  friends that I've delivered is to have dad gown and glove up
• 24:54
  with me and help me do the delivery, which is really,
• 24:57
  really cool. I love that.
• 24:59
  But I've had dads who weren't gowned and gloved up with me who
• 25:03
  like got so excited that they kind of tried to like be a part
• 25:05
  of it or something, you know? So that's kind of fun.
• 25:09
  Yeah. To just awe, being speechless,
• 25:12
  crying, laughing, yeah. You know, jump on the couch like
• 25:16
  Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidnam. A great interview.
• 25:18
  And I have to, like, try to climb on the bed with the mob,
• 25:21
  you know, which is fine. But if I'm still, like, needing
• 25:24
  to do things sometimes I'm like, all right, Dad, you gotta wait
• 25:27
  just a minute, then we'll let you up there, you know?
• 25:28
  So, yeah, it's just, it's really wonderful.
• 25:31
  And. And I just love, you know,
• 25:34
  again, just speaking to the importance of a family unit.
• 25:37
  I just love when that is functioning how it is supposed
• 25:42
  to function and, and I just wish that more people could see that,
• 25:46
  I guess to see the importance of why should we as a culture be
• 25:51
  encouraging and supporting formation of that family unit.
• 25:55
  I mean, it just like I said, it makes such a difference even
• 25:57
  just in how a woman does her labor.
• 26:01
  You know, if she feels supported and has a really active,
• 26:05
  supportive husband that is there with her.
• 26:08
  In general, I would say that labor just goes so much
• 26:11
  smoother. I mean, you know, there are
• 26:12
  factors you can't control for obviously, but for the ones that
• 26:15
  you can, it goes so much smoother.
• 26:18
  Well, and I think in addition, you know, for those that maybe
• 26:20
  there is an issue where their dad is not in the picture, which
• 26:24
  tragically there are those cases, of course, but this brave
• 26:26
  Mama is like, I'm going to just love on this baby.
• 26:29
  In fact, for this baby. But then the power of community,
• 26:32
  whether it's a mother, a sister, a doula, you know, a friend
• 26:36
  doula, you in the room, you know, there to love on mom.
• 26:39
  Because the bottom line is we weren't meant to do pregnancy or
• 26:42
  birth alone. We meant to do it with the
• 26:45
  tribe, with the community, you know, with the doctor, of
• 26:48
  course, but you know, the friend or whoever it is.
• 26:50
  So that's the power of accompanying moms, regardless of
• 26:53
  the other challenges they may be facing or situations they may be
• 26:56
  in, but accompanying them and being there with them, even
• 26:58
  right up to the delivery of that baby to love on them and to
• 27:02
  provide support. I remember for my very first
• 27:04
  birth, my husband was, I was extra beloved on like I had my
• 27:06
  husband there, I had my mother there, we had a doula there.
• 27:09
  My sister dropped by for part of it.
• 27:11
  Now she's actually a birth doula.
• 27:12
  She went through training and it was just so special to have the
• 27:17
  people that loved me there for me.
• 27:19
  And so that's my hope for every woman.
• 27:22
  And if anyone listening has someone in their life who needs
• 27:25
  extra love, you know, who is pregnant or about to, you know,
• 27:27
  give birth or whatever, showing up for them, you know, asking
• 27:30
  how can I be there for you and showing up for them?
• 27:32
  I think it's so important. Absolutely, absolutely.
• 27:35
  And I think, you know, that's, I think even plays into this how
• 27:40
  we're trying to kind of flip the narrative on how we look at
• 27:43
  pregnancy as well, is even women that are in unplanned pregnancy
• 27:48
  situations where they are facing maybe an uphill battle, you
• 27:52
  know, by by society standards, they deserve to be excited about
• 27:58
  this baby and they deserve to have that support.
• 28:00
  And I absolutely, I mean, this is I think where the church can
• 28:03
  really play an important and significant role for women that
• 28:08
  maybe don't have that family support that they need.
• 28:11
  We know that many women who choose abortion say that had
• 28:15
  they had the support that they needed, they would have chosen
• 28:18
  life for their baby. And so absolutely, this is a
• 28:20
  place where Community Church can show up for women, be
• 28:24
  supportive. I think it's so important to the
• 28:27
  importance of having multiple generations within somebody's
• 28:30
  life for an older grandmother to be able to normalize some of the
• 28:35
  things that women are feeling during pregnancy, to say, no,
• 28:37
  this is actually very normal. Again, it's a good thing because
• 28:40
  it means that your body's changing in this way to help
• 28:43
  support you, to help support your baby.
• 28:45
  But they need to hear that. And that's, I think the
• 28:47
  importance of having, you know, multiple generations around
• 28:51
  them, whether that's through their family unit or through
• 28:53
  their church. So, so important.
• 28:55
  There's an article on rethinkpregnancy.com that is
• 28:59
  called Pregnancy Doesn't Ruin Your Body, it strengthens it.
• 29:01
  Yeah, you've shared a little bit about this, but can you share
• 29:04
  how exactly does pregnancy make your body stronger?
• 29:07
  Yeah, absolutely. Well, we know that that women,
• 29:10
  first of all, I mean, you said even from your own experience
• 29:13
  with your first delivery, Yeah, it's like a marathon.
• 29:16
  So it can actually increase a woman's cardiovascular strength.
• 29:21
  We know that women who have full term pregnancies especially have
• 29:26
  a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke later in
• 29:29
  life. So it it can strengthen your
• 29:33
  heart. Now, certainly there are, you
• 29:35
  know, if women have heart conditions, they, they have to
• 29:37
  be monitored during pregnancy. But again, we're talking about
• 29:40
  in general, the rule here for pregnancy is that it can improve
• 29:44
  your cardiovascular system. It also changes your muscle mass
• 29:49
  and, and the structure of those muscles as well so that your
• 29:53
  body can support pregnancy. And then what you need to do
• 29:56
  after you deliver, you know, through motherhood as well.
• 30:00
  And it, yeah, it just, it changes your, your pelvic
• 30:03
  structure, makes that more stable as well.
• 30:06
  So just lots of different ways that that women's bodies
• 30:09
  actually, again, is are they going to be different?
• 30:13
  Yes, they are going to be different after pregnancy and
• 30:15
  delivery, but different doesn't mean bad.
• 30:18
  It actually, yeah, improves women's their their stamina as
• 30:23
  well. I know I've, I've heard
• 30:25
  interviews with really elite runners who have said that
• 30:28
  actually after having being pregnant and then delivering,
• 30:31
  they actually have more stamina in long distance running, things
• 30:34
  like that. So really amazing changes that a
• 30:37
  woman's body goes through to then be able to, you know, not
• 30:40
  only take care of her children, but that can impact her for the
• 30:44
  long run as well. It's amazing.
• 30:46
  I'm not a long distance runner or a short distance runner, but
• 30:49
  I do relate to that because the stamina piece, I mean, I'm able
• 30:53
  to do things I could never. I was like such a wimp before
• 30:57
  having kids. I feel in many ways and I
• 30:59
  remember after our first, having our first baby, I, I was like a
• 31:03
  marathon. I like, I've never run a
• 31:04
  marathon, but that was my marathon and I was overcome with
• 31:09
  another again, awe. That is the word offer the baby,
• 31:11
  offer the experience and awe that I was able by God's grace,
• 31:15
  I had help, but I was able to do that, deliver this little 1 And
• 31:20
  I was just like, wow, I can't I'm, I'm tougher.
• 31:23
  I was like, Oh, I'm stronger than I thought I was, but my
• 31:25
  body did it. You know, that's the other
• 31:27
  thing. You have to be engaged mentally,
• 31:28
  I think in pregnancy as a mom, but your body just knows what to
• 31:32
  do if you let it. Absolutely, which is also this
• 31:34
  incredible, almost surprise that it's so intuitive.
• 31:37
  But at the same time, again, we're taught, I think, to fear
• 31:40
  right pregnancy in our culture today.
• 31:42
  So if you let your body do its thing, it's just amazing to
• 31:45
  watch the power of the body. It is really amazing.
• 31:48
  I mean, I, I tell people all the time.
• 31:50
  I mean, obviously I'm, I'm not saying that my job is, is not
• 31:54
  important or that I shouldn't be there as a physician.
• 31:56
  But really my job in being there as a physician is to help a
• 31:59
  woman if something isn't going quite right with her labor.
• 32:03
  Because really and truly a woman's body does take over and
• 32:08
  it knows what to do in labour and sometimes, yes, we have to
• 32:12
  be there to assist with things if things aren't going quite as
• 32:15
  they should. But it is really amazing to
• 32:17
  watch that process and how, as you said, a woman's body changes
• 32:22
  during pregnancy, but then even in the delivery process as well,
• 32:26
  to be able to assist that that baby to be able to come out is,
• 32:29
  is truly remarkable. Yeah.
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  solved. It's not a disease to be
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  treated. It is something it is actually
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  evidence that a woman's body is working in the way it was meant
• 34:15
  to work. It actually can be a sign of
• 34:17
  health that our systems are working together as they're
• 34:20
  supposed to work together. And so we need to celebrate
• 34:24
  that, celebrate pregnancy, celebrate motherhood as what it
• 34:27
  was meant to be, which is the sign of what I think women are
• 34:31
  truly meant to be and to do. Not that you can't be a mother
• 34:36
  and also work outside the home and work in the workplace.
• 34:39
  Obviously, I'm a physician. I am fully supportive of women
• 34:41
  being able to go to school and pursue their dreams, all of
• 34:44
  that. But I think motherhood just
• 34:48
  amplifies that. It doesn't.
• 34:49
  It doesn't need to diminish from it.
• 34:51
  But when we live in a society, in a culture that says you can't
• 34:55
  do both, you need to be able to end your child's life in order
• 34:58
  to pursue these other dreams, we really are doing women a
• 35:02
  disservice through that. And we're not challenging.
• 35:06
  The other thing that I say often times is that abortion is used
• 35:10
  as a Band-Aid to try to cover up wounds within society or things
• 35:14
  that are wrong within society. But we all know band aids don't
• 35:17
  actually fix anything. They just kind of cover things
• 35:19
  up and they're a temporary, you know, quote UN quote solution.
• 35:23
  But one area that I think we need to be talking about more is
• 35:26
  this area of prenatal diagnosis. I think it is one of the most
• 35:30
  common situations of coerced abortions that exist.
• 35:33
  And unfortunately, the coercion often times is coming from my
• 35:37
  profession and I think a lot of doctors that are offering that
• 35:43
  or maybe recommending it to women.
• 35:45
  Honestly, it is coming from a place of misplaced compassion
• 35:50
  because we are trained that the compassionate thing to do in
• 35:54
  that situation. If that baby is not going to
• 35:56
  survive anyways, which by the way, often times we don't
• 35:58
  actually know that. But if we think that there's a
• 36:02
  chance that baby isn't going to survive, then the compassionate
• 36:04
  thing to do is why would you make that woman, you know,
• 36:07
  endure an entire pregnancy? And this is how we're trained.
• 36:10
  So I do think that many physicians think that they're
• 36:13
  being compassionate when they offer that.
• 36:15
  But what we think physicians need to understand is that our
• 36:20
  words carry so much weight with our patients.
• 36:23
  And when a doctor is saying that to you, many women see that as
• 36:26
  their only option when it's the first thing that's offered to
• 36:30
  them. Many women see that as, oh,
• 36:32
  that's something that I have to do then.
• 36:34
  And you're right, many times it comes at women and families over
• 36:38
  and over and over again. I had the great privilege and
• 36:42
  honor to meet an amazing woman at our State House in Indiana
• 36:47
  when we were debating our abortion law.
• 36:49
  And one of the big areas of debate was an exception for
• 36:53
  babies that have potentially life limiting conditions.
• 36:56
  And unfortunately, our law only got passed with that exception
• 36:59
  in place. We fought very hard against it,
• 37:02
  but this woman that I had the privilege of meeting had a baby
• 37:04
  that was diagnosed with a condition called anencephaly
• 37:07
  during her pregnancy, which is where the brain doesn't fully
• 37:10
  develop. And, and typically, a lot of
• 37:12
  times those babies will die before they're born.
• 37:15
  But if not, they typically die shortly after birth.
• 37:18
  Although there are documented cases of babies living to be two
• 37:21
  or three years old even with that condition.
• 37:24
  And abortion was not an option for her.
• 37:26
  You know, that was offered to her by her first doctor.
• 37:28
  She said no. She went back a couple more
• 37:31
  times. At each visit, she said my
• 37:33
  doctor explained the condition again to me.
• 37:36
  It was like she thought that I was stupid or something and
• 37:39
  didn't understand. She said I fully understood what
• 37:41
  my in fact, I probably understood more about my
• 37:43
  daughter's condition than my doctor did because I did so much
• 37:46
  research. I was so motivated to do
• 37:47
  research on it. So she eventually went to
• 37:49
  another doctor because she was tired of having to fight that
• 37:52
  fight every time she went to see her doctor.
• 37:55
  She eventually went to six doctors before she finally found
• 37:58
  one who was just willing to not pressure her to end her child's
• 38:02
  life. She had a high risk doctor.
• 38:04
  She wanted AC section because she wanted the best chance
• 38:07
  possible for her daughter to be born alive.
• 38:10
  And she knew, and she was correct through her research,
• 38:12
  that labor would likely cause enough stress that it could end
• 38:16
  her daughter's life during labor.
• 38:18
  So she wanted AC section. First of all, ACOG, the American
• 38:21
  College of OBGYN, says that if a woman just wants AC section for
• 38:24
  any reason, just an elective C-section, that after counseling
• 38:27
  her about the risk, we should do that for her.
• 38:29
  So that's the official stance of ACOG.
• 38:32
  She had a high risk doctor tell her that it would be a waste of
• 38:35
  resources to do AC section for her since her daughter wasn't
• 38:38
  going to live. How demeaning is that?
• 38:41
  Now, thankfully, she finally found a Doctor Who said
• 38:43
  absolutely, we'll do that. If that's your desire, we will
• 38:46
  do that. And she delivered her daughter
• 38:48
  Mia. Her story's available online.
• 38:50
  It's it's a really moving story actually.
• 38:52
  She delivered her daughter. Her daughter was born alive and
• 38:55
  she was able to take her daughter home for three weeks.
• 38:58
  She was able to breastfeed her, her son, I believe it was her
• 39:02
  son that she already had at home, was able to spend time
• 39:05
  with his little sister. And yes, they lost their
• 39:08
  daughter after three weeks, but she said I wouldn't have given
• 39:11
  up that three weeks for anything in the world.
• 39:13
  And my son is a better, a better child.
• 39:16
  He's going to be a better person because he had that three weeks
• 39:18
  with his sister. They have beautiful videos of
• 39:21
  her laughing, smiling. And, you know, it just breaks my
• 39:27
  heart. I, I am so grateful for her that
• 39:29
  she got to have that time with her daughter.
• 39:31
  But it breaks my heart that she faced what she faced every time
• 39:35
  she went into a doctor's office. And so I think it's really
• 39:38
  important, as you said, that we not only be looking for ways
• 39:43
  that, you know, eventually maybe there will be a way that we can
• 39:46
  better support children with anencephaly and it and it won't
• 39:48
  be an immediate death sentence as it kind of is now.
• 39:53
  But even if not that, we find ways to respect families, to
• 39:56
  support them, to help them understand.
• 39:58
  We also know women's mental health outcomes when they have
• 40:01
  abortions in those kind of circumstances with very wanted
• 40:04
  desired pregnancies, typically farther along in the pregnancy
• 40:07
  by the time these diagnosis are made, that their mental health
• 40:11
  outcomes are actually significantly worse.
• 40:13
  Who's talking to them about that?
• 40:14
  But their mental health outcomes will be better if they're
• 40:17
  supported through their pregnancy and through their
• 40:19
  delivery. That's a huge point you just
• 40:21
  made that I think most people do not know.
• 40:24
  And it's so important that if you have a poor prenatal
• 40:29
  diagnosis, life limiting condition, genetic condition,
• 40:32
  something that says that death is imminent for this baby.
• 40:35
  And then terminations offered that the mental health outcomes
• 40:38
  for mom are worse if she aborts versus letting nature take its
• 40:43
  course lovingly with as much medical intervention as you can
• 40:46
  do to help that baby, give it, give that baby a shot.
• 40:49
  If you let ultimately that baby have the lifespan ODD allows, as
• 40:54
  opposed to cutting that lifespan short, the mental health
• 40:56
  outcomes are going to be worse for mom with abortion than if
• 40:59
  she chooses life for as long as that baby may live.
• 41:01
  Absolutely. And there's a number of reasons
• 41:03
  for that. You know, part of it is because
• 41:06
  when the baby dies of natural causes that that happened
• 41:10
  because of that condition, right?
• 41:12
  So the parents didn't have any agency or, or participation in
• 41:17
  that baby dying versus when the decision is made for a pregnancy
• 41:22
  termination or an abortion, the parents then have agency in
• 41:25
  that. And I think inherently they,
• 41:28
  they feel that and they understand that.
• 41:30
  The other thing is that often times families, women are
• 41:33
  manipulated into that decision because they're told your baby
• 41:36
  is suffering and you don't want your baby to be in pain.
• 41:40
  This is heartbreaking to me that parents are being told, I mean,
• 41:43
  how emotionally manipulative. Of course, no parent wants their
• 41:47
  child to suffer or to ever feel pain if they don't don't have
• 41:50
  to. And so I think so many families
• 41:52
  who would never have considered abortion do it because they
• 41:57
  think, well, I don't want my baby to be suffering.
• 41:59
  That baby is not suffering inside of a mom because of any
• 42:03
  genetic condition. There is no evidence whatsoever.
• 42:07
  In fact, there's evidence that that the baby actually probably
• 42:11
  feels, you know, somewhat less in inside than they maybe would
• 42:15
  with the same condition outside. Not that they don't feel pain.
• 42:17
  They do feel pain, but there that's a protected environment
• 42:21
  and so it's helping protect them.
• 42:23
  What will cause them pain would be to be intentionally
• 42:26
  dismembered through an abortion procedure, and parents aren't
• 42:29
  told about that, that that's going to be a very painful,
• 42:32
  awful procedure for the baby. This is this is where we're
• 42:34
  getting into it. And I think this is incredibly
• 42:37
  important what you're about to share with people when we hear
• 42:40
  the word termination. Like your average mom who has a
• 42:43
  high risk pregnancy. Again, these are rare cases.
• 42:45
  I shouldn't say average because these are very, you know, rare
• 42:47
  cases, but there is this high risk situation where baby has
• 42:51
  this very extreme condition, let's say, right?
• 42:54
  First of all, that can be misdiagnosed.
• 42:56
  We haven't even gone into that yet.
• 42:57
  But for the question of pain, because they are told many women
• 43:00
  in this Reddit forum I'm reading, they're saying they I
• 43:03
  don't want baby to suffer. So I opted for termination,
• 43:06
  right? And I'm sitting there like, do
• 43:07
  you know what termination is, right?
• 43:09
  Can you explain what termination means?
• 43:12
  Yes, for a baby that has some genetic condition or life
• 43:15
  limiting diagnosis. Yeah, absolutely.
• 43:17
  Well, so how it's done is going to depend on how far along in
• 43:21
  pregnancy she is. But even if it's in the first
• 43:24
  trimester, which, you know, the, the scientific literature now
• 43:27
  shows that I think we can confidently say as early as 12
• 43:31
  weeks, babies are feeling pain. But the literature actually says
• 43:34
  it's likely earlier. Even when we see procedures that
• 43:39
  are done as early as 8 or 10 weeks where the baby
• 43:41
  accidentally gets kind of poked with a needle, the baby will
• 43:44
  withdraw from from that. So that's evidence that the
• 43:47
  baby's likely feeling pain even as early as 8 or 10 weeks.
• 43:51
  But you know, in a first trimester abortion procedure, if
• 43:54
  it's done via the abortion drugs that maybe is starved to death
• 43:58
  and and starved of oxygen and nutrients.
• 44:00
  So that's obviously not a pleasant way to to die.
• 44:04
  If it's done through a surgical procedure, AD and C in the first
• 44:08
  trimester, then the baby is being torn apart limb from limb.
• 44:12
  It threw a suction cannula. So again that while the baby is
• 44:16
  alive, so that baby is going to feel every bit of that.
• 44:19
  And remember, baby is not suffering inside of mom
• 44:22
  regardless of what condition he or she has.
• 44:26
  There is zero evidence that exists that that baby is
• 44:29
  actively suffering or feeling pain from that condition while
• 44:33
  inside of mom, but we do know that these kind of dismemberment
• 44:37
  procedures would cause pain. How could they I mean?
• 44:39
  How could they not if? There's any feeling total
• 44:42
  sensation, totally the feeling or sensation of being like when
• 44:45
  I first learned about abortion and saw like just medically
• 44:48
  accurate depictions of what these abortion I was, I was
• 44:51
  floored. I thought people, are we just
• 44:54
  living in La La land and pretending like this doesn't
• 44:56
  happen, that termination involves these things, but like
• 45:00
  keep going because a lot of these life, life limiting
• 45:02
  diagnosis happen later or they're confirmed at the 20 week
• 45:06
  scan as an example. That's when we're talking not
• 45:09
  just first trimester abortions. We're talking 2nd and and even
• 45:12
  third. Right, exactly.
• 45:13
  So the farther along in pregnancy we get, then the
• 45:15
  abortion procedures change a little bit in the second
• 45:18
  trimester, at least up to depending.
• 45:21
  Some people will do what's called AD and E procedure, which
• 45:25
  is very barbaric procedure on a on a living baby where parts of
• 45:30
  the baby are grasped with forceps that have teeth on them
• 45:34
  that grab hold and don't let go. And literally arms are ripped
• 45:38
  off, legs are ripped off, the torso is ripped off.
• 45:41
  And again, this on a living baby that can very definitely feel
• 45:44
  pain. Like they're crushing and
• 45:46
  twisting, crushing, twisting. Like someone like God forbid
• 45:49
  like grab me right and just tried to.
• 45:51
  RIP my arm arm. Powerful like source?
• 45:54
  Something like a machine? Right.
• 45:57
  It's. Unreal.
• 45:57
  And our families told this before when they're recommended
• 46:01
  to have an abortion in this situation, I think in I can
• 46:04
  confidently say in the vast majority of cases, no, they're
• 46:07
  not. I think they're told it will be
• 46:09
  painless. They're told that this is
• 46:10
  actually going to not be. Suffering.
• 46:12
  This is going to take away suffering, right?
• 46:14
  And, you know, even no matter where somebody stands on the
• 46:18
  issue of abortion, we should believe that if a family is
• 46:22
  going to make a very significant decision like this, that they
• 46:26
  should be making it with fully accurate information on both
• 46:29
  sides, right? We don't just talk about risks
• 46:31
  and benefits of one option. You have to talk about risks and
• 46:34
  benefits of all options that you're presenting to a patient.
• 46:38
  And part of that conversation, especially if you're centering
• 46:40
  that conversation around trying to prevent pain and suffering
• 46:44
  for someone's child, should absolutely involve.
• 46:48
  But if you choose abortion, this is what that's going to, this is
• 46:51
  going to mean for your child. And they're, I know they're not
• 46:54
  being told that I know because I've talked to patients and
• 46:56
  families who've been through this with other physicians.
• 46:59
  You know, the far, if we get farther along in pregnancy, if
• 47:02
  we start thinking about later second trimester and even into
• 47:05
  the third trimester, which oftentimes right, is the
• 47:07
  justification used for 3rd trimester abortions.
• 47:09
  Well, for fetal conditions, we have to be able to do this.
• 47:12
  First of all, no, you don't. You can deliver the baby and
• 47:15
  provide baby with appropriate care that may or may not be life
• 47:19
  saving depending on the condition.
• 47:21
  But as you said, we're not always right about these
• 47:23
  diagnosis either. And if we are dismembering that
• 47:26
  baby in the second trimester, we have destroyed any possibility
• 47:30
  of discovering that we were actually wrong about our
• 47:32
  diagnosis first of all. Second of all, even if the
• 47:34
  diagnosis is right, that child has value and worth and can feel
• 47:38
  pain when he or she is dismembered, so we should avoid.
• 47:41
  That it makes me feel sick because we wouldn't do this to
• 47:45
  dogs, I mean. Right, we did the new matches.
• 47:48
  Even disabled puppies, right, like ripping them live
• 47:51
  dismemberment. Like we would be like, oh, PETA
• 47:54
  would be all over that. Like you'd have all the advocacy
• 47:56
  groups like politically left and right, I think could come
• 47:58
  together and be like, this is wrong.
• 48:00
  Right. But we're doing this actively to
• 48:01
  babies in hospitals under the guise of healthcare today,
• 48:04
  right? And we all act like the Reddit
• 48:06
  acts like, oh, this was the loving thing.
• 48:08
  We opted for this because we didn't want baby to feel pain.
• 48:10
  I'm like, this is unreal that people misunderstand this
• 48:14
  because they've never been told it right.
• 48:17
  Absolutely. Absolutely.
• 48:18
  And then even if we look at, you know, how abortions are done
• 48:21
  later in pregnancy, maybe some people would look at that as
• 48:25
  more humane. But typically, what I certainly
• 48:28
  don't, but typically what's done is the baby's heart is injected
• 48:31
  with a substance that will induce a heart attack so that
• 48:35
  the baby dies in utero. Well, I don't know about you,
• 48:38
  but I personally would not want to have a heart attack induced,
• 48:41
  not only because it would end my life but also it's not a
• 48:45
  pleasant experience to go through a heart attack.
• 48:47
  And aren't they stabbing the child's chest with a needle in
• 48:50
  order to do that? Like, it's not like they just
• 48:52
  press the button and the baby has this heart attack, Guys,
• 48:54
  they have to Pierce the baby's chest cavity.
• 48:57
  Yes, with a long sharp needle. Like like imagine getting like
• 49:02
  stabbed in the chest and then you have a heart attack.
• 49:04
  Right, right. And it's one thing if that is
• 49:07
  being done for a life saving intervention, but when you're
• 49:10
  doing it to end a life, to kill baby, yes, that's even worse.
• 49:14
  So yes. So a heart attack is induced so
• 49:17
  that then when the woman's labor is induced, which by the way is
• 49:20
  another thing that I don't think gets talked about enough.
• 49:23
  So those of us who are pro-life often times are accused of being
• 49:26
  forced birthers, right? All these people that are
• 49:29
  advocating for 3rd trimester abortions, mom still has to go
• 49:33
  through labor. So she's not avoiding labor.
• 49:37
  The difference is she's delivering a dead baby.
• 49:39
  She's not delivering a live baby and a, and a baby that whose
• 49:42
  life was ended, you know, I would say in a pretty horrific
• 49:46
  way as you just described. And, and then we've induced a
• 49:48
  heart attack. So actually, if we truly cared
• 49:51
  about Women's Health and, and saving women and, you know,
• 49:55
  taking care of them as quickly as possible, we do deliveries.
• 49:57
  We don't do abortions and every doctor knows that.
• 50:00
  That's the thing. Every doctor knows that.
• 50:02
  So, so, yeah, I think, you know, parents need to understand that
• 50:06
  these, if they're being recommended an abortion in these
• 50:09
  situations, they need to understand what that truly is,
• 50:13
  what it means for them, for their babies, so that they can
• 50:17
  make decisions that are best for both of them.
• 50:19
  Can you explain briefly for folks what perinatal palliative
• 50:25
  care or Hospice is? This is a big term, but I think
• 50:29
  that when we're talking about suffering for baby, outcomes for
• 50:32
  baby, like you said, there's families that think that there
• 50:35
  is no other option than termination.
• 50:37
  They're not told what termination really is, but
• 50:39
  they're just told that. What are some of these other
• 50:42
  options in terms of palliative care, Hospice and ways to give
• 50:46
  baby a chance? Yeah, absolutely.
• 50:48
  Well, so perinatal palliative care or perinatal Hospice was
• 50:51
  kind of modeled after what we think of as Hospice at the end
• 50:54
  of life. So if an adult, you know,
• 50:56
  towards the end of their life has a condition that we expect
• 50:59
  to lead to their death, then there are things that we do to
• 51:02
  support them. Again, it's not just go suffer
• 51:06
  and until your life is over, you know, there are comfort measures
• 51:09
  that we can provide, things like that and, and a whole support
• 51:12
  system. We experienced it myself with
• 51:14
  my, with my dad before he passed away.
• 51:16
  And it is a really great supportive environment for
• 51:19
  families. So perinatal Hospice is, is
• 51:22
  similar in some ways, but it's for a baby right after they're
• 51:26
  born. So again, with a condition that
• 51:28
  we expect may lead to a shorter lifespan, it provides support
• 51:33
  through the pregnancy through a multidisciplinary approach where
• 51:36
  you have doctors who can provide pain management if that's what's
• 51:40
  needed for the baby afterwards, where you have neonatologists
• 51:43
  involved. Because maybe this is a
• 51:44
  condition that could potentially have survival with certain
• 51:48
  treatments. But you might need to wait and
• 51:50
  see how baby responds to interventions after delivery,
• 51:54
  which is actually the most important thing I think for
• 51:57
  families to know is to say, let's try to do some
• 52:01
  interventions after delivery and let's see how baby responds.
• 52:03
  That's actually the best predictor of how a baby will do.
• 52:07
  The the biggest factor for a poor prognosis after delivery,
• 52:13
  meaning baby doesn't survive, is a prenatal diagnosis.
• 52:17
  Actually, there have been studies that have looked at
• 52:19
  that, that when babies had the same condition, but it wasn't
• 52:23
  diagnosed until after delivery, they do better.
• 52:26
  Why is that? Because when we don't know that
• 52:28
  they have one of these conditions, what's the automatic
• 52:30
  response after delivery? Oh, baby is struggling.
• 52:33
  Baby needs help, so we're going to do these interventions.
• 52:35
  And again, shocker, when you do interventions, often times
• 52:39
  babies will do better. So, so I think that that study
• 52:42
  is actually very illuminating that the biggest factor for a
• 52:47
  poor prognosis and how baby does after delivery is having that
• 52:50
  diagnosis before delivery. When we don't find out about it
• 52:53
  until after delivery, we automatically start
• 52:55
  interventions. And then often times babies will
• 52:57
  do better. But perinatal palliative care
• 53:00
  can come along in those cases where maybe you've tried
• 53:03
  interventions or maybe babies born so small that those
• 53:07
  interventions just aren't possible, to then provide
• 53:10
  supportive care to the family, to provide supportive care to
• 53:13
  the baby to ensure baby isn't suffering and to walk the family
• 53:16
  through that grief process. We know for grief in general
• 53:21
  that mental health outcomes after grief are better when you
• 53:23
  walk through those stages of grief.
• 53:26
  And what abortion does is it it unnaturally truncates that
• 53:31
  grieving process and doesn't allow families to really walk
• 53:35
  through the stages of grief that they really need to in order to
• 53:38
  appropriately grieve the loss of their child.
• 53:40
  And the the other thing is that I think perinatal palliative
• 53:43
  care helps them see that even though your child's life may
• 53:45
  have been short, that was still your child and your child still
• 53:48
  has value and worth. It gives a family an intact baby
• 53:52
  to hold and to grieve, even if that baby does pass away.
• 53:56
  My hospital that I work at does a great job with this, this and
• 53:59
  we have so many mementos that we can do for families so that they
• 54:02
  can have memories of that child. And so I just think the beauty
• 54:06
  of of perinatal palliative care when it's appropriate.
• 54:09
  I think a lot of times we need to be doing interventions, not
• 54:12
  not just doing palliative care, but but when it's appropriate.
• 54:15
  I think that the beauty of it is that it it supports these
• 54:18
  families while helping them see the value of their child.
• 54:22
  That's so beautifully shared. Thank you.
• 54:25
  And I hope it's a good myth, Buster for people listening who
• 54:28
  maybe can pass this to a friend who's facing a poor prenatal
• 54:31
  diagnosis or just for everyone to have this working knowledge
• 54:34
  because somebody eventually we know somebody or hear of
• 54:37
  somebody and they just don't know that.
• 54:39
  There are doctors that specialize in this.
• 54:40
  And there are so many options for ways to value that little
• 54:44
  life and take care of mom too. I want to get into the abortion
• 54:48
  pill now because there's a lot in the news media about this.
• 54:51
  I want to trace what's happening and then hear your expert
• 54:54
  opinion on it. We're going to talk about that,
• 54:57
  but we're going to get into solutions to, you know, how do
• 54:59
  we get ourselves all healthier and make this country and beyond
• 55:04
  a healthier place for moms to have babies, healthier place for
• 55:07
  those babies. That's the end game here, right?
• 55:09
  But to break it down a little bit, so recently the Supreme
• 55:12
  Court did a ruling that ultimately upended the 5th
• 55:16
  Circuit. So there's another court system
• 55:19
  that said that the abortion pill cannot be shipped via mail
• 55:23
  because there's pro-life states like Louisiana.
• 55:25
  Who was the plaintiff in that case who said who has, you know,
• 55:30
  pro-life? They protect babies in their
• 55:31
  state. But you can ship in these drugs
• 55:33
  via the postal mail system from, say, California, which is super
• 55:35
  pro abortion. So in this particular case,
• 55:38
  there was a young woman whose boyfriend coerced her into
• 55:40
  taking the abortion drug. He ordered it for her from
• 55:42
  California, forced her to take it under threat or, you know,
• 55:45
  horrible. She, the baby is dead and she's
• 55:48
  devastated, right? So she's also a plaintiffs with
• 55:50
  the state of Louisiana in that case.
• 55:53
  I share that because people look at the abortion rate today and
• 55:56
  you can see it's going up and you can point directly to mail
• 56:00
  order abortion, press the button, basically get it shipped
• 56:03
  to you. What are the dangers of mail
• 56:05
  order abortion? So there are significant dangers
• 56:08
  associated with the abortion drugs even at baseline, but
• 56:12
  especially with the way they're being dispensed right now
• 56:14
  through the mail with no, no medical supervision.
• 56:17
  I'm going to get to that. I think people need to
• 56:18
  understand there is no medical supervision over these drugs
• 56:21
  right now, even at their baseline, even under the quote
• 56:25
  UN quote best of circumstances. So where women are being seen in
• 56:28
  person before they get them, they're being seen in person for
• 56:31
  follow up visits. They're only taking them early
• 56:34
  in pregnancy, all of that. Even with the best of
• 56:37
  circumstances, we know that abortion drugs are just
• 56:41
  inherently dangerous. They have a four times higher
• 56:43
  complication rate than surgical abortions.
• 56:45
  When you look at international data.
• 56:47
  And you know of course some recent analysis that have been
• 56:51
  done of insurance claims data show that close to one in nine
• 56:54
  women who take these drugs will have a serious adverse event.
• 56:57
  And that data all came from the actually or the majority of it
• 57:01
  came from when the in person dispensing requirement was still
• 57:04
  in place. So we know that at baseline,
• 57:06
  these drugs are inherently dangerous the way they are being
• 57:10
  dispensed now, thanks to the Biden administration removing,
• 57:14
  there was only one in person visit left that was required and
• 57:18
  that was before women were given these abortion drugs.
• 57:21
  Now that that's been removed, these drugs are available online
• 57:25
  with no interaction with a medical professional.
• 57:28
  So I think this is another really important point to make,
• 57:30
  especially for any your pro-life audience, because I've heard a
• 57:34
  lot of people in the pro-life movement still refer to these as
• 57:36
  telehealth or telemedicine abortions.
• 57:38
  We have got to stop calling them that.
• 57:40
  They are not telehealth. No, no, not, not at all.
• 57:43
  You know, first of all, there's no health benefit that's being
• 57:46
  accomplished. But second of all, they're
• 57:47
  literally exactly, definitely not for baby.
• 57:50
  It's ending baby's lives. So that's not health.
• 57:52
  The purpose of medicine is health, healing and wholeness.
• 57:55
  Abortion does none of those things for for baby certainly,
• 57:58
  but also doesn't do any of those things for mom.
• 58:00
  But not only that, there is 0 interaction in most cases with
• 58:05
  any kind of medical professional And to put this to a test,
• 58:09
  Applog recently put out an expose video.
• 58:13
  Now I feel bad talking to you about this because live action
• 58:15
  is like the the experts of your expose video.
• 58:18
  You really briefly, I should have already asked you to do
• 58:20
  this. Can you tell people what a plug
• 58:22
  is? Oh, yes, you have it beautifully
• 58:23
  on your we're going to we're going to link it as well.
• 58:25
  But this is absolutely along with every life behind the
• 58:28
  Rethink pregnancy campaign. But what is a plug?
• 58:30
  And then tell me about this investigation because it was
• 58:32
  phenomenal. Yes.
• 58:32
  So we are the American Association of Pro-life OBGYN's.
• 58:37
  We are the largest non sectarian professional medical
• 58:40
  organization for pro-life medical professionals in the
• 58:43
  world. We've got just over 8000 members
• 58:45
  now across the country and really I think have become the
• 58:50
  medical voice for the pro-life movement to say that good
• 58:53
  science, good medicine is consistent with the pro-life
• 58:56
  perspective and we desire to practice life affirming
• 58:59
  medicine. And so, yeah, so we decided
• 59:03
  because I was, we've seen a lot of videos, including many that
• 59:06
  live action had put out showing how easy it it is to get these
• 59:09
  pills online. Obviously men can get them.
• 59:12
  Rosalie Marquez, the the plaintiff, the Co plaintiff and
• 59:15
  the case out of Louisiana, her boyfriend, as you said, got
• 59:18
  online and ordered these pills. I was really interested to see
• 59:22
  because they, the, the sites and the companies that are
• 59:24
  dispensing these pills will say that there is medical oversight
• 59:29
  still, that there's somebody, you know, who knows who because
• 59:31
  nobody's name is on anything, but there's somebody reviewing
• 59:34
  this and ensuring that there's some kind of medical
• 59:36
  supervision. So we really wanted to put that
• 59:39
  to the test. So I got on to plan C, put that
• 59:42
  I was in Indiana, which is my home state where abortion is
• 59:45
  almost completely illegal. And it popped up with I think 18
• 59:49
  different websites where I could get these abortion drugs from.
• 59:52
  So I picked Aid Access, which is one of the biggest distributors
• 59:56
  of the abortion drugs online, and I just wanted to see.
• 59:59
  So I went in in the end. I was a 13 year old with
• 1:00:04
  basically every single contraindication meaning a
• 1:00:07
  reason why these drugs would be life threatening that you could
• 1:00:11
  possibly have. So I was a 13 year old with an
• 1:00:14
  IUD in place which would increase my risk of ectopic
• 1:00:16
  pregnancy with a history of ectopic pregnancy which would
• 1:00:19
  also increase my risk further of ectopic pregnancy which is life
• 1:00:23
  threatening and the abortion drugs don't treat it with three
• 1:00:25
  previous C sections on blood thinners.
• 1:00:29
  This 13 year old has been through a lot but you just put
• 1:00:31
  it all out to trigger something and the alarm says yes.
• 1:00:34
  I mean it was so ridiculous that at the end I looked at our
• 1:00:39
  communications manager and we both said okay, if anyones
• 1:00:42
  looking at this they're going to say there's no way that this
• 1:00:44
  person actually. Not giving exactly.
• 1:00:48
  So they would pop up warnings, but all I had to do was say I
• 1:00:52
  acknowledge, OK, So what 13 year old is actually going to
• 1:00:55
  understand the true risk that she is at with all of those
• 1:00:59
  conditions? That you just say.
• 1:01:01
  Yes, exactly, I said. I didn't know how far along I
• 1:01:03
  was, so that's another red flag, right?
• 1:01:06
  They said. That you would send an abortion
• 1:01:09
  drug even from the pro-choice perspective to a woman who
• 1:01:12
  doesn't even know how far along she is.
• 1:01:14
  That it violates all the at least rhetoric that the pro
• 1:01:18
  abortion side uses about safety for women because you're you
• 1:01:22
  could be, you know, second, third trimester doing the
• 1:01:24
  abortion drug, incredibly high risk for you.
• 1:01:26
  And also the baby can be born alive.
• 1:01:29
  It could be harmful to the baby. I mean, I mean, it is harmful to
• 1:01:31
  the baby period, but in a special way harmful.
• 1:01:33
  It's insane. Baby could be born alive out,
• 1:01:35
  you know this is marketed as needed or necessary for women in
• 1:01:39
  rural areas that don't have access to healthcare.
• 1:01:42
  Well those are exactly the women that are going to suffer the
• 1:01:44
  most complications and babies that are going to suffer the
• 1:01:46
  most. You know what if she is 26 weeks
• 1:01:48
  along, well, if she delivered in a hospital, they could take care
• 1:01:50
  of her baby. If she delivers 3 hours away
• 1:01:53
  from the hospital, her baby will die.
• 1:01:55
  And we know that this is happening and women are seeing
• 1:01:57
  their babies and seeing their babies either, you know, maybe
• 1:02:01
  they are 10 or 11 weeks, but they still can see their baby
• 1:02:04
  and see that that's their baby, not just a clump of cells, which
• 1:02:07
  of course is what they're told or see.
• 1:02:10
  They're much farther along baby and then realize, Oh my
• 1:02:13
  goodness, what did I do? So, you know, the mental health
• 1:02:15
  impact that that has, not to mention the physical impact.
• 1:02:18
  You know, we know that the farther along in pregnancy a
• 1:02:20
  woman is when she takes these drugs, the higher the risk of
• 1:02:22
  complications for her as well. And so even when I said I didn't
• 1:02:26
  know how far long I was, they literally have a back button
• 1:02:30
  built into their system. So this is not the back button
• 1:02:32
  on the web browser. This is built into their system
• 1:02:35
  that they said, well, give us your best guess.
• 1:02:36
  So I went back and then I picked a last period that I knew would
• 1:02:41
  make me about 12 weeks and then I could proceed.
• 1:02:45
  And so then you get to the end. They have all of these things,
• 1:02:50
  the patient agreement form that you have to read and agree to,
• 1:02:52
  but then they have their own things, complete lies, saying
• 1:02:56
  pregnancy is very dangerous to your health, abortion is much
• 1:03:00
  safer, which is untrue. And again, how manipulative,
• 1:03:05
  right, of some young scared girl that gets on this website to
• 1:03:08
  order these drugs because she's pregnant and she's scared.
• 1:03:11
  And then it said that once I submitted my request that it
• 1:03:15
  would be reviewed by a healthcare professional and that
• 1:03:17
  if then I was approved, then I would receive an e-mail with a
• 1:03:21
  payment link and to confirm my address.
• 1:03:23
  So I hit submit literally within a minute and a half.
• 1:03:27
  I had an e-mail in my inbox with the payment information and to
• 1:03:30
  confirm my address. So you know.
• 1:03:32
  There was no. Doctors automatically generated
• 1:03:36
  because also if anyone with any kind of medical background,
• 1:03:39
  honestly if anyone had looked at that, they'd be like, this is
• 1:03:42
  crazy, a 13 year old with this history.
• 1:03:45
  But obviously if anybody with a medical background had checked
• 1:03:47
  it, they would have said no, you can't receive these pills until
• 1:03:50
  you've been evaluated by a physician.
• 1:03:53
  And so I submitted my payment and within about 3-2 and a half,
• 1:03:57
  three days, the pills were in my mailbox in Indiana again, where
• 1:04:01
  abortion is illegal from shipped from Los Angeles, CA with no
• 1:04:07
  name associated with it. And then just AQR code with very
• 1:04:11
  when you scan the QR code, it was very minimal instructions of
• 1:04:14
  how to take the pills. And, you know, clearly said, if
• 1:04:19
  you you feel like you're having complications, go to the
• 1:04:22
  emergency room. You can just tell them that
• 1:04:24
  you're having a miscarriage. That was right there.
• 1:04:26
  They're telling women to lie to the doctors like me, who then
• 1:04:29
  show up in the emergency room to take care of these
• 1:04:31
  complications. And also then they're coded as
• 1:04:33
  pregnancy complications. This is the other thing just in
• 1:04:37
  our reporting data that is such a light that I had a
• 1:04:40
  misunderstanding is we are we are because of legalized
• 1:04:43
  abortion. It makes it look like pregnancy
• 1:04:46
  is more dangerous because any complication with abortion is
• 1:04:50
  coded as a pregnancy complication medically as
• 1:04:53
  opposed to an abortion complication.
• 1:04:54
  Absolutely. And a lot of people don't know
• 1:04:56
  that the CDC actually does not track maternal deaths by
• 1:05:01
  specific pregnancy outcome. So we which we absolutely should
• 1:05:05
  be doing. And again, this is something
• 1:05:06
  people on both sides of this issue should be in agreement
• 1:05:08
  about. If we care about Women's Health,
• 1:05:10
  why wouldn't we want to know what is the mortality rate and
• 1:05:13
  complication rate related to live birth?
• 1:05:16
  What is it related to miscarriage?
• 1:05:17
  What is it related to abortion? These are just basic statistics
• 1:05:21
  that if we want to improve Women's Health, we should want
• 1:05:23
  to know. But who fights the tracking of
• 1:05:25
  it by specific pregnancy outcome every time?
• 1:05:29
  It's the abortion industry and their allies within the medical
• 1:05:31
  community every single time. And you know, I remember a few
• 1:05:35
  years ago Indiana passed an abortion complication reporting
• 1:05:38
  law, which has actually been wonderful for our state because
• 1:05:41
  now we can track complications. But of course, the abortion
• 1:05:46
  industry, Planned Parenthood, ACOG, they all fought it.
• 1:05:49
  And I actually said in my testimony, if they are so
• 1:05:51
  convinced that abortion is as safe as they say that it is, why
• 1:05:56
  aren't they supporting this? Because they could prove me
• 1:05:58
  wrong If we tracked complications and it really is
• 1:06:01
  as safe as they say that it is, then they should be supporting
• 1:06:04
  this so that they could have the chance to prove me wrong.
• 1:06:06
  I think it's very telling that they are the ones that want to
• 1:06:10
  avoid having good data on abortion outcomes for a
• 1:06:15
  movement. You know, the pro abortion
• 1:06:17
  movement, for a movement that claims to care about women and
• 1:06:20
  want to empower women, this is the least empowering thing I can
• 1:06:23
  imagine. It is the most, gosh, I don't
• 1:06:28
  even know a strong enough word. It's the most just demeaning and
• 1:06:32
  crippling thing, I guess that I can think of for a woman to say.
• 1:06:36
  You have to do this all by yourself, go through this
• 1:06:38
  horrendous experience and then know that you made a decision
• 1:06:42
  that led to your child's life being ended.
• 1:06:46
  And, and that's what's going to fix the problems that you're
• 1:06:49
  facing. And that's what's going to make
• 1:06:51
  your dreams possible. And, you know, we're seeing the
• 1:06:53
  emotional fallout from that and the the mental health fallout
• 1:06:56
  from that. And, and it really, I think, you
• 1:06:58
  know, if we truly care about women, we should care about
• 1:07:01
  helping them avoid that situation.
• 1:07:04
  No woman should feel alone when she's pregnant or feel like
• 1:07:07
  there aren't people that want to help her no matter her
• 1:07:09
  situation. There's an option line number
• 1:07:12
  that I want to just say right now and people listening can
• 1:07:15
  maybe write this down. Save it in your notebook on your
• 1:07:17
  phone. Because if you know someone or
• 1:07:19
  you hear of someone even like on social media who is facing an
• 1:07:22
  unplanned pregnancy and they feel alone, there are people
• 1:07:25
  that want to provide free confidential care material,
• 1:07:28
  resources, even prenatal help, all the things she may need to
• 1:07:31
  not be alone and be able to choose life for her baby.
• 1:07:34
  The number IS180712 HELP 1800 seven 1-2 HELP or
• 1:07:41
  1-800-712-4357. We'll put this also in the show
• 1:07:45
  notes along with your amazing site.
• 1:07:47
  But I think what you're saying is so key.
• 1:07:49
  We should all know this and everyone should be aware of
• 1:07:51
  this. A few more questions just on the
• 1:07:53
  current mechanics of the abortion pill and its risks to
• 1:07:57
  women. 100% of the time, almost dangerous for baby.
• 1:08:00
  Sometimes the baby survives by the way, and they have to go
• 1:08:02
  back for a second abortion. Or you can save the baby's life
• 1:08:05
  through abortion pill reversal. But the FDA label for the
• 1:08:09
  abortion pill warns women that one out of every 25 of them will
• 1:08:13
  end up in the emergency room. And there's more recent studies
• 1:08:16
  that have been done than it could be as few as one out of
• 1:08:18
  every 21 women. Why are women going to the
• 1:08:22
  emergency room after taking the abortion pill?
• 1:08:24
  Yeah, well, this is, I think it's really important for people
• 1:08:26
  to understand how common this is.
• 1:08:29
  So when some of the newer data came out, I was interviewed
• 1:08:32
  about it and asked if it surprised me and I said no.
• 1:08:35
  I practice in a state where abortion is illegal and our
• 1:08:38
  group is regularly called down to the emergency room to take
• 1:08:41
  care of complications of the abortion drugs.
• 1:08:43
  So, and in fact, when I go down there, often times the emergency
• 1:08:47
  room doctors will say doctors that aren't pro-life even, we'll
• 1:08:50
  just say, gosh, there's another one.
• 1:08:52
  I mean, it just, it's so common. So women are going to the
• 1:08:56
  emergency room. I mean, sometimes, and this is a
• 1:08:59
  claim that will be made by the other side.
• 1:09:00
  Well, yes, women go to the emergency room because they're
• 1:09:03
  having an abortion and they're just afraid.
• 1:09:06
  Yes, that's true. But what does that say to you?
• 1:09:09
  That says that she probably received a little to no
• 1:09:11
  appropriate counseling to understand what she was going to
• 1:09:14
  actually go through. So that is certainly some of the
• 1:09:17
  women that are going to the emergency room.
• 1:09:18
  But I don't want to diminish still the severity and the
• 1:09:22
  importance of that because it means that they are not getting
• 1:09:25
  support either and have no medical supervision.
• 1:09:28
  So the emergency room is the only place they have to go to.
• 1:09:31
  But more commonly we see women coming in with potentially life
• 1:09:35
  threatening bleeding. Even so, hemorrhage we know is a
• 1:09:38
  significant risk of these drugs, especially if they take them
• 1:09:41
  farther along in pregnancy. Retain tissue or an incomplete
• 1:09:45
  abortion where not all of the baby is passed from the uterus
• 1:09:48
  or not all of the pregnancy tissues like placenta membranes,
• 1:09:51
  things like that. And so retain tissue is there
• 1:09:53
  that can lead to more bleeding, can lead to the need for
• 1:09:56
  emergency surgery. Infection is actually a major
• 1:09:59
  risk from these drugs and a really atypical kind of
• 1:10:02
  infection that and this isn't talked about a lot, but I think
• 1:10:05
  it's really important. This is actually what
• 1:10:07
  precipitated the black box warning that is still on
• 1:10:10
  Mythopristone right now. So after Mythopristone was
• 1:10:13
  approved, there were 4 documented deaths of women in
• 1:10:18
  here in the state of California from all from the same kind of
• 1:10:22
  infection. So it's a particular kind of
• 1:10:24
  sepsis that is really dangerous because it's very difficult to
• 1:10:28
  diagnosis sepsis because women don't present with the typical
• 1:10:31
  symptoms that we would see in the typical findings of sepsis.
• 1:10:35
  They kind of look like they maybe have the flu or just like
• 1:10:38
  they're just don't feel great, but they don't, they oftentimes
• 1:10:41
  don't have fevers. A lot of the other things that
• 1:10:43
  we look for to to diagnose sepsis.
• 1:10:46
  And then they progress from that to being dead oftentimes within
• 1:10:50
  24 hours. So it's rapidly progressive.
• 1:10:53
  It's very difficult to treat once it really becomes severe.
• 1:10:57
  And in fact, we have heard stories in the news in the last
• 1:11:01
  couple of years of I don't have these women's medical records,
• 1:11:04
  but I can almost guarantee Amber Thurman, many people will
• 1:11:07
  remember hearing her story. A woman out of Georgia who was
• 1:11:10
  pregnant with twins, who travelled to North Carolina was
• 1:11:13
  given the abortion drugs and she ended up dying.
• 1:11:16
  Now, Pro Publica tried to claim that it was because of Georgio's
• 1:11:19
  abortion law, but it was 100% because of the abortion drugs
• 1:11:22
  that she took in. Pro Publica actually laid out
• 1:11:25
  her, her timeline once she presented to the hospital
• 1:11:28
  actually relatively well. And from looking at that, I and
• 1:11:31
  many other physicians are pretty convinced that she died of, of
• 1:11:34
  this particular kind of sepsis. It's called Clostridium is the
• 1:11:37
  the bacteria that causes it. And then around the same time,
• 1:11:40
  there's another woman, Alana Dixon, in Las Vegas, who also
• 1:11:44
  died from a rapidly progressive sepsis picture that again, I
• 1:11:48
  don't have her medical records, so I can't say 100%, but I think
• 1:11:51
  was likely the same kind of sepsis.
• 1:11:53
  So, you know, those are just women that we know about because
• 1:11:55
  their stories happen to make it into the news.
• 1:11:57
  And, and wildly, just to interject really quick what you
• 1:12:01
  just said, which is so important.
• 1:12:03
  The media framed these stories that made it into the news as a
• 1:12:07
  reason why pro-life laws are bad and why we need abortion, when
• 1:12:12
  it's abortion that is very likely responsible for killing
• 1:12:16
  not just the babies but the women in these situations.
• 1:12:18
  Absolutely, absolutely wild. It's like the.
• 1:12:21
  Amount of gaslighting, right? The American people.
• 1:12:24
  This is what's happening when it's the absolute opposite.
• 1:12:27
  It's actually abortion that's responsible for the death.
• 1:12:29
  Exactly. It's crazy.
• 1:12:31
  Exactly. And where were the people that
• 1:12:32
  gave these women the drugs? You know, when I was in my
• 1:12:35
  medical training, it was drilled into us that if we prescribed a
• 1:12:39
  medication, if we did a surgical procedure, did any kind of
• 1:12:43
  intervention on a patient, that patient was our responsibility.
• 1:12:46
  So she has a complication. It's your responsibility.
• 1:12:49
  Your responsibility to her as your patient is to manage that
• 1:12:53
  complication. And how many times do we as pro
• 1:12:56
  lifers get accused of your intervening in the physician
• 1:12:59
  patient relationship? I think we need to make it very
• 1:13:02
  clear there is no physician patient relationship when it
• 1:13:04
  comes to abortion, especially now with the way these drugs are
• 1:13:08
  being shipped through the mail. Again, when I got them, there
• 1:13:10
  was no doctor's name on it. And we have states like
• 1:13:12
  California and New York that have shield laws to protect
• 1:13:15
  these doctors from any repercussions from honestly,
• 1:13:20
  frank, medical malpractice. And but there, you know,
• 1:13:23
  there's, there's no physician patient relationship here.
• 1:13:26
  These women get abandoned to their local emergency rooms.
• 1:13:29
  Often times they either lie because they've been told to lie
• 1:13:33
  or maybe the physician that sees them doesn't even ask.
• 1:13:36
  I think that happens a lot of times too.
• 1:13:37
  It's just assumed she's having a miscarriage.
• 1:13:40
  They don't just don't even ask. And you know, the important
• 1:13:44
  thing about that and, and why women should understand why you
• 1:13:46
  shouldn't lie about it actually when you go into the emergency
• 1:13:49
  room is because there have been studies that have looked at
• 1:13:52
  outcomes when women, when we know from insurance data that
• 1:13:55
  women took abortion drugs. And then if their complication
• 1:13:59
  was miscoded as a miscarriage complication, those women
• 1:14:03
  actually have higher hospitalization rates.
• 1:14:05
  They have worse outcomes. This infection that I just
• 1:14:08
  talked about, we don't see that with first trimester
• 1:14:10
  miscarriages. You only see it with abortions
• 1:14:14
  in the first trimester due to these abortion drugs.
• 1:14:16
  So it's important for that doctor that's taking care of you
• 1:14:19
  as the woman to have accurate information.
• 1:14:22
  And yet this is another way that the abortion industry, I think
• 1:14:25
  is, is showing that they don't care about Women's Health, is
• 1:14:29
  they're telling women to lie about it and they're not
• 1:14:31
  providing for ongoing medical care for women.
• 1:14:34
  Why were the multiple doctors visits originally when the
• 1:14:36
  abortion pill was approved? I think 2000 there were multiple
• 1:14:39
  doctors visits. They've all been removed, the
• 1:14:42
  last one being removed under Biden administration like you
• 1:14:44
  mentioned. And unfortunately, the Trump
• 1:14:46
  administration has still done nothing to reinstate nothing.
• 1:14:50
  Why? Why did that happen?
• 1:14:52
  Well, so they were originally put into place.
• 1:14:54
  So you know, many people and I know you guys have done some
• 1:14:57
  great work showing what happened with the approval of the
• 1:15:00
  abortion pill under the Clinton administration.
• 1:15:02
  It was very much politically motivated.
• 1:15:04
  It went through an expedited process that typically is
• 1:15:07
  reserved for life saving drugs. Imagine a drug that whose sole
• 1:15:11
  purpose in this circumstances to end a life was was approved
• 1:15:15
  through an expedited process. But because of that, the FDA
• 1:15:18
  recognized there are real inherent risks here.
• 1:15:21
  And so we need to do something to minimize those risks.
• 1:15:23
  So they actually originally had three required visits, one
• 1:15:26
  before the woman was given the drugs, and then two follow up
• 1:15:29
  visits because they knew that there was a high rate of
• 1:15:32
  complications of incomplete abortions.
• 1:15:34
  And so women needed follow up care to screen for these
• 1:15:36
  complications and make sure that they were doing OK.
• 1:15:39
  And then with time, with subsequent, first under the
• 1:15:42
  Obama administration and then under the Biden administration,
• 1:15:45
  these were removed. And so now there's no in person
• 1:15:48
  care required whatsoever. And you're right, the all the
• 1:15:52
  Trump administration would have to do would be to go back to how
• 1:15:55
  it was under the first Trump administration to undo what the
• 1:16:00
  Biden administration did to at least put back into place that
• 1:16:04
  in person dispensing requirement.
• 1:16:05
  Now, of course, that's, that's not enough that it's going to
• 1:16:08
  slightly mitigate the risk for women, but it's it's not.
• 1:16:11
  And it will save some some lives of preborn children as well.
• 1:16:14
  You can't ship them from pro abortion states into pro-life
• 1:16:16
  states, so you're going to also prevent all the law breaking
• 1:16:19
  that's happening. Exactly, exactly.
• 1:16:21
  I mean it. Will it will help towards that
• 1:16:22
  you'll still have black market abortion drugs being shipped by
• 1:16:25
  all kinds of people, right? Which is effectively happening
• 1:16:27
  now, which that's another enforcement mechanism that needs
• 1:16:30
  to clamp down on that because you can, you can enforce laws
• 1:16:33
  and actually clamp down on these, you know, big pharma
• 1:16:36
  groups that are making all this money from black market
• 1:16:39
  abortions. But the in person doctor visit
• 1:16:41
  will help stem some of that. Of course, the drug shouldn't be
• 1:16:44
  on the market. Right.
• 1:16:45
  Exactly, exactly. It's dangerous, it carries no
• 1:16:48
  health benefit for women and it's ending the lives of
• 1:16:53
  millions of, of preborn children.
• 1:16:56
  But right, there's already a law actually on the books that if
• 1:16:59
  the federal government would enforce it, we could put a stop
• 1:17:01
  to this, the Comstock Act, which is still on the books, which
• 1:17:05
  prevents the, the mailing of abortion inducing drugs.
• 1:17:08
  So, so there are mechanisms that could be used on a, on a federal
• 1:17:12
  level to, to help put a stop to this.
• 1:17:16
  And you know, and again, I think that it, a big part of this is
• 1:17:19
  that more people need to be aware that this is going on.
• 1:17:22
  I think people, again, they hear telemedicine and they think,
• 1:17:25
  well, you know, I've had telemedicine visits with my
• 1:17:28
  doctor. It seemed like it was okay, but
• 1:17:30
  they don't really. I think I understand what's
• 1:17:32
  actually happening with these drugs right now.
• 1:17:34
  I've got to ask this. We touched on it, but I want to
• 1:17:37
  really hear you explain this for folks because it's so important.
• 1:17:42
  We are told that abortion is safer than pregnancy.
• 1:17:47
  Why is that false? And what's the truth about the
• 1:17:50
  risks of abortion? There is a common narrative out
• 1:17:53
  there that really stems from one study put out by Doctor Daniel
• 1:17:56
  Grossman, who is an abortionist, that said that abortion is 14
• 1:18:01
  times safer than childbirth. And that line unfortunately
• 1:18:04
  really took off and, and now I've heard repeated by so many
• 1:18:08
  people. The problem with that, in order
• 1:18:10
  to explain the problem with that study is that you actually have
• 1:18:13
  to go back to sort of basic math.
• 1:18:15
  So if we all remember when we learned how to compare
• 1:18:17
  fractions, we learned that in order to compare 2 fractions,
• 1:18:22
  what has to be the same, your denominator in those fractions
• 1:18:25
  has to be the same. This study compared 2 fractions
• 1:18:28
  with different denominators is the simplest way to explain it.
• 1:18:31
  So, so out of the sort of four variables, so if you're thinking
• 1:18:35
  about the two fractions, you've got 2 numerators, 2
• 1:18:37
  denominators. Out of those 4 variables,
• 1:18:39
  there's actually only one out of the four that we accurately
• 1:18:43
  track in the United States, and that is the number of live
• 1:18:46
  births. And so it actually biased the
• 1:18:49
  study towards looking like there are more deaths associated with
• 1:18:54
  live births on a percentage basis than than associated with
• 1:18:59
  abortions. There are many, many problems
• 1:19:02
  with our reporting in the United States.
• 1:19:04
  We actually do a very bad job collecting data.
• 1:19:08
  One of them is that we don't actually know the number of
• 1:19:10
  abortions that are happening in the United States because
• 1:19:12
  there's not a universal reporting requirement.
• 1:19:15
  And some of the states like California that are doing
• 1:19:18
  probably the most abortions, we think, aren't reporting their
• 1:19:21
  data. So we don't actually know how
• 1:19:23
  many abortions are happening. We also don't know how many
• 1:19:26
  deaths are occurring after abortions.
• 1:19:29
  And part of that is because abortions are happening with
• 1:19:33
  physicians that are often times itinerant physicians.
• 1:19:36
  So they're traveling around the country, they're popping in,
• 1:19:38
  they're doing abortions, or now they're just prescribing or
• 1:19:42
  sending abortion pills from a far away state.
• 1:19:45
  How are they ever to know if the woman who takes those drugs dies
• 1:19:49
  after taking them? They don't know.
• 1:19:51
  That's not reported back to them.
• 1:19:52
  It's not reported back to the company.
• 1:19:54
  It's likely not reported to the FDA, so we're not tracking those
• 1:19:59
  outcomes very well either. We also honestly aren't doing a
• 1:20:03
  great job of tracking maternal deaths after live births even.
• 1:20:08
  And now there have been some efforts in the last decade or so
• 1:20:11
  to improve that, like a check box on a death certificate if a
• 1:20:14
  woman was pregnant within the last year or so.
• 1:20:16
  That has helped a little bit. But there was new data that came
• 1:20:19
  out from the CDC actually on maternal mortality, which needs
• 1:20:22
  a lot of work in this country. But there are a lot of really
• 1:20:25
  interesting findings that actually don't support the
• 1:20:27
  abortion narrative. One of them is that the vast
• 1:20:30
  majority of maternal deaths are preventable.
• 1:20:33
  And that doesn't mean they're preventable by aborting a baby.
• 1:20:38
  It means they're preventable if we will do appropriate
• 1:20:40
  interventions, if we'll treat conditions appropriately, if
• 1:20:43
  women will get access to the actual care that they need.
• 1:20:47
  And I'm going to put a pin in that and come back to that in
• 1:20:48
  just a second. The other thing is that a lot of
• 1:20:52
  deaths that are reported as maternal deaths are actually due
• 1:20:57
  to mental health disorders, so suicide or due to drug
• 1:21:01
  overdoses. So while maybe that was
• 1:21:04
  exacerbated by the pregnancy and the stress of delivery, maybe
• 1:21:08
  not. Because if you look at other
• 1:21:09
  data, it actually says that, you know, women who've had
• 1:21:12
  deliveries and, and our mothers actually have better mental
• 1:21:15
  health outcomes. So or maybe it just happened to
• 1:21:18
  be associated in the time frame of within a year after delivery.
• 1:21:21
  So that doesn't mean that pregnancy is inherently more
• 1:21:24
  dangerous. It means that we've got a mental
• 1:21:26
  health crisis in this country that we need to do a better job
• 1:21:29
  of treating. Doesn't mean that an abortion
• 1:21:31
  will improve that. In fact, we know that it'll
• 1:21:33
  worsen it because women that have pre-existing mental health
• 1:21:37
  disorders have worse mental health outcomes after abortions
• 1:21:40
  than if they were to carry their pregnancies to term.
• 1:21:43
  So there's a lot of factors in there.
• 1:21:45
  There's a lot of things that are being included in that maternal
• 1:21:47
  mortality number that aren't actually due to actual
• 1:21:49
  complications of the pregnancy. And like we talked about
• 1:21:52
  earlier, we're not tracking outcomes of maternal deaths
• 1:21:56
  based on particular pregnancy outcomes.
• 1:21:58
  So some of these may be after an abortion, but they're not
• 1:22:01
  getting counted as a death after an abortion.
• 1:22:04
  The other thing that I think people are not talking about
• 1:22:07
  enough is we're hearing a lot about closures of Labor and
• 1:22:11
  delivery units across the country and maternal healthcare
• 1:22:13
  deserts, which are a very real thing.
• 1:22:15
  I've seen it even within my own hospital system.
• 1:22:18
  So the hospitals that I work at now, we're getting patients from
• 1:22:21
  communities that are an hour and a half away even because that
• 1:22:24
  were their closest labor and delivery unit.
• 1:22:27
  That's a real problem. It means that women aren't
• 1:22:29
  getting good prenatal care when they need it.
• 1:22:31
  They're not getting management of their blood pressure, their
• 1:22:34
  diabetes, things like that that they need during their pregnancy
• 1:22:38
  because it's too far for them to travel to get to a labor and
• 1:22:42
  delivery care or to an OBGYN. Why is that happening?
• 1:22:46
  Well, the pro abortion side will say that it's because of
• 1:22:49
  pro-life laws. They'll point to pro-life States
• 1:22:51
  and they'll say, look, they've had this many labor and delivery
• 1:22:54
  closures. Well, the problem is they're not
• 1:22:56
  looking at the 20 years leading up to it where that was already
• 1:22:58
  starting. Why are they closing?
• 1:23:01
  There's a variety of reasons, but one of the big driving
• 1:23:04
  reasons is a falling number of births.
• 1:23:07
  A falling number of pregnancies, yes.
• 1:23:10
  And labor and delivery units are expensive to run, so you need to
• 1:23:13
  have a certain number of deliveries every year in order
• 1:23:16
  to maintain a labor and delivery unit.
• 1:23:18
  In order to attract an OBGYN to your community or midwives, you
• 1:23:22
  need to have enough business to keep them busy.
• 1:23:24
  Why are our birth rates falling? Well, partly because of all the
• 1:23:27
  abortions that we're doing, you know, last year what we had, So
• 1:23:30
  what was it close to 1.1 million abortions in the US and that's.
• 1:23:33
  Just what's reported, we don't know.
• 1:23:36
  Those 1.1 million abortions actually resulted in births.
• 1:23:40
  We could then reopen a lot of these labor and delivery units.
• 1:23:43
  We know that fertility rates are falling, you know, from a
• 1:23:46
  variety of reasons. Of course, that's
• 1:23:48
  multifactorial, but that's actually what's leading to
• 1:23:51
  closure of Labor and delivery units, which then is leading to
• 1:23:54
  worsening of maternal health outcomes because we don't have
• 1:23:57
  enough care. And so that's actually the
• 1:23:59
  problem in abortion and is contributing to that.
• 1:24:01
  And that's actually something that I don't think that people
• 1:24:03
  are talking about enough. That's such an incredibly
• 1:24:05
  important point that you made and it requires a shift, a
• 1:24:08
  mindset shift that instead of like seeing pregnancy as some
• 1:24:11
  burden, a disease, something to end, right?
• 1:24:14
  Because we were going to terminate the baby or whatever
• 1:24:16
  it is, seeing it and said as let's care for both patients.
• 1:24:19
  Yes, absolutely. And that is possible.
• 1:24:21
  It's being done by pro-life OBGYN's like yourself.
• 1:24:24
  And the thousands that exist in this country that are doing that
• 1:24:26
  work are pregnancy resource centers, the thousands of those
• 1:24:29
  that exist that provide free, confidential care for moms and
• 1:24:33
  babies and young families. What gives you hope in the
• 1:24:36
  landscape of all of this? That we can rethink pregnancy as
• 1:24:40
  a culture and really care for both mom and baby.
• 1:24:43
  Yeah, well, I think just even talking about pregnancy from a
• 1:24:46
  different framework is so important, not only to help moms
• 1:24:51
  choose life who are pregnant, but also to help women who are,
• 1:24:57
  you know, getting married in their early 20s and thinking,
• 1:25:00
  oh, maybe I want to delay pregnancy for a variety of
• 1:25:02
  reasons. Thinking about it from a
• 1:25:04
  different perspective and saying, you know, we we're
• 1:25:07
  partnered with every life in this campaign.
• 1:25:09
  And I love their slogan, Make more babies.
• 1:25:12
  It's it's smart for them from a business standpoint.
• 1:25:14
  It's smart for us as OBGYN's, of course we want that.
• 1:25:16
  But it's also smart for us as a culture, because that's what's
• 1:25:20
  going to actually grow and strengthen our culture is, is
• 1:25:23
  getting that fertility rate back up, helping strengthen families,
• 1:25:26
  build families, but also helping women and men to see pregnancy
• 1:25:30
  through a different lens. And I think if we do that,
• 1:25:33
  again, not only is it going to help women make better choices
• 1:25:36
  once they are pregnant, but it's going to help them think more
• 1:25:40
  about maybe I want to start a family sooner than I had
• 1:25:42
  originally thought. Because look at all the benefits
• 1:25:44
  of that. Maybe I want if I'm in a
• 1:25:46
  position to do so. And, and you know, I don't have
• 1:25:49
  any children myself. So I fully understand that
• 1:25:51
  sometimes that's out of your control.
• 1:25:53
  But if you're in a position to do so, you actually, for your
• 1:25:56
  health benefits, want to think about getting pregnant, having
• 1:25:59
  babies before the age of 30 if you can, because that's going to
• 1:26:02
  reduce your your cancer risk even more.
• 1:26:04
  That's going to give you that much more time with your
• 1:26:06
  children. And so it gives me hope that I
• 1:26:08
  do think that we're seeing this switch.
• 1:26:10
  I think that we're seeing a lot in our culture of a desire from
• 1:26:13
  women for something more, something different.
• 1:26:18
  I think, you know, especially women in their 20s and 30s have
• 1:26:21
  their their parents and their grandparents to look at and what
• 1:26:25
  our generations have done and say, you know what, that didn't
• 1:26:28
  seem to really bring them more happiness.
• 1:26:30
  And so I do think that we're seeing a a switch a lot in our
• 1:26:33
  culture now to say maybe we want to do something different.
• 1:26:36
  And it's kind of radically counter cultural right now to
• 1:26:39
  get married young and to have babies young.
• 1:26:41
  But I think the wonderful thing about that is it's going to
• 1:26:44
  improve outcomes for moms for babies.
• 1:26:46
  It's going to make for happier families.
• 1:26:48
  So that gives me a lot of hope for the future.
• 1:26:51
  Also, just the fact that I think there are a lot more groups that
• 1:26:54
  are so interested in looking at this.
• 1:26:56
  You know, let's really take a deep dive into Women's Health
• 1:26:59
  and have accurate information about Women's Health.
• 1:27:02
  And a big part of that has to be what are the benefits of
• 1:27:05
  pregnancy? What are things we can do to
• 1:27:08
  help continue to make pregnancy outcomes even better?
• 1:27:11
  And what are the sort of breaking technology things that
• 1:27:14
  we can look at? One of the other things we talk
• 1:27:16
  about in this campaign is something called microchymerism,
• 1:27:19
  which I think is fascinating. It's where cells from the baby
• 1:27:23
  actually get into the mom's bloodstream and stay with her
• 1:27:26
  for decades. And there's emerging science now
• 1:27:29
  to show that those cells might actually help in healing for mom
• 1:27:32
  when she's wounded or has some sort of disease.
• 1:27:34
  They may help prevent chronic autoimmune conditions, things
• 1:27:38
  like that. So there's there's just this
• 1:27:40
  whole amazing horizon out there that if we can value life, value
• 1:27:45
  pregnancy, value family formation and really prioritize
• 1:27:48
  that, I think that we'll see a much larger cultural and
• 1:27:52
  societal benefit. Thank you for your work, Doctor
• 1:27:55
  Francis. It's so important and I'm so
• 1:27:57
  excited to see the fruit of people feeling more safe and
• 1:28:01
  supported and able that they can be mothers and that this is a
• 1:28:06
  beautiful part of our design and not something to attack us in
• 1:28:09
  any way. Thank you so much for your work.
• 1:28:11
  Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me.
• 1:28:13
  It's a pleasure to be here. A big thank you to our channel
• 1:28:16
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• 1:28:20
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• 1:28:23
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• 1:28:26
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• 1:28:35
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