Roe vs. Wade Ending? A Challenge from the Medical Community

isro vs wade in jeopardy is the right to abortion which has been legally permissible in the united states for decades going back to roe versus wade is that being overturned well these are hugely important questions right now that we need to give some thought to and i have a special guest today that is going to help us think this through in particular from a medical perspective her name is dr christina francis she's a practicing ob gyn and works with an organization called aplog which i'm going to ask you to tell us a little bit about but basically it's one of the largest organizations of obstetricians and gynecologists who speak into the issue of life thanks so much for coming on but i want to start by asking you why are you as a medical doctor so passionate about the pro-life movement well thank you so much for having me on sean and you know i can't imagine as an obstetrician not being pro-life so one of the things as i was going through my medical training and you know considering the different specialties that i could that i could specialize in one of the things that struck me the most about the practice of obstetrics is that you're caring for two patients at once it's kind of a adds a complexity to our field that a lot of other fields of medicine don't have in fact i joke all the time that other specialties are a little bit nervous about taking care of pregnant patients a lot of times because they're you know what they're two patients we're dealing with here not just one and so you know as part of my medical training it was very clear from even my embryology class as a first year medical student that life begins a new distinct living and whole human being comes into existence at the moment of fertilization and so my job as an obstetrician is to take care of mom yes but also to take care of baby and so to me it's always seemed just antithetical to the practice of ob gyn to not be pro-life so much of what we do is maximizing the health of both of those patients and so you know to me it just makes natural sense to to be pro-life as an ob gyn but you know i was go ahead sorry oh i'm sorry yeah keep going yeah oh i just was gonna say you know i was spurred though to action and to do more within the pro-life movement as i saw the direction that medicine was heading and just the direction overall of being more pro-death and more accommodating to just whatever the patient wants as opposed to talking to our patients about the very real risks that that exist with abortion and about the fact that this we know based on science this is a living human being growing inside of you and you know as i saw the tide of medicine unfortunately start to move more in the pro-abortion direction it really became clear to me that as an ob gyn and you know as a woman this certainly hits me very deeply that i need to do more within the pro-life movement i think it's vital for our viewers right away to realize that you're not alone you're not kind of on the fringes as an ob gyn shouting from the sidelines saying hey actually the unborn deserves the right to life but correct me if i'm wrong 93 of obstetricians and ob gyns will not perform an abortion is that correct and second why do you think that's the case if so absolutely you're correct so according to the latest survey that was done which was done in 2018 of um practicing obgyns out in community practice 93 of them said that they did not perform abortions and i i love to tell people the statistic because i think so many people think they you know they've heard so many times abortion is essential women's health care so we have to keep it legal because it's a an essential part of reproductive care for women but obgyns are women's healthcare specialists and so i don't know of anything else that is actually essential women's healthcare that 93 of us don't do um so to me that one tells you that it's not essential women's healthcare because the vast majority of ob gyns don't perform abortions but i think the real reason why they don't perform them it's not that we couldn't you know from a technical standpoint we know how to do the procedure many of the procedures are that are done for abortions can also be done in the setting of a miscarriage and so we do receive training technical training and how to do most of those procedures during our residency training so it's not that we couldn't it's not that the training isn't available it's that people are choosing not to do it and you know i think that goes back to my answer to your first question and why don't they do it because we all know what that is that's growing inside of a woman when she's pregnant we all know that that's another individual unique human being and as physicians we are called to heal not to harm we take an oath when we join medical school that we will not intentionally end the lives of our patients and so um you know i really think that's why the vast majority of obgyns don't perform abortions because we know exactly what it is and and we don't want to be involved in ending the life of one of our patients that 93 statistic to me should be enough for anybody even the most ardent pro-choice advocate to stop and say okay wait a minute do these doctors know something or see something or understand something that i don't the fact that we're dealing with life and death should cause some serious humility and reflection i think in all of us to get this issue right now before we jump into the texas ruling and roe versus wade and kind of what's happening culturally and medically just tell us really quick about aplog as an organization and how you're speaking specifically into this supreme court case absolutely so apog stands for the american association of pro-life obstetricians and gynecologists we are a professional medical organization we're not a religiously based organization we represent thousands of members who decide who desire to practice pro-life medicine or life-affirming medicine according to the original traditional hippocratic oath and we it's very important that we exist because we exist to provide a second medical opinion to some of the mainstream medical organizations specifically organizations like acog the american college of ob gyns who have really gone in just a rabidly pro-abortion direction so acog is pushing for no holds barred abortion access through all nine months of pregnancy um and you know no restrictions to be placed on abortion and in fact acog has never supported a single abortion restriction since roe v wade in fact they didn't even support the partial birth abortion ban which nearly everybody could agree was a gruesome procedure and had no place in the practice of medicine but these mainstream medical organizations are really just jumping on the um cultural and political bandwagon of supporting the abortion industry at all costs and so it's important that aplog exists because we represent medical professionals we present the science the medical evidence that says that abortion is harmful for women and that it ends the life of an innocent human being and we provide that second medical opinion that the legislatures and the courts need in order to move in a direction which i'm hoping that's where we're moving this year with this very important supreme court case of overturning roe v wade and um you know of course that would return power to the states but what we really want to do is make a powerful statement that the medical evidence is clear it has advanced so much in the last 50 years that nothing in the medical evidence supports keeping abortion legal both from the standpoint of the preborn child or from the standpoint of the woman i want to make sure those of you tune in watching this that we are looking at this medically we're here with dr christina francis who is an ob gyn and she says there's no good medical reason to support the continuance of abortion as it's been practiced in the states going back to roe versus wade thanks for the clarity about what aplog does now you mentioned the supreme court ruling this challenging roe versus wade let's come back to that but first what's been in the news the past few weeks is this ruling in texas which is different than the supreme court case itself although in due time there might be a challenge to the ruling in texas that will work its way up to the supreme court so first give some clarity to us in terms of what this case is happening in texas absolutely so the texas heartbeat act bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected and typically that happens at about five to six weeks when you can see it on ultrasound it actually starts sooner than that it actually starts at about three to four weeks of pregnancy but but at that point we can't see it on ultrasound so when we can actually detect it is at about five to six weeks and of course um i'm sure your listeners will know that that our personhood and our value as human beings isn't dependent on whether or not we can see a heartbeat but you know that's our first tangible sign of life that we can document at this point in time and so once a fetal heartbeat has been detected then this law essentially bans abortions you know it doesn't do it on a state level it took a little bit more interesting legal tact but but essentially what it has led to is abortions not being done in the state of texas beyond six weeks because of the risk of lawsuit for anyone who's involved in that what percentage of abortions are after that six weeks all methods of abortion as best we can tell like how much is this ruling in texas ruling out of the abortions done per year sure so it's a little bit hard to tease that out exactly because a lot of the data that we have looks at abortions less than eight weeks and then abortions greater than eight weeks but certainly um certainly beyond six weeks is when the vast majority of abortions are occurring a woman can find out she's pregnant as early as about three to four weeks of pregnancy if she's actively seeking to to test and see if she's pregnant so there is the possibility that in that couple of week time frame prior to six weeks that a woman could still have an abortion but the certainly the vast majority of abortions in this country are occurring after six weeks generation you know most women don't even realize they're pregnant until maybe about four to five weeks again if they're if they're really watching their their menstrual cycles closely so um so this is this is stopping the vast majority of abortions in the state of texas and for that we are very glad that there are babies that are being saved each and every day that would have died via abortion in the state of texas and women are being saved from the harms of these abortion procedures as well it's important for people here that you say women are being saved from the practice of abortion and babies it's not just the unborn i've seen some studies that say about 150 babies per day in texas are being saved and it makes me think in 10 20 30 years we hear the stories of these individuals who are given the opportunity of life right during this window what some of those stories will be is powerful but you also highlight it's not just about the unborn there's actually a great amount of harm that's done in particular in late term abortions to women and this ruling in texas medically protects women now to get into that that actually brings us to the dobbs case dobbs versus jackson which is the supreme court case that's on the docket right now that probably will be ruled on in june 2022 now some have said this is going to overturn or challenge roe versus wade tell us what's at issue kind of medically speaking in this case itself sure so this is a case out of mississippi that was passed with really bipartisan support in the state of mississippi that bans abortions after 15 weeks they do make a couple of exceptions one would be for life of the mother the other would be for a severe fetal anomaly but other than that abortions are banned after 15 weeks gestation and the reason that this is such a big deal that it's going to the supreme court is because one of the key questions at play here is whether or not a ban or a restriction on abortion prior to the point of viability can be held to be constitutional so when roe v wade was originally decided one of the big deciding factors as far as when states could place restrictions on abortion and when they couldn't focused around this this point of viability which actually is not even a medical term um we do use that word a lot in medicine but there's no clear cut point of viability and in fact at the time that roe v wade was decided the point of viability was about 28 weeks now we're down to depending on what center you're at potentially as low as 22 weeks we have babies surviving there's even reports 21 and a half weeks now certainly that's not common to get survivors in that gestational range but it's possible and i think you know i just said depending on what center you're at i think that makes this point perfectly because how can we base the constitutionality of something on this shifting point that doesn't just shift with time as medicine progresses and and you know technology progresses but also shifts depending on where you're at in this country so if you are out at a rural hospital your baby probably at 24 weeks isn't going to survive if you are at a large academic center where they have you know a a high level nicu with all of the latest technology your baby might survive at 21 and a half for 22 weeks so how can we say across the board that we have to make this cut off for whether or not abortion can be legal based on something that's so shifting and changes you know it seems like almost on a daily basis we get new advances with how we can support these micro preemies and so that really is what this case focuses on is is a state allowed to make an abortion restriction based on other factors so this one is largely based on the fact that um second and third trimester abortions are extremely risky to women and so you know can a state in the interest of the women of their state but also the pre-born children of their state protecting them from abortions beyond 15 weeks can they make those restrictions in order to protect their citizens okay so at heart here is not a ruling that would say roe versus wade is false and we are restricting abortion in all 50 states if i understand it correctly what it does is put the power back to the states and allow a state to restrict abortion before viability because 15 weeks is at least six to seven weeks before viability so i guess if i understand it correctly this challenge is basically staying are we removing this from a federally unified issue to allow states to rule in the best interest of their states is that a fair summary correct correct so i in no way a legal expert i'm a medical doctor but um but you know the the mississippi attorney general's office has actually asked the supreme court to consider overturning roe because it's basis on this sort of viability standard that really like we just talked about is is not a good standard to base it on so you know the court could choose to do a number of things they could choose okay overturn roe v wade which you know of course i would be an absolute supportive because i don't think that any practice that harms my patients both my pre-born and my born patient should be sanctioned by our federal government um you know if roe v wade were completely overturned then the power to legislate abortion would return to the state or the court could decide just to uphold this particular mississippi case and say no there are some pre-viability restrictions that are constitutional and they could choose just to uphold this restriction in mississippi okay that's helpful now let's get into some of the details of what aplog your organization has put into a briefing and submitted to the supreme court to help along with the research behind this ruling and at the heart of the argument as i understand is you're saying that late term abortions bring significant harm to women and the state has interest in at least according to the mississippi ruling restricting some of abortions to protect women now before we get into particulars what describe exactly what's meant by a late term abortion sure so you know again this is not a medical term but it's one that's used quite quite often uh within the discussion about abortion so in general late term abortions refer to second and third trimester abortion so okay the first semester goes through 14 up to 14 weeks and then the second trimester is 14 to 28 and then third trimester 28 and beyond so typically when people say late term abortion what they're talking about are second and third trimester abortions anything after the first trimester what percentage of abortions are late term in the way you described it sure so it is a very small percentage of abortions only about four percent or so of abortions are done um after 15 weeks so when this particular restriction would apply so it's certainly not the majority of abortions but as you referenced as we as we detailed um in great detail in our brief to the court these abortions in particular are very dangerous uh for women and they're also being done on fetal human beings that we know can feel pain and that just makes these procedures even more gruesome one of the things that surprised me is how the us is in the minority of allowing kind of unmitigated late term abortions really through all nine months of pregnancy uh certain exceptions barring we are in the minority of this with countries worldwide not a lot of people realize that now let's uh let's talk about uh some of the late term complications some of the complications for late term abortions but broadly speaking help me understand medically why would there be so many more complications for late-term abortions than earlier abortions sure so you know there's a number of factors that play into that one is and this is something i used to explain to medical students who worked with me all the time is i just used to tell them you have to give the pregnant uterus the respect that it's due and part of that is because there's a lot of blood flow going to the pregnant uterus especially in the second and third trimesters and so that's one of the factors that leads to there being higher complications the farther along in her pregnancy a woman is is because the blood flow to the pregnant uterus is increasing with increasing gestational age so the risk of heavy bleeding or hemorrhage goes up the other thing is that as the uterus grows that wall of the uterus becomes much softer and much easier to damage uh through essentially the kind of surgical procedures that are typically done in second trimester abortions and then the the other big factor is the way that a lot of these abortions are being done and so the vast majority of uh abortion specifically in the in the first part of the second trimester so when the vast majority of these kinds of abortions are occurring are typically done through a surgical procedure called a dna or a dilation and evacuation um and you know just i think it's good not to get too graphic but i think it's good for people who are using this to be aware of what's happening and and then you can kind of understand why women are at such risk for these procedures too so what happens during a dna is the woman's cervix is is forcibly dilated a lot of times she'll be given either some medication or something called laminaria placed in the cervix to help open the cervix a little bit uh prior to the procedure but then during the procedure itself the cervix has to be forcibly opened and the reason for that is because you've got a baby that's much bigger than in the first trimester so you've got to make an opening big enough that you can get the baby through that opening so her cervix is forcibly dilated and then that baby is pulled out in pieces with a combination typically of a suction catheter and metal forceps as well and when you do that in the second trimester these babies have bones that have already formed and bones are sharp when they're broken and so those bone shards can cause internal damage to the woman's uterus i have heard stories from friends of mine who are ob gyns who have cared for women who came in with holes poked in their uterus that have gone through major blood vessels and led to massive bleeding in their bellies um you know situations where they've almost died and had to lose their uterus and gone through major surgery for repairs so this is not uncommon and it's not um unimaginable how it happens you know as these babies are being taken out piece by piece not only obviously is that horrible and traumatic for the child that's going through that but it also puts the woman at significant risk as well for damage from that or from the instruments that are being used as well especially if the physician is not taking care to do to do it in kind of a methodical and safe way but going quickly we know that many abortion providers uh get through as many abortions during a single day as they possibly can so that uh they can you know make as much money from multiple procedures and so that typically leads to doing these fairly quickly and these are very actually technically difficult and potentially dangerous procedures that put women at significant risk and they're often not counseled about the amount of risk that they're under in these kinds of procedures i want to make sure that our viewers are tracking along here that this challenge does not again overturn abortion all nine months of pregnancy it's specifically challenging after 15 weeks which is in the stage of viability but past when most abortions actually are performed and your concern with aplog ethics aside your pro-life is just medically not only does it harm your patient which is the unborn but it brings great harm to the mother and you lay this out specifically in a briefing that's delivered to the supreme court now comment on this and we'll get into some of these particular ways that women are harmed i was reading the planned parenthood versus casey ruling and there's a quote in there that says advances in maternal health care allow for abortions safe to the mother later in pregnancy than was true in 1973. as a non-doctor i would imagine that over that 20 years it got safer than it was 20 years earlier but i also suspect that's not the whole story and safer doesn't mean safe am i right about that well you're correct in that um you know legal abortion doesn't equal safe abortion and there actually is no such thing as a safe abortion so obviously a hundred percent of the time it's not safe to that preborn child but also in addition to that especially like we've been talking about in these later term abortions second and third trimester abortions the woman is at significant risk the only thing that really changed and actually that started to change prior to roe v wade that might have made uh mortality from abortions decrease was actually the advent of antibiotics so if you look back at the data prior to row and even the um even the architects of of the challenge that led to the roe v wade decision have acknowledged that they inflated the numbers of deaths from illegal abortions in order to scare people into thinking that we needed to legalize abortion but if you look at the actual numbers they actually started to change significantly with the advent of antibiotics so women started to be administered either an antibiotic prior to their abortion procedure or if they started to develop signs of infection then they were given antibiotics to treat that infection and that's actually where we started to see mortality from abortions fall from where they were at prior to that um you know there's this common conception that that abortions if if we make abortions illegal we're going to return to these back alley abortions and and women are going to die from from these illegal abortions but actually the the people providing abortions prior to roe v wade most of them were physicians and that back alley name came from them opening because it was an illegal procedure at the time having women come in through the back doors of their clinics in order to get their abortions so that they wouldn't be seen coming in for that these were the same people then that after abortion became legal they just started doing the same procedures legally as they were doing prior to roe v wade so it's a very common misconception that we're gonna go you know back to some person who has no training you know doing it if it's if it's made illegal really what has changed over the last 50 years is this medical science has advanced to the point that we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that pre-born children are living human beings from the moment of fertilization that was said to be in doubt at the time of roe v wade that now is extremely clear nearly 100 of human biologists agree that a distinct living and whole human being comes into existence at the moment of fertilization so medical science has advanced in that aspect medical data has also advanced and that we have been able to collect data from multiple other countries so countries that have um socialized medicine actually have centralized medical records which is very helpful for collecting data in the us we're very bad at collecting data but when you when you look at data from some of these other countries what it shows is that abortion actually worsens maternal mortality um and that uh it increases the risk which i know we're going to talk about a preterm birth and multiple other health complications and so medical advancements actually have not done anything except for the advent of antibiotics which again occurred prior to roe v wade um medical advancements have not done anything to make abortion safer if anything we now know more about the harms of abortion than we did before wow that's powerful let's jump into this and by the way i have to say when you and aplog put a briefing together for the supreme court you're not making these stats up you have to get it right or it would seem to me there might even be legal repercussions or certainly powerful moral repercussions so all of what we're saying here can be found in the briefing that i read very carefully through now you have four specific concerns one of them is hemorrhaging that there's a risk for serious bleeding for women in late term abortions talk about that absolutely so we know that the farther along in pregnancy a woman is when she has an abortion the higher her risk of hemorrhage which just means severe bleeding and that hemorrhage can be so severe that she could require admission to the hospital if this is being done as an outpatient procedure she could require a blood transfusion um she could even require potentially a hysterectomy or her uterus being removed if the bleeding can't be stopped in any other way and so again in restricting abortions after 15 weeks you would lessen the risk of severe hemorrhage it's not zero even when it's done in the first trimester but it certainly is less than those that are done in the second and third trimesters and just for the record for someone who's not a medical doctor just in principle the idea that the further along in pregnancy a woman grows and goes and her body adjusts the sunborn and it gets bigger and more developed it makes perfect sense that this would be a greater disruption to the woman's body and have a greater chance of harm it just it seems obvious to me that that would be the case so let's move on to the second one where have an abortion puts a late term abortion puts a woman at risk for a future pre-term birth right right so you know this is a significant issue that i really think more people need to be talking about um we have a really a pandemic in this country of preterm birth that we really haven't been able to touch so preterm birth meaning a birth prior to 37 weeks of pregnancy and the ones that we really are concerned about are the preterm births that happen prior to 34 weeks and the reason for that is because that sets those babies up for potential long-term complications they have a higher risk of things like cerebral palsy and blindness and chronic lung disease from some of the complications of prematurity and so it's been announced even on a national level that you know as a as one of the developed countries we have one of the worst pre-term birth rates um in the developed world and so there are a lot of initiatives that are going on to look at what can we do to reduce our preterm birth rate and to help children be healthier as a result and one of the things that so many people are not looking at are the correlation between abortion and preterm birth and future pregnancies this is one of the best proven complications of abortion there are more than 160 studies now that show a correlation between abortions and future preterm births specifically surgical abortions and the more abortions a woman has the higher her risk of preterm birth in future pregnancies so if she has one she's got about 150 increased risk of a preterm birth in the future oh i'm sorry let me correct myself i'm getting ahead of myself if she has one she's got about a sixty percent increased risk of return if she's got two or more abortions she's got about a ninety increase risk and if she has three or more abortions she's got about 150 percent increased risk of preterm blood and future disease so the more she has the higher her risk of preterm birth and future pregnancies and the institute of medicine actually listed abortion as an immutable risk factor for preterm birth meaning once she's had an abortion there's nothing she can do to change that risk of preterm birth and future pregnancies so lots of people probably heard about smoking as a risk factor if a woman smokes during her pregnancy she's at a higher risk of preterm birth that's a mutable risk factor meaning she can change her risk so if she stops smoking she can decrease her risk again for pre-term birth that's not the case with abortion once it's done it's done and then she has that ongoing risk of preterm birth and future pregnancies and again the farther along she is in pregnancy the higher her risk because of that forcing opening of the cervix um that leads to cervical damage which can lead to something called cervical incompetence where the cervix is not strong enough anymore to hold the baby in to term or even to the point of viability so it kind of gives out and leads to women losing their pregnancies often before the baby can survive outside of her um i've had many patients that i've taken care of that have found themselves in that situation and it's so devastating to me i i wrote about this recently in an article that i wrote about this woman that i sat with her and her husband as they lost their fifth baby and you look back in her history and she had two abortions when she was very young you know and now she's lost this very desired child and it was at about 20 to 21 weeks i mean we were right on the cusp could have potentially done something for this baby and i just sat and cried with her and you know that that heartbreak that you that you felt or that i felt with her as a physician i couldn't do anything to take that away from her and it was so awful and i just thought what if back when she was you know however old she was when she was a teenager and she had that first pregnancy and i am sure she was scared she wasn't ready to be a mom she didn't know what to do and she felt like abortion was her only option thinking one day i'll be ready you know when i'm ready then i'll have a family but right now i'm just not ready but what if someone had told her that that abortion decision then could lead to her not being able to have biological children in the future because she would lose them would she have made a different choice you know and and i don't know but at the very least she deserved to have that information before she made her abortion decision you know of course my feeling because of being pro-life and not wanting women to suffer from abortions my feeling would be that i would hope that no woman would ever choose abortion but at the very least women are being told lies when they go to these abortion facilities they're being told that these are safe procedures they're being told that it's no different than having a tooth pulled and that it's easy it'll just be quick and over and their problem will be gone but they're not being told about the very real risks that exist and as a woman you know i take issue with that women are smart intelligent beings they can make informed decisions and at the very least again even if even if abortion stays legal you know across all 50 states in this country at the very least women deserve to have this information and to know the risks that are potentially coming after their abortion procedures i can only imagine how painful that would be as a doctor there to help somebody and not able to help them i can also only imagine how painful that was for the mom and for the dad on we had two kids in our third we had a miscarriage and my wife and i remember when the doctor told us we just sat there and we cried and it was hard and it was the only time in our marriage my wife used the word she's like i feel depressed like it was so painful on certain levels but she she had not had an abortion before that it just happens i know a lot of people have a miscarriage i can only imagine for this woman that part of her grieving is like i wish i had known wish i had done differently probably just beating herself up exacerbates that so i love that you're motivated to say we want to see late-term abortion overturn to protect women minimally if it doesn't women need to be told the truth to make choices and if somebody's pro-choice they should be in favor of that choice and empowering somebody to make it that's why i think many people call themselves pro-choice are not really pro-choice in fact they're pro-abortion not all of them but many and one other thing about preterm births and we're going to keep going is it surprising you make a case in this briefing that preterm births uh not only have a risk for the mother as you described but for society there's a cost and one study showed 76 000 per pre-term baby so what's fascinating is like you're making this cumulative case that all of us are paying in different ways because of late term abortions minimally that should be part of the larger case and i appreciate that that aplog points that out now the third one you talk about which surprised me i guess it all surprised me because i'm not a medical doctor is that the link between a late-term abortion and breast cancer yeah absolutely so there is very definitely a link between women who have abortions and an increased risk of breast cancer now this is a hotly contested subject um and you know even within even within the pro-life movement i think there's a lot of discussion about whether or not this is the case so if we are going to make this case we need to be very cautious that we say specifically what the risk is so it's not all abortions it's abortions that occur before a woman has her first full-term pregnancy okay so granted this is when most abortions are happening right and women are young they're not ready to have a baby yet and so they have an abortion the reason this happens is because and the reason that the risk is even greater in women the farther along in pregnancy that they are is just a very brief lesson in how a woman's breast undergoes changes during a pregnancy when a woman first becomes pregnant many people who are listening will probably recognize this and say oh yeah i felt that too one of the first signs of pregnancy oftentimes is breast tenderness the reason for that is because her breast tissue is starting to multiply and grow but when it starts to multiply and grow it's all what we call type 1 and type 2 tissue and this is a type that is very cancer susceptible okay it continues to grow in this type 1 and type 2 tissue until about 32 weeks of pregnancy and at that point under the influence of a hormone called human placental lactogen that induces the tissue to change into type 4 tissue once it gets to type 4 tissue that type is very cancer resistant and so this is why we've seen and this is well accepted in the practice of medicine that women who have full term pregnancies especially women that go on to breastfeed are at a decreased risk of breast cancer it's because they've induced their breast tissue to change into type 3 and 4 tissue which is very cancer resistant what happens when a woman has an abortion is that her breast tissue has started to multiply and grow but all type 1 and type 2 tissue and then she has the abortion and arrests her breast tissue in that cancer susceptible state and so the farther along in pregnancy she is up to 32 weeks so say she has an abortion at 20 weeks she's got more of that cancer susceptible tissue than she did even at eight weeks so she's got more places for cancer to grow than she did prior to the pregnancy or early on in the pregnancy and so the more abortions a woman has prior to her first full-term pregnancy and the farther along she is the higher her risk of breast cancer and this has been seen in over 50 studies now from all over the world where we've shown this this correlation that if you look at that specific subset of women women who have abortions prior to their first full-term pregnancy they are at an increased risk of breast cancer hi that's just heartbreak and again somebody wouldn't know and pay dearly in their life for a choice minimally without that information the the final point that you make which i imagine would be as controversial maybe more is about the psychological harm to women it would seem to me this might be harder to diagnose is that true what is some of the psychological harm to women who have late term abortions sure so you know in general when we look at the the mental health effects of abortion on women you do have to follow women for years and years in order to get a true picture of the impact on their mental health so one of the problems with the studies that the abortion industry likes to quote all the time that says there's no ill effect on women's mental health from abortion in fact most women are happy with their decision they feel relieved is that they only follow up with them for a few months to maybe a year and so you know many women who find themselves in a crisis pregnancy it's certainly understandable that right after they have their abortion they might feel very relieved you know they were faced with this crisis situation and now it's over and so you know i'm sure for many women there is that sense of relief however if you follow them out for years afterwards you find that that relief starts to wane and the ill effects on their mental health start to increase and so that would be depression anxiety substance abuse suicide we know that women who are post-abortive are seven times more likely to commit suicide than those women who have never had an abortion this is that's an insane increase in risk especially in a country where we already have a mental health epidemic you know that's going on that's been worsened even in the last couple of years and so and this is even higher in women that have a mental health history so the american psychological association identified a number of risk factors actually that predispose women who are going to have an abortion to have ill mental health effects after their abortion and what they what another study has found is using that list of criteria that was put out by the apa more than 80 percent of women who have abortions have at least one if not multiple of those risk factors so what that's saying is that more than eighty percent of women who are going to have abortions are gonna have poor mental health outcomes after their abortion again this is something that women should be told about and they're they're just not i can imagine some skeptics might push back and say this is correlation not causation maybe women bring in certain mental health issues to this but then i'm you know thinking out loud i'd say okay if that's the case then clearly if they bring it in and have the abortion it's not fixing it so if the mental health issues were already there and we care about the mental health of women have an abortion is not fixing the issue maybe we need to rethink it so causation or correlation still calls into question the the rightness not only morally but the effectiveness of an abortion to help a woman who's suffering psychologically now there's a line in uh in the briefing that i want you to comment on because this is one i shared with my wife last night as we were talking about this uh the line was when compared to women who carried an unwanted pregnancy to term women who underwent an abortion still experienced a 55 increase risk of mental health problems now i want to explain that because what we're so often told is when a woman has a mental i'm sorry when a woman has an unwanted pregnancy forcing her to carry it to term is going to pile on the suffering and make her psychological life worse you're saying there's at least one study that says it's the opposite exactly and it's a great point to bring up because especially now with this texas bill that just went into effect i you know i'm hearing that constantly that this is going to force women to carry pregnancies that they don't want and that that's going to lead to worse mental health outcomes for them but as you stated very well the studies actually don't bear that out so there's not a lot of studies looking at this but when you look at studies that are methodol methodologically done well what that shows is that for women who have unintended or unwanted pregnancies if you compare those that choose abortion versus those that choose to carry to term that the ones that choose to carry to term actually have better mental health outcomes and we've known for a long time that pregnancy and delivering a baby up term actually confers lifelong better mental health for women than um than not having children and so this you know this goes along with that um that actually abortion worsens mental health outcomes and so you know if you truly look at the studies the one study that the pro-abortion side likes to quote all the time is the turn away study um which if people go to our our website and look at our mental health practice bulletin you'll find a very good description of why the turnaway study was actually not a good study so there was very poor follow-up and there was a self-selection bias of women that responded um that were motivated to respond because they felt like they had a good outcome from their um from their abortion or they um were upset because they weren't able to have an abortion so but their overall response rate was extremely low so it's actually a bad study when you look at studies that have a better response rate and a longer follow-up rate what you find is what you just said that women even women with unintended pregnancies who carry their pregnancies to term they have better mental health outcomes than those women that chose abortion so if anyone cares about the mental health outcome of women they should minimally seriously question abortion as a remedy to help women psychologically that's what the data shows now you are your gynecologist you work with women who obviously are pregnant and with the unborn what if it's not just the mental health of the mother but the mother's life is genuinely in jeopardy have you ever had to personally make this decision or if not how do you think about it as a medical doctor yeah sean i'm so glad you asked this question because this is a this is a true sticking point that i think the the pro-abortion side tries to bring this up all the time you know if we if we make abortion illegal then women are going to die because you won't have the the capability of intervening if their life is in jeopardy um as an ob gyn unfortunately i have faced that situation um more often than than i would have wished it certainly is still very rare but even one instance of having to make that choice to intervene is heartbreaking as a physician heartbreaking for the patients and so there are very real situations in which a woman's life is in jeopardy because of a complication of her pregnancy now for people who argue that third trimester abortions need to be legal so that we can save women's lives they are lying um if a woman's life is endangered by her pregnancy in the third trimester you deliver her and you take care of the baby and you take care of mom it's a no-brainer it's what we do every day in our practice of obgyn um and in fact an expeditious emergent cesarean section is much faster than an abortion would be in that situation so it's absolutely what you do if a mother's life is in danger you get her delivered you take care of mom you take care of baby there is zero reason why an abortion would need to be legal in the third trimester it gets a little stickier when you're talking about you know prior to that point where baby can survive outside of mom but what i like to tell people is one if tomorrow roe v wade were overturned and every state in the country decided to make abortion illegal that would not in any way interfere with my ability as a physician to save a woman's life when i needed to save her life for those of us who are pro-life we are pro-life in all circumstances and we save whatever lives we can save if we can save them both we save them both if we can only save one then we just save the one but that doesn't mean that we intentionally end the life of the other and this is the difference between abortion and a medically indicated premature delivery so there are situations that i've had to sit down and talk with a patient at 20 21 weeks and say i'm very sorry but because of this particular complication i'm worried that your life could be in jeopardy and because of that we're going to need to get you delivered however we do it in a way that respects the dignity of her child's life as well we deliver an intact child that she can hold and grieve so even though we know that the eventual outcome is that that child is not going to be able to survive that's not our intent in intervening and we don't do it in a way that dismembers that child or disrespects the dignity of that child's life and so it's very different and again just a practical example of why any physician who takes care of pregnant women who's being honest will tell you that that scenario is not an abortion is because i guarantee you that when they walk into that patient's room of here you have a woman with a highly desired pregnancy and you're getting ready to give her heartbreaking news that we have no other choice other than to get you delivered i can almost guarantee you that they don't walk into that room and tell that patient i'm very sorry but we need to do an abortion they walk in and they say i'm very sorry but we need to get you delivered it's the only way we're going to be able to save your life and so to me that's just a glaring example of how that is not the same thing as an abortion people that say that it is especially people within the medical profession are not being honest um again if roe v wade were overturned and abortion were made illegal today i would still tomorrow be able to save the life of a woman who had life-threatening complications from her pregnancy i wouldn't be i wouldn't be barred from doing that by by abortion being made illegal when my wife had a miscarriage the procedure that she had to have to have the unborn taken out was the same procedure we were told it's often done to perform an abortion and at first it was very jarring to her and i just walked her through and i said look exactly what you said it's not just the procedure itself it's the intent this this unborn baby is not alive it's already passed so the intent makes the difference so when the mother's life is genuinely in jeopardy the intent is to protect the mom it's not to go in and kill the child and that ethical distinction changes everything now these statistics that you're giving me are they contested are they unanimously agreed now you mentioned the one on breast cancer is a little bit more contested but where is the medical kind of community as a whole on the harms of late terms abortion as you've laid out here well so you know obviously people even within the medical profession can choose which studies they want to believe and read and use and choose which studies they want to ignore um unfortunately a lot of the major medical journals have a publication bias in that they will not publish studies that show harms of abortion because they're trying to uphold this narrative that abortion is safe and that it's good for women and so we have seen many many times very good studies that have been denied publication for really no good reason other than that they go against the abortion narrative um you know there was a study it in fact if even if any of your listeners have never heard of the documentary hush i would encourage them to um find a way to see it i think you could probably find it online um it's made by a pro-choice documentarian and she even says at the end of the documentary that she's still pro-choice but that she believes that women have a right to fully informed consent and so they should know about this and actually the issue that got her interested in looking into this was that she heard about the link between abortion and breast cancer and she had never heard that before and so she wanted to look into it more she tried to get information from the national cancer institute who had actively suppressed a study that showed that abortion causes an increased risk of breast cancer and she was actually escorted out of the national cancer institute by security so there is a a major agenda at play to suppress this information which is one of the reasons why a plug and our our other allies are so important because we're working very hard to get this information out there if you actually look at the studies that are out there the vast majority of studies looking for example at abortion and breast cancer show that again in that subset of women women that have abortions prior to their first full-term birth they're at an increased risk of breast cancer um and like i said the studies on abortion and pre-term birth there's 160 of them from the last 50 years that show that abortion increases the risk of preterm birth so the problem is that many physicians in their training in medical school aren't hearing this information because again just because of the bias in medical training towards um you know we shouldn't stand in our patients way of getting an abortion you need to be we're told you need to be unbiased in your counseling but what that actually means is that you if a patient wants an abortion you should just let her have it and um you know just briefly uh something that i think brings up a point that you referenced earlier about you know we're not helping women that already have mental health struggles by by just handing them an abortion and not dealing with actually what's at the root of their problems if a woman comes to see me in the office what i found was she oftentimes is actually seeking information so when a woman would come to me and say i think i won an abortion what i found was most times if she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she wanted an abortion she usually didn't even come into my office she just went straight to planned parenthood she knew where to go for an abortion so she was coming to see me oftentimes it was because there's a doubt somewhere in her mind of is this what i should do and so how i usually started out talking to my patients was i would say tell me what makes you think that that's your best option or that that's your only option why is it that you think abortion is the good option for you what i often found in that was that she would say that someone was pressuring her or maybe she felt like she didn't have the social support that she needed you know things that the abortion is not going to fix in fact it's probably going to exacerbate it and so our job as physicians is to take the whole picture of what's going on with our patient into consideration and offer her our best medical advice and based on the information that we've talked about today my best medical advice to women is that there's no health benefits of abortion for you in fact there's very real harms and it ends the life of your child who's a human being a living human being growing inside of you and so i don't see counseling a woman in that way as being biased i see it as giving my expert medical opinion and it seems like 93 percent of ob gyns at least broadly speaking agree with you i appreciate the approach you took sometimes it's hard for me on issues of life to be sober minded and to be patient because life this is a life or death issue but i think what you modeled asking questions showing graciousness trying to get to the root of the issue is very wise for people who are pro-life how to relationally engage other people to hopefully protect life i think that's really smart now i realize you're not your lane is medical not legal but i'm just curious broadly speaking your thoughts of this ruling that will come down in june uh are you hopeful about it does it feel like david versus goliath what do you see from where you sit about this ruling uh that maybe those of us not looking at from the perspective you are should should see yeah well you know it's anybody's guess what what the ruling will be you know come next june when we think we'll probably get the ruling what my hope is is that the justices who will be making this decision will really take the time to look at the science to look at the data and see how much science has changed in the last 50 years you know the opposition to roe being overturned have said you know if rose overturned it's going to set us back 50 years you know we'll be back to you know those back alley abortions and and we'll be back in kind of the dark ages but actually roe v wade being overturned would catch us up with where science has brought us over the last 50 years and so my hope is that the justices will see that that they'll see that um you know we need to end this really this holocaust of lives that are being lost mostly the lives of pre-born children but also the lives either through death of women that are suffering complications of abortion or how their lives are being permanently altered by these abortion procedures and that we need to not sanction this as a country any longer especially with what we know from scientific advancements over the last 50 years so that would be my hope would be that at the very least they would allow common sense restrictions that improve safety for women uh my ultimate hope would be that they would see uh the really the poor decision that was made with the roby wade decision and and reverse that completely based on where we are at with the scientific and medical data now how can people follow you and aplog just what's the quick website or other social media things or platforms you use that can help people track this and what you do even beyond this case yeah absolutely so um there's a number of different ways people can find us first of all our website is aaplog.org so they can find lots of resources on there we also are active on most of the major social media sites we're on instagram and facebook and twitter and linkedin and um our handle on most of them is just at aaplog but if you look up at blog on those you'll be able to find us and we post very helpful information that i think is helpful for people as they're engaging in conversation about abortion to be able to say look not only is this my stance maybe from a moral standpoint but it's also my stance because it's based on science and it's based on the evidence and so we want to provide that for people also i would just encourage if there's anybody listening who is a healthcare professional whether you're a student or in practice i'd encourage you to join us even though obgyns is in our title we actually have a lot of non-ob-gyn physicians we have mental health professionals we have midwives who are members so we encourage anybody who is involved in women's healthcare who desires to practice from a pro-life standpoint to join us so that one we know their strength in numbers so the more numbers we can get the bigger voice we're going to have on a national stage um as we're defending life but also so that you can know that you're not alone and that you have support and that we're here to support you thanks so much for what you're doing as you know i had your colleague don harrison on just a few weeks ago talking about over-the-counter abortion which is completely blew me away when i learned some of the insight about that in terms of how it's harming women but i have been following aplog for a while grateful for your clary but also just the compassion for which you approach this so dr christina francis thanks so much for for coming on thanks for having me sean i appreciate it

Channel: Sean McDowell

Views: 11,112

Keywords: heaven, afterlife, hell, scripture, Jesus, Bible, evidence, proof, NDE, near death experiences, soul, spirit, investigate, apologetics, defense, book, resource

Id: CC-MDMjL48w

Length: 61min 12sec (3672 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021