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Aug. 13, 2022 - The Michael Knowles Show

01:56:57

Choosing Life: Former Abortionist Describes Abortion in Detail - Dr. Steve Hammond

Dr. Steve Hammond excelled at performing abortions - so much so that he did them after hours for extra cash. But all that changed when a baby in the womb kicked the abortion instrument in his hand and he realized that he was taking the life of an innocent human being. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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	A quick note before the episode begins.
	This conversation involves graphic discussions related to abortion and the abortion industry.
	Please consider turning off the episode if children are present and continue listening with caution.
	Well, abortion is sold as a concept, I think, to the American public.
	It's a concept.
	And it's an abstract concept.
	I think if the public could see an abortion through my eyes and see the reality of it, the polling that you would see would dramatically increase toward opposition to abortion.
	I can't imagine people seeing an abortion, seeing what happens during an abortion, Not being appalled and that the statistics that you read about supporting abortion would be vastly different if people could see the reality and it became more than just an abstract concept to them.
	Dr.
	Steve Hammond didn't just support abortion.
	He performed abortions.
	And he didn't just perform abortions.
	He was good at performing abortions.
	Steve aborted babies as his day job and as a side hustle for extra money on nights and weekends.
	He took pride in his skill and efficiency.
	until one day, after having taken the lives of some 700 babies, when Steve stopped an abortion midway through because of an unmistakable feeling.
	Not just an emotional feeling, but a physical feeling.
	The baby kicked his instruments.
	Come around to this.
	Right now, I would strongly recommend you go to I would strongly recommend you go to hallow.com slash choose life because today's world is a scary one.
	Too many people don't seem to care about the truth.
	And I would suggest that that's all rooted in people becoming less or really just anti-religious.
	That's why it's more important than ever to keep our relationship with God strong.
	Hallow is the number one Christian prayer app in the United States.
	It's like Calm or Headspace, but rooted in Catholic faith.
	It is the perfect resource to deepen your relationship with God and find peace through audio-guided prayer and meditation.
	Several of Hallow's meditations encourage you to choose life and to pray for others to choose life, such as their Litany for Life with Lila Rose.
	Hallow is free to download online.
	It will help you find peace and calm throughout your day.
	So do it.
	Do it right now.
	Download the app for free at hallo.com slash choose life.
	That is hallo.com slash choose life.
	And now, Dr.
	Hammond.
	My name is Steve Hammond, and I'm a medical doctor.
	I've been in practice for 43 years.
	My specialty is obstetrics and gynecology.
	During my career, I've delivered over 4,000 babies.
	And early in my career, I was an abortionist.
	I performed over 700 abortions.
	And every story has a beginning.
	I was raised in a Christian family.
	I was in the middle of five children.
	We were really spread out.
	Even in my earliest time, as a five-year-old, I can remember wanting to be a physician.
	And I don't know where that came from, actually.
	Nobody in my family was involved in medicine at all.
	My dad was assistant manager of a cotton mill.
	And I could tell you that my mother was the spiritual leader of our house.
	If you ever looked at Father Knows Best reruns or whatever, that's kind of the way our family was.
	My mother was the spiritual leader of our house and introduced me to Jesus as a four-year-old.
	And trying to teach a four-year-old about sin, salvation, and need for the Savior is really a difficult task because I can tell you, as a four-year-old, I was just interested in playing in the dirt.
	That was really a concept way beyond my ability to understand.
	But she told me, I'll give you an example.
	She said, you know, we've got a big yard, Steve, and you like to play in the dirt.
	You can play in the yard, but don't leave the yard without your dad or me with you because it's dangerous.
	Well, probably about a week or two after that, I followed my older brother to visit some friends.
	And when I got back home, there was my mother waiting for me with a switch.
	And she taught me the first two multi-syllable words that I can remember.
	You deliberately disobeyed me.
	And that really exemplifies, I think, the boundaries that true freedom has.
	We are free to do so much in life, but there are boundaries to our freedom.
	And as Christians, we recognize that.
	Well, as time goes on, testosterone and peer pressure and the world started changing me, I guess you would say.
	By the time I got to college in the 60s, it was the sexual revolution.
	It was a time of challenging authority that we had been raised with.
	And when you say freedom to someone in the 60s, they would think that freedom comes without boundaries.
	What they were really looking for was autonomy.
	Autonomy is a much different thing.
	Autonomy is a law unto oneself.
	And you can see how that's really flowed into our culture today.
	But I bought into this and Part of what that entails is what we call moral relativism.
	And I can remember one of the things we would always say in those days, well, that might be wrong for you to do, but it's okay if you think it's okay.
	So that moral relativism started creeping in.
	And this really laid the foundation for how, when I became a physician later, that I was swayed by the argument that came about.
	Now, Roe vs.
	Wade came about when I was halfway through medical school.
	And there was really no 24-7 news in those days.
	We really were insulated from that.
	We learned about Roe v.
	Wade being passed down by the Supreme Court through our professors.
	And in those days, the professors were...
	My professors, at least, were encouraging us to think about this and that it was important for women's health and for women to be able to choose To have their babies or not.
	And so it was a concept that I bought into.
	I think part of that moral relativism flowed from my past into this.
	But until I became a resident in obstetrics and gynecology, it really didn't impact me that much.
	I can remember during medical school, some of my fellow students I believed that abortion was murder, and I thought, they're just religious fanatics, Jesus freaks.
	We had all kind of monikers we would put on them.
	So fast forward, I went into obstetrics and gynecology, mainly in medical school.
	It was the first hands-on experience I had, and seeing new life being born was fascinating to me.
	And so I chose to pursue a residency in obstetrics and gynecology.
	As I mentioned, Roe v.
	Wade was passed down halfway through medical school.
	That was in 1973.
	I got married later that year, and we went to the Medical College of Georgia for my residency.
	The fourth month of my residency was in Planned Parenthood rotation.
	And during that Planned Parenthood rotation, that's when I was first introduced to the actual abortion procedure.
	I could have opted out, but I chose not to.
	And I witnessed my first abortion, and then, hands-on, I started doing them.
	I actually became good at it.
	I guess as a young physician, you gravitate towards something that you feel good about.
	And I did.
	I became very proficient at it.
	And it shortly evolved from just doing them on the rotation to, because I was good at it, Planned Parenthood actually hired me to do abortions for moonlighting.
	And so I started doing them.
	And over the course of the next year and a half, doing abortions at Planned Parenthood on weekends.
	And then we started traveling to other cities to do them as well.
	That went on for about a year and a half, and it all came to a halt on a Saturday morning.
	I remember it so well.
	I was doing abortions.
	We would do 20, 25 abortions on a Saturday morning.
	And the last patient of that day was a little 16-year-old.
	And usually when we do an abortion, And we were only doing them up to about 13 weeks at that time.
	There's only a tablespoon, maybe three or four tablespoons of amniotic fluid that come out when we do the procedure.
	This was different.
	There was probably a quart, maybe a quart and a half of amniotic fluid that came out.
	As I was doing it, and then there was a lot of blood.
	And then it happened, the event that changed everything.
	The baby kicked me.
	Now you might think, here I was doing abortions for a year and a half, and I would see the products that I was pulling out of the uterus, the broken limbs, the torsos, the head.
	All the pieces of those babies.
	And that didn't really move me.
	It didn't change my mind.
	But when I felt the baby kick me, it changed everything.
	You see, we didn't have real-time ultrasound back in those days.
	We were flying blindly, you might say.
	I mean, we could hear the baby's heartbeat with a Doppler ultrasound, but we didn't have real-time ultrasound to actually see the baby in utero.
	When I was kicked, though, it brought everything to a realization that there was something going on.
	I was taking a life.
	And actually, when I examined the patient more closely, she was about five months pregnant, and she had to be transported to the hospital, and that baby had to be dismembered and removed in pieces.
	Now, that was the last abortion I ever did, but philosophically, I was still pro-choice.
	I guess you might say I would refer them to someone else to do.
	I just couldn't do them myself.
	Well, that transition took place, I guess, if you'd have to fast forward another five years.
	I was out of residency in private practice.
	My wife and I had already had two children, and our third child was born under some unique circumstances.
	She went into preterm labor at 26 weeks.
	That was 1982, and babies born at 26 weeks in 1982 had about a 25% chance of survival.
	We tried everything we could to stop the labor, but it was impossible to do so.
	So our third child was born at 26 weeks.
	weeks.
	He weighed two pounds and three ounces when he was born.
	And he was in the neonatal intensive care unit for about eight weeks.
	It was then I think it really dawned on me watching the neonatologist working around the clock to save my son's life, realizing that there were facilities already in our country that were aborting babies of that gestational age.
	And it was hard for me to reconcile that.
	And so I think philosophically at that point, I became what you might call pro-life.
	I realized that abortion was taking a human life, and I couldn't reconcile that.
	You might say the morality of that really hit home.
	That was further bolstered about, I guess that was another seven years after that, I went on a retreat and really was reintroduced to the Jesus that my mother had introduced me to when I was four years old.
	And I became really hungry to read Scripture and find out exactly how Scripture talks to us about God and why He created man, the plan He has for us, how He created us, and about new life.
	And going back to the first chapter of Genesis, God said, let us create man in our own image.
	And then in Exodus, actually the next book of the Bible, there's an interesting passage there.
	They're describing the law of Moses and breaking it down basically to...
	Talk about how the legal system would be set up.
	So if there were damages done, how that would be repaid and so forth.
	It got into some real minutia.
	But there was an interesting passage.
	It's in Exodus 22, verse 21, where two men are fighting and a pregnant woman is a bystander and is accidentally injured.
	And it says if all goes well, then damages are to be paid.
	But if there's serious damage, and we can infer from that that something happens to that newborn, then it's an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life.
	So it looks like, at least in that passage, that we're being introduced to the fact that intrauterine life is actually life.
	And we go to the first chapter of Jeremiah, and he tells Jeremiah, he said, you know, before you were conceived, I knew you.
	And appointed you a prophet to the nations.
	So there, you know, the Bible is saying that God knows us even before we're not just born, but before we're conceived.
	So there are numerous passages in the Bible that really brought to my mind the fact that not only is abortion taking a human life, but there's very good biblical evidence that God breathes into us life at conception.
	And so if you look at it scientifically and study when life begins, certainly at birth, it's no question about it, but if you trace that back all the way, there's not any logical point along the way that you can say that this transition actually happens unless you get back to conception.
	And there's A great deal of scientific evidence, I mean, basic biology about the chromosomes, the DNA that's formed in a newborn, we call it a zygote, when the sperm and the egg unite,
	that the full complement of chromosomes that are unique to that individual Or are consummated or begun and that the DNA of that individual is different than any other individual has ever been on the face of this earth unless it's a situation where they're identical twins.
	So that unique identity is there from conception.
	Thank you.
	Thank you for sharing that story.
	I want to jump back to some questions about the earlier part of your story.
	When you saw your first abortion, not the first one you performed, but when you saw the first abortion, what was going through your mind?
	Was anyone telling you what to think or giving you a context for how to deal with processing it, or what were you thinking about it?
	When I first was introduced to abortion as a resident, Dr.
	Bronstein, who was the medical director at Planned Parenthood, actually performed it.
	And I remember going through the, we call it the products of conception, the pieces of the baby that were removed, the arms and legs, the little arms and legs and the torso, the head, all of that.
	Really, I was separated from the fact that that was life because we really didn't have real-time ultrasound back then.
	We weren't able to see the baby in utero like we are now.
	But at the same time, it was pretty clear what we were looking at.
	There were pieces of baby, little arms and legs.
	I think this pregnancy was probably around 10 weeks or so.
	You can see fingers and toes and all the parts of the baby.
	And I guess you would say I looked at that as a pathologist would do an autopsy on someone maybe that he had known or that was a member of his community.
	He separates himself from the fact that that body that's there I was up and living and breathing and walking down the street maybe a week before.
	He doesn't really think about it as a living human being, but as something to be studied and evaluated.
	And I guess that's how I would have described what I saw in my emotions as I looked at that, was more intrigue and interest in The anatomy, and emotionally I was really sold out to the fact that abortion was a necessary thing.
	I've been taught that in medical school, that abortion was finally giving women an ability to...
	End of pregnancy if it wasn't convenient or if they had other reasons.
	We weren't to question that.
	It gave them the freedom to do so.
	So I disconnected the fact that that was a life.
	We didn't have real-time ultrasound back then.
	So we didn't have the ability that we have now to be able to see the baby moving, the heartbeat in utero that we have today.
	So all I saw was the products of what was in utero five minutes before alive, but I was not able to draw that context back then.
	So fast forward to the abortion that the court of amniotic fluid and blood came out.
	Describe what you're mentally going through in that moment.
	Is it still that kind of clinical, oh, this is medically different?
	Or is there a part of you that your heartbeat picks up and you're like, oh no, what's happening?
	Talk us through that.
	So that last abortion that I did, as we were performing it, usually there's only a teaspoon or a tablespoon of amniotic fluid.
	And then the products of conception come through.
	That's what we call the baby.
	Products of conception came through the tubing.
	It was just a lot of amniotic fluid, a lot of blood.
	And then the baby kicked me.
	and it was only then when i examined the abdomen and realized that this pregnancy was much further along than i had anticipated um you know that was the first time i think i ever really connected the fact that what i was doing was taking a human life Thank you.
	We didn't have the real-time ultrasound that you have now, at least it was in its infancy then.
	So we didn't do ultrasounds before the abortion, and we relied only on our ability to estimate the gestational age.
	And if the patient was not accurate about their last menstrual period, we sometimes could be off, or sometimes the patient either didn't know or actually would misrepresent when their last menstrual period was.
	But in this case, I don't know what happened, but she was much further along than We had anticipated.
	And the fact that the baby kicked me was the first connection that I had, I think, between what I was doing was taking a life because the pregnancies,
	the abortions I had previously done were Much smaller, but she was further along, and that made quite an imprint on me because I knew then that what I was doing was taking a life.
	It was clear.
	I had a newborn at home at that time, and I knew what a kick was, and when I felt that baby kicked me, It really hit home, I think, with the fact that I was taking a life.
	She had to be taken to the hospital and the baby was removed in pieces in a gruesome procedure.
	That was the last abortion that I ever did.
	I didn't become pro-life overnight.
	It took a few years for that to happen.
	And my...
	What kind of system surrounded you?
	Yeah.
	Thank you.
	Because you were brought up through a system and Planned Parenthood saw you as very valuable.
	Tell me about that world.
	I assume that they were, oh, you're so great at what you do.
	Very encouraging of the technical excellence.
	Tell me about that world and what was that environment like?
	As a resident, I rotated through Planned Parenthood and was introduced to the abortion procedure, and I quickly became quite proficient at it.
	And I think it was one of the first things as a resident that I was able to do proficiently by myself.
	This was three years after Roe v.
	Wade was passed, so the country was really starting to accept abortion, I think, at that time.
	And I was separated really from the counseling of the patients.
	I was just a technician really at that time.
	But I became quite proficient at it.
	And actually, I think over a year and a half doing abortions, I never had a major complication until the end.
	Even traveling to other cities and doing abortions for money.
	I never had a complication, which gave me pride, I guess, as a resident, that I was able to do something myself.
	A resident is in training and always has supervision, but this was something I was doing independently, and I might say, in a word, proficiently.
	You know, there's a lot of debate and discussion about Planned Parenthood and, you know, what their motives are and a lot of arguments going back and forth from both sides.
	Did you feel that Planned Parenthood, at least while you were there, was...
	Really interested in doing a lot of abortions and creating an environment where that was seen as a really prominent procedure to have women go through.
	Well, this was 1976.
	And...
	Planned Parenthood did a lot of different things.
	They did annual physicals, they did contraceptive counseling, and they were also doing abortions.
	And abortions were done, I can't remember, I know they were done two or three times a week.
	We were also doing laparoscopic sterilizations.
	Abortion was only part of the process that was going on at Planned Parenthood.
	And I was actually not really involved in the counseling.
	I was a technician.
	So as far as what was going on behind the scenes, I wasn't really aware of.
	But I was hired as a technician, actually, to perform abortions.
	Can you describe what happens in an abortion?
	Okay.
	An abortion procedure, in the days that I was doing them, really hasn't changed very much over the years.
	It is done as a one-step or two-step procedure.
	Usually, a woman who is early gestational age can be done in one step.
	That means one visit.
	I've got a little audio-visual here, I guess you might say.
	This little gourd is the shape of about a seven-week size pregnant uterus.
	The uterus here, the cervix here.
	And the procedure is done first by injecting a local anesthetic around the cervix.
	And this is the curette that we might use for an early pregnancy.
	This is a six millimeter flexible curette.
	It's got some holes in the end here, and this connects to a suction tubing on the other end.
	Once the cervix is anesthetized, dilators are used to force open the cervical opening.
	We call it the cervical os.
	The curette is then passed through the cervix, connected to a high-pressure suction on the other end.
	The suction is then rotated round and round until the bag of water that contains the pregnancy inside the uterus is ruptured.
	Once that happens, the membranes in the amniotic fluid are trapped inside those little openings in the end of the tube.
	They're pulled out this way.
	And if the pregnancy is early, most of the baby is small enough to pass through these little fenestrations here, but a pregnancy of this size, the pregnancy would not be able to pass through that little opening.
	So at that point, we would use instruments to actually go in and pull the tissue out.
	The sac would collapse.
	The pieces of the baby would be extracted.
	Sometimes parts of the baby would come through the tubing here.
	We have instruments that would go inside the uterus and pull the remaining placenta and parts of the baby out.
	Now, all of this was collected.
	In a suction device.
	And after the procedure is done, the uterus would contract and the parts of the baby would actually collect in a bag in the suction device.
	And we would go through that to be sure all of the parts of the baby had been removed.
	Because if something is left behind in the uterus, it sets up potential for infection that can lead to bleeding and death.
	So that's the way an abortion is performed.
	Now, a two-step abortion, if the patient is further along and we need to dilate the cervix more than just what I showed you in the previous one, laminary attempt can be inserted into the cervix.
	These are actually seaweed that absorbs moisture in the cervix overnight and will stretch the opening of the cervix large enough to get a curette that's larger than this one through the So the patient would return the second day, the curette would be passed through, and larger instruments could be passed into the uterus.
	And the baby, again, removed in pieces.
	Those pieces have to be accounted for.
	And as I was doing abortions in those days, I would look at the pieces of the baby more as a pathologist would look at an autopsy.
	There was obviously no life.
	It was intriguing to me, I guess you might say, as a resident.
	But we didn't have real-time ultrasound in those days, so we didn't see the baby moving, the heart beating, and so forth before we did the procedure.
	We just saw what we removed and making sure all the pieces of the baby were removed because if you leave Part of the placenta, part of the baby, back inside the uterus, it will set up infection.
	The uterus will not contract properly.
	There's bleeding and so forth that will happen afterwards.
	So, you know, that's basically walking through the procedure.
	Yeah.
	How are those forceps used?
	Is that what those are called?
	This is a ring clamp, and it really is too big to pass through, but if the cervix were dilated more, we could actually pass this ring clamp inside the uterus.
	There's Teeth on the end of that, that grasp tissue.
	And if we were able to show you this on this, we would pass this inside grasp tissue and pull.
	And you would pull out maybe a leg.
	You can go back, grasp again, pull out another leg or arm, the torso.
	And the head and bring out the pieces one at a time.
	This would be in a pregnancy that was 12, 13 weeks along.
	And you actually can see a lot of the anatomy of the baby at that time.
	The woman will experience a variable amount of discomfort during that procedure.
	Many times when we did this, as we started, patients would We began crying and protesting, but once we had begun dilating the cervix and passing instruments into the uterus, it was too late to stop.
	Well, abortion is sold as a concept, I think, to the American public, and it's an abstract concept.
	I think if the public could see an abortion through my eyes, See the reality of it.
	The polling that you would see would dramatically increase toward opposition to abortion.
	I can't imagine people seeing an abortion, seeing what happens during an abortion, Not being appalled and that the statistics that you read about supporting abortion would be vastly different if people could see the reality and it became more than just an abstract concept to them.
	When someone finds out that you're pro-life, And if someone challenges you on that, what do you say to that person?
	As a pro-life physician, I've been in a position, I think, to share the fact that I haven't always been pro-life.
	I was an abortionist.
	I performed abortions.
	I bought into the concept hook, line, and sinker.
	I was all for it.
	So I think when someone wants to have a conversation with me about abortion, I can understand their point of view and where they're coming from and I'm patient with them because I understand that it took me a while to come to the grips with what I was doing and To
	develop the attitude toward a life that I currently have.
	I didn't always have this attitude, and so I guess you might say I'm patient with those that disagree with me.
	I believe that we have to have a dialogue about it, and we will gain a lot more by having a reasonable dialogue than fighting over it.
	Is it emotional for you to think back on those days and explain for the audience why you get emotional when you think about that?
	Well, reliving my past abortion experiences does bring back a certain amount of emotional trauma, but as a believer, I know that Christ died for my sins and I don't bear them anymore.
	I don't have the shame and the guilt anymore.
	And this is why I can talk about it.
	Not devoid of emotion.
	Certainly, I wish that I'd never been involved in it in the first place.
	But there's a story in the Bible about Joseph and...
	He was sold into slavery by his brothers.
	They were jealous of him when he was a little boy.
	And he was taken to Egypt.
	He became Prime Minister of Egypt.
	And during a famine later, this was many, many years later, his brothers went to Egypt to get food because there was a famine.
	He knew who they were, but they didn't recognize him at first, but when they did, they were terrified.
	They thought he was going to take revenge on them.
	But he said something that I think applies to my story as well, and that is, he told them not to be afraid because they meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
	And so I guess what I would say is, Destroyed 700 babies.
	That's true.
	But I'm having an opportunity now to speak for those 700 babies that can't speak for themselves anymore.
	And so that's really a privilege, I guess, that I have.
	And I know because Christ died for my Abortion sins and all my other sins as well, that I can speak freely of it.
	I don't have the shame and the guilt anymore.
	And as I speak to those who are suffering from a past abortion or whatever, I can certainly identify with that and console him and teach them that there is one source of forgiveness.
	Abortion inflicts a spiritual wound.
	As a surgeon, I've done thousands of surgical cases, and we take a scalpel and we make an incision.
	We make a physical wound, and there's a proper way to repair that wound, put sutures and create hemostasis, use antibiotics when appropriate to make that wound heal properly.
	Abortion inflicts a spiritual wound.
	A spiritual wound can be denied.
	It can be repressed.
	It can be, in our day, we see it celebrated, but it's a wound nonetheless.
	And there's only one cure for that wound.
	I mean, people go to counseling and other things, but there's only one real way for that wound to be And that's through Christ.
	And I've come to realize that.
	I understand that.
	The guilt and the shame that I should be bearing because of all the abortions that I did, Christ bore for me.
	He has freed me from the guilt and the shame because He bore those sins.
	In His body.
	So I bear them no more.
	And I'm free to talk about what I've done.
	Yes, it's emotional.
	Yes, it...
	Do I wish I'd never done them?
	Yes, but in the greater picture, knowing that I've been forgiven and that I can speak to others about that forgiveness.
	And I know that...
	I've said this before, that Those 700 babies can't speak for themselves anymore, but they're speaking through me.
	We have more from Dr.
	Steve Hammond coming up.
	First, though, be sure to text PRO-LIFE to 47581.
	Because as the country grapples with the aftermath of overturning Roe v.
	Wade, the pro-life movement has come under fire from far-left pro-abortion extremists.
	Not only have leftists firebombed and vandalized pro-life clinics in multiple states, but online pro-life groups have experienced mass censorship by Google, Facebook, TikTok, you name it.
	That's why Live Action has been working tirelessly to find ways to spread the truth about abortion and share resources with those who need it most without relying on biased big tech.
	If you want to join Live Action's Fight for Life, text PRO-LIFE to 47581 and opt in to receive updates from Live Action about their ongoing work to end abortion.
	Texting pro-life to 47581 means you won't be at the mercy of the big tech sensors in the ongoing fight for life.
	At one point in your answer you mentioned that you wished that you hadn't been a part of that.
	What Planned Parenthood was doing, what you did in your career.
	Can you maybe talk about how you hope that your story can perhaps impact or influence either other doctors or mothers to not make the mistakes that you made?
	Well, I'm often asked, Do you wish you could turn back the clock and not have done the abortions you did?
	And part of me says, yes, that would be great if I could have never had to experience that.
	But there's a lot of learning that goes along with our mistakes in life.
	And had I not Gone through that, I would not be able to speak with the authority that I think I can speak now.
	Because now I can explain how Christ forgives us of the things that we do in this life because He bore those sins.
	He didn't deserve them.
	He didn't deserve to die for our sins, but He did.
	I tell you, it's more emotional for me to think about A positive impact that my story might have that Christ will use to change hearts and minds.
	That's what brings tears to my eyes rather than the tears of regret and remorse.
	So to that point, do you hope that your story...
	Or that some portion of your story might speak to a woman who doesn't know what to do and feels lost and feels unsupported.
	And that perhaps hearing your story, a baby's life might be saved.
	You know, I often encounter patients who are struggling with what they call an unplanned pregnancy.
	And I don't want to minimize the heartache that that causes.
	It's not easy, particularly in a culture that is so oriented towards self.
	And sometimes it's hard to break through that external emotional part of that.
	And I don't want to minimize that.
	But I have encountered so many patients who have gone on to deliver a baby in a difficult circumstance that in the end have looked back on it and come back and told me that, you know, though that was a very difficult time in their life, They're so glad that they did what they did.
	Maybe they've given the baby up for adoption.
	Or maybe they've overcome the demons that told them that they couldn't carry that pregnancy.
	And that's happened so many times.
	I've had the opportunity to discuss this with patients through the years.
	Then having to counsel patients who have had abortions and to tell them about the saving grace that Christ brings.
	And it's the only healing that can solve the pain of what they're experiencing.
	But it's so...
	It's so reliable because, you know, my story, you know, society should look at me as a mass murderer, but they don't because abortion is accepted by our society.
	But I know as a Christian that I have taken the lives of 700 babies that Probably would have been parents and grandparents today.
	But I can stand here or sit here and discuss with you what I've done without the guilt and the shame that I really should bear, but I don't because Christ has taken that burden away from me.
	I don't have the guilt and the shame, so I can I can speak of it truthfully, but without a lot of emotion, because truthfully, I don't have the guilt and the shame anymore.
	And that's what I would share with a woman who's struggling with the fact that she had an abortion, that that's where she needs to seek the forgiveness.
	And a lot of people are not used to praying.
	Maybe they don't even believe that there's a God that answers prayer.
	But let me assure you that He's there.
	And the one prayer He will answer is one that I did wrong.
	wrong, I have made mistakes.
	And to feel the peace that comes from that forgiveness.
	It's something I can share and have shared with patients who are suffering with the unwanted or unplanned pregnancy that they had, that they ended with an abortion, and they're having trouble coming to grips with it.
	That's the one solution to the pain that they're experiencing.
	It's the one place.
	Secular counseling is a dead end.
	Unless it's tied to the forgiveness of Christ because ultimately that's where our forgiveness comes from.
	That's beautiful.
	Thank you.
	I think that we've covered beautifully, or you've covered beautifully, how your story helps people Well, I went to medical
	school and residency, became a physician to heal and to help people.
	These hands that were trained over 40 years ago to save lives, to heal the sick, I used them to destroy life.
	And through my faith in Christ, I know that he is using that for his glory.
	And I guess the message that I would have for a woman who is in a difficult situation,
	and I don't want to say anything to diminish the fact that there and I don't want to say anything to diminish the fact that there isn't a lot of difficulty with a pregnancy that seems unplanned and not at the proper time, or social situations have
	I would say that anything that happens to us is not unplanned by God and that He is able to redeem in His time what seems like an insurmountable mountain to climb.
	But it's not insurmountable.
	And I've seen so many times a woman who comes with an intent to abort her baby.
	And it's hard to do the full amount of counseling I need to do in a 15-minute office visit.
	So I've learned to sometimes encourage patients to go to...
	Here in Jackson, we have our birth choice, which is a crisis pregnancy center, where there are trained counselors to spend the kind of time with her and walk her through that.
	Many of the counselors themselves have faced difficult situations.
	Many of them have had abortions.
	Aborting the baby...
	Adds another layer of pain to what's already happening.
	And I think that's the ultimate thing I would say to someone in that situation.
	It looks like a good short-term solution.
	And that's the way counseling in an abortion center is usually directed.
	You have a problem, we can fix your problem.
	It's a short-term problem.
	Once it's fixed, you can go on about your life, but the problem is, it's like somebody who goes off to war and comes back with PTSD. That spiritual wound is there, and it compounds the pain of an unwanted pregnancy.
	In my experience over the years, I've seen women 20-25 years later still living with, in many cases, guilt, remorse always, shame usually of aborting their child.
	Many times this is suppressed or locked in a room deep in the soul.
	The only problem is that room is not soundproof, I'll usually say.
	And it's adding a layer of pain that the unwanted pregnancy has already laid.
	And my encouragement would be, it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
	It's hard to see how Not aborting that baby is the right choice when everything in our secular society and sometimes the advice of parents and boyfriends and sometimes spouses tell you the opposite.
	But in the end, after the The pregnancy is over.
	And looking back, I don't recall ever having a mother tell me she wished she had aborted her baby.
	Those that keep their baby, those that choose to give their baby up for adoption, I don't recall ever hearing someone say they wished they had aborted their baby.
	I do hear women who have aborted their baby tell me they wish they hadn't.
	How has the scientific and medical understanding of life, conception, what's happening in the womb, how has all that shifted or changed, and has it shifted and changed since the 70s when Roe v.
	Wade became law?
	Well, a lot has changed since I was a medical student and Roe vs.
	Wade was passed.
	I mean, let's look at technology first.
	There was no such thing as real-time ultrasound.
	We didn't see the baby in utero.
	We didn't see the heart beating.
	We have learned so much from technology.
	We didn't know a lot about the Genome Project, the ability to understand our DNA and how it expresses itself.
	Much of that's come about since Roe v.
	Wade came out.
	It's just impossible to go back to the time of 1973 With the understanding that we had in medicine and try to extrapolate that to today.
	And it's one of the reasons that those that support abortion now are having such a difficult time convincing people, lay people, That abortion, you know, in the beginning they called it a blob of tissue and they could basically, most lay people would not question that.
	Now, all you got to do is go on the internet.
	You can see videos of seven-week, eight-week babies in utero with their heart beating, moving around.
	That wasn't available in 1973.
	I mean, most laypeople see that.
	So now, they're having to resort to changing the language.
	They're trying to sanitize the abortion procedure.
	They're changing how we speak of the baby growing in utero.
	Changing things to basically sanitize the life of a growing baby in a mother's womb so that abortion becomes more palatable.
	But I think that's going to fail.
	The stigma of abortion is becoming more and more real to the average layperson.
	And you can change the language, but eventually the stigma will catch up with the language.
	And I think more and more people are aware of what's happening in utero today than they were in 73.
	And there's certainly more sources for that kind of information to get out.
	Through the internet and...
	Television.
	I mean, there were about four channels in 1973 on television, and that was about the extent of our ability to get information back then.
	And it's just exploded wildly since then.
	Can you just kind of quickly juxtapose, it could even be a quick list of some of the medical understanding at the time versus medical understanding today, technology at the time, technology today, just so people can see kind of side-by-side information.
	You know, oh, wow.
	It was kind of like no wonder something like Roe v.
	Wade could happen because it was like the dark ages in terms of, you know, in terms of how, I mean, truly dark, like in terms of people not even being able to see into the womb, really.
	Well, Roe v.
	Wade was passed down in 1973, and to compare that with the knowledge and the technology we have today is...
	There's a huge difference.
	We were flying blindly most of the time when we did abortions in 1976 when I was introduced to the procedure.
	And I say blindly, the only thing we had to go on then was The last menstrual period and our physical examination.
	So we had to be pretty good at doing a physical exam, a pelvic exam to determine the uterine size.
	Now, of course, ultrasound can determine gestational age within a few days.
	We see incredible detail, incredible detail.
	Even as early as 10 to 12 weeks, we can see anomalies that we didn't notice or didn't know until birth.
	So, it's been a huge change in that piece of technology, for sure.
	We were doing, I was just starting then, prenatal diagnosis.
	We were doing amniocentesis to check for things like Down syndrome and other chromosomal defects back then.
	But when we did amniocentesis back then, we were flying blindly.
	We were sticking needles in the And to the amniotic sac without really knowing where the placenta was, where the baby was.
	And now, of course, it's done under ultrasound guidance.
	So abortion is a blind procedure when it was done, particularly when it was done in the 70s.
	That is, we didn't see what was going on.
	We passed a curette into the uterus, turned on the suction.
	We'd get the amniotic fluid back.
	We'd pull pieces of the baby out.
	It was all done basically blindly.
	You know, some doctors today when they do an abortion will actually have the ultrasound turned on and actually look at the baby in utero as they're making sure that their curette's in the right place and watch the baby being destroyed on ultrasound.
	Molecular biology has changed.
	Our knowledge of cell division, our knowledge of in vitro fertilization, the things we're able to accomplish that really we were not able to do in those days,
	to provide a chance for pregnancy for someone who's normal avenues of Pregnancy were blocked because of maybe tubal disease or other things.
	Now we're able to fertilize those eggs in vitro, we call it, which means we do that in a test tube or in a laboratory and transplant those into the uterus.
	So we overcome that barrier to conception for a lot of women.
	Things that we just take for granted today, there's so many of them that we didn't have in 73.
	So the laws that were passed in 1973, even by later Supreme Court cases, have basically changed the landscape of abortion in 73.
	The Supreme Court allowed the states to control abortion in the third trimester.
	So it was this breakdown of the third trimester, the trimester system.
	In the third trimester, the states were allowed to control or prohibit abortion during that time period.
	Later cases, actually, it's Casey versus Planned Parenthood.
	That gestational age was moved back and they used the term viability.
	Now, viability means the baby...
	Would be able to survive outside the womb.
	We have other definitions for viability, but that was the one that they were looking at.
	In other words, if the baby were able to survive outside of the womb, it was considered, quote, viable.
	That was the new standard by which states could control it.
	As time went on in the 19 years between Roe v.
	Wade and Casey, that has actually changed.
	The viability is now the standard in the recent court pleading of Dobbs v.
	Jackson, that term viability was used over and over and over by both sides in the debate.
	So even from a legal standpoint, a lot has changed in the 49 years now since Roe was passed.
	Do you think that the law, has the law kept up with medicine in terms of the amount that we understand life now?
	In the womb versus the laws that protect it or don't protect it.
	Is there a disconnect?
	Well, the laws have changed since 73 and then since 92 when the Casey versus Planned Parenthood was adjudicated.
	And I think that the law usually lags behind medical science.
	And the reason for that is it takes a while, I think, for things to filter down.
	But as we're, you know, entered the 21st century now and we understand more about the science, you know, this is not, we're not even talking about the morality issue.
	We're talking about the science, how it's progressed.
	You know, I suspect that in some ways the laws are going to have to change to keep pace with the science.
	And the pro-choice movement often accuses pro-life advocates of being anti-science.
	Can you respond to that?
	Well, as someone who's pro-life, you hear the Accusations that the pro-life movement is anti-science.
	And I think when you start hearing name-calling, you start realizing someone's losing the argument, so they have to resort to name-calling.
	I think science is on the side of pro-life, actually.
	There was a recent paper from ACOG, the American College of OBGYN, That was trying to clarify the abortion terminology.
	And I think, having read that, I think the motive behind that is to try to destigmatize abortion and to dehumanize the baby in the womb.
	And a stigma It's already attached to abortion because you can go online and see an abortion being done.
	You can see for yourself by real-time ultrasound what's going on inside the womb.
	So changing the language is not going to change the stigma.
	In fact, the opposite is true.
	The stigma eventually will make the language have to change.
	And I think that As we've discussed the science of molecular biology, the science of genetics.
	When I learned genetics in medical school, we were basically studying Mendelian genetics.
	It was very basic.
	And the things now that geneticists talk about are Would have been totally unknown to someone in medical school in 1973 like I was.
	So there's been tremendous understanding of what's happening on the molecular level.
	And the science argument This paper that ACOG came out with talking about how the four chambers of the heart are not really purposeful, I guess, maybe, but I'm using that word, not theirs, until 17 to 20 weeks when electron microscopy clearly shows the four chambers of the heart that are visible at six and a half to seven weeks.
	So, Eventually, the science is going to win out, and science is not a static process.
	It's changing.
	What we knew in 1973 as science, some of it's been left behind, and much of it has been learned since then.
	Just so that, you know, we're not committing the same offense that the pro-choice movement often commits in terms of kind of making baseless claims about, you know, what the other side, you know, believes or thinks or, you know, advocates for, what would you say is the strongest scientific argument that the pro-choice movement uses and how do you respond to that?
	Well, I would say I think the strongest argument or the strongest statement that the pro-choice movement would say would be that pregnancy is going to interfere with your life for a time if you have an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy.
	And that certainly is true.
	It's going to be a It may be a rough few months.
	You may have to overcome family problems.
	You may have to overcome some serious social hurdles.
	But I would say that these are all very short-sighted and very short-term problems.
	And that eventually what appears to be a short-term problem It vanishes when we look at it from a long-term perspective.
	So probably that would be the thing, and that's what they promote the most.
	Their counseling is, you have a problem, we have an answer.
	And the question that I would throw back is, Is the answer you're providing creating an even greater problem?
	What does the pro-choice movement typically mean when they...
	I mean, accusations are thrown all over the place, but what are they even talking about when they say that the pro-life movement is anti-science?
	Do you know?
	Or is it just an accusation?
	The pro-life movement...
	Movement is often characterized by those that support abortion as being anti-science.
	Science is not static.
	It's almost as if it's used as a barrier to shield, protect you from debate.
	Science is something that has changed.
	I've talked about the change in science or what is known to medical science over the past 49 years.
	Science is ever-evolving.
	Science is...
	Not static.
	We learn things that we thought were true 49 years ago that are not, and we learn new things that are true that we didn't know 49 years ago.
	To accuse someone of being anti-science is a way of I think indirectly saying that they are trying to promote a moral or a religious philosophical view over science and somehow in our secular society that is accepted as a bona fide complaint.
	I don't think that's true.
	And I think that those of us who are pro-life are very much on the leading edge of science.
	We want to know what's happening at conception.
	I think the more and more we learn about when life begins, the more science shines a light on the pro-life movement favorably, I think.
	Pro-choice advocates often accuse pro-life advocates of being anti-woman.
	Can you address that?
	Yeah, a pro-life advocate is accused of being anti-woman.
	Again, we resort to name-calling because we don't sometimes want to appreciate what's What's really the truth?
	I've devoted my life to a practice of medicine that's solely devoted to women, and I hear their concerns, and I've watched the traumas of their lives as,
	in the case of abortion, Live with guilt and pain and suffering, the depression, many times drug use, alcohol abuse that can so often accompany that.
	And I don't think it's anti-woman to want to prevent someone having to go through that kind of suffering.
	And I know the traumas that often accompany the spiritual wounds that occur after an abortion that the pro-life movement is actually trying to prevent.
	So I don't think that it's fair to call someone who is A pro-life advocate is being anti-woman simply because we want to provide a balanced, at least a balanced approach to a decision that's possibly life-altering.
	You know, today's medicine, we talk a lot about informed consent.
	And informed consent is what a patient basically agrees the educational process that a patient goes through before they consent to surgery or a medical procedure.
	And I think that for an abortion particularly, informed consent is necessary.
	And I think a pro-life advocate is just simply asking that full informed consent be given to a woman before she makes this decision.
	And that would probably include ultrasound, show them what's happening, and a full disclosure of what may happen after an abortion.
	There are several physical things that can happen after an abortion, particularly after multiple abortions, future pregnancies, that can end in an incompetent cervix where the baby delivers early because the cervix dilates too soon.
	That's been shown to occur after abortion.
	It's debated, but I think there's some really good possibility or really good information that particularly repeated abortions that are not followed by a normal full-term pregnancy within seven to ten years can increase a woman's chance for breast cancer.
	And you hear this debated some, and pro-life advocates are accused of fear-mongering and other things like that.
	And I think if we had an honest debate, I think you would find a pro-life advocate, I know at least for me personally, I want to hear both sides of any argument.
	I mean, like I've said before, I was on the other side of the argument on pro-choice.
	I was a pro-choice advocate for years, and I was willing to listen to the other side.
	And I would ask anyone who is a pro-choice or favors abortion or abortion rights to at least consider Listening to a rational presentation of those that might disagree with them.
	I'd like to go into the turning point for you one more time, specifically the more kind of emotional turning point when you saw doctors fighting to save the life of your second son, your third child.
	Can you go into that story in a little bit more depth?
	Well, I had...
	Come to the conclusion during my residency that I couldn't do abortions anymore, but I was still struggling with the philosophical debate about unplanned pregnancies and whether or not abortion, at least I couldn't do them, but someone else might do them.
	So again, that piece of moral relativism came in, I guess, but Philosophically, I was still kind of in the wilderness a bit on that.
	Well, I came to conflict, I guess, or came to a realization to me, at least, in about five years later, I was in private practice, and I My wife was pregnant with our third child.
	And at 26 weeks, we'd gone out to eat and had come home.
	And she told me, she said, I feel a lot of pressure.
	This is the way I felt when I was full term pregnant with the other two.
	So I had some exam gloves and I checked her and she was four centimeters dilated.
	She was only 26 weeks.
	In 1982, that was like a death sentence.
	So, I was on a call that night, but one of my partners was, and I called him, and I said, my wife's in preterm labor.
	I called my mother and said, can you keep the other two kids?
	Paulette's in preterm labor.
	We've got to go to the hospital.
	So, I got her in the car and we flew to the hospital.
	She started an IV. We tried to suppress her labor.
	It was about 9 or 10 o'clock at night.
	We tried all night long to suppress labor.
	When it was clear we were not going to be successful, she was too far into the labor process.
	We consulted with one of our pediatric friends.
	The choice was whether to go to the city of Memphis Hospital or to the Baptist Hospital because we didn't have a NICU unit at that time.
	We had to go to Memphis.
	And he said, oh, they'll take better care of you at Baptist Hospital, private hospital.
	That baby's not going to survive anyway.
	That was his comment.
	So we did.
	We went there and flew over in an ambulance and she was almost ready to deliver when we got there.
	We went back to the delivery room and Matthew was born.
	He weighed 2 pounds and 3 ounces, 980 grams in birth and lost over the course of the next couple of weeks, lost down to 1 pound and 11 ounces.
	I don't know if you've ever seen a baby that premature, but the skin is almost translucent and he was lost in that big incubator.
	I had struggled with this idea of being pro-choice and I knew I couldn't do abortions anymore, but Second trimester.
	And this was in the second trimester.
	It was not even in the third trimester.
	Abortions were being performed in the second trimester.
	Not in that facility, but it was legal in some places in the United States.
	They were destroying babies that size.
	And, you know, we would go back and forth to Memphis and check on On Matthew, nearly every day for about two weeks, two months.
	And it was more and more a struggle for me to comprehend how babies, his gestational age, could be destroyed.
	And I think that's when I made the transition that, no, it's not just me being Not being able to do them anymore, but I became morally...
	developed a moral rejection of the notion that abortion was...
	the decision to abort a baby was not a moral decision.
	It was a moral decision.
	And fortunately, Matthew did well.
	He...
	He graduated from that NICU and he overcame several milestones.
	One, the statistics in those days was about 25% survival.
	Well, he survived.
	And about 25% of those babies had severe neurological defects and cognitive problems and Cerebral palsy, those kind of things.
	Matthew didn't have any of that.
	And he's graduated with a degree in computer science and is a very hard-working IT specialist today.
	We have a lot to be thankful for from that standpoint.
	But it was a turning point in my life, I think, that I realized that it was not only that I couldn't do them anymore, but I was morally opposed to abortion.
	Thank you.
	Thank you for sharing that story in more depth.
	What are the risks of abortion for women?
	Because everyone talks about...
	The risks of women not getting abortions, you know, but you almost never hear about, well, what are the risks of an abortion?
	Well, we often in the debate talk about the risk of an abortion.
	There are the immediate physical risks during the procedure itself.
	When the cervix is dilated, There's a possibility of perforating the uterus.
	The uterus, if that's in a pregnant state, is quite soft and passing the curette or a sound through the wall of the uterus is a very real risk.
	And if that happens, then there's all sorts of problems that you can get into.
	Bleeding.
	If you don't recognize it, you can aspirate.
	When you turn on the suction, you can pull intestines into the uterus.
	All manner of severe problems can happen.
	And a second problem would be if the uterus isn't completely emptied.
	If you leave behind fetal parts or fetal tissue, placental tissue, membranes, Bleeding, infection, sometimes severe.
	You know, one of the things that's hard to track is the post-abortion complications, because many times these are not reported.
	If a patient comes to the emergency room with hemorrhage, and we took care of many of these that had an abortion or an attempted abortion somewhere else, They would come in running fever, bleeding.
	We might code that out as something besides actually an abortion complication.
	So it may not even be ever registered as a complication.
	So many of the complications of abortion go unrecognized.
	Even maternal deaths.
	Sometimes are not reported as abortion complications.
	For instance, if a woman has a uterine perforation that goes unrecognized and she's admitted to an emergency room somewhere else with catastrophic hemorrhage, it might be thought to be unrelated to the If she didn't mention that she had had an abortion,
	it might be diagnosed as some other thing or signed off as some other reason for death.
	Even the number of abortions that are performed, we have only a vague idea of that because many states are not required by the CDC to report the actual number of abortions.
	And it's not to the abortion facility's best interest to report all of their complications.
	So many times those go unreported.
	So there's hemorrhage.
	There's surgical damage during a surgical abortion.
	We haven't even touched on Yeah, we haven't really talked about medication-induced abortion, and that's come about really since I was doing abortions.
	It involves taking a drug called Mifeprex, which is an anti-progesterone.
	Progesterone is a very important hormone in early pregnancy, and Basically, the drug saturates the receptors and doesn't allow progesterone to have its effect.
	Basically, starves the baby of its ability to absorb progesterone and usually results, prior to about seven weeks, is about 90% effective by itself.
	So, There is a cocktail now that adds a prostaglandin cytotec, which is taken 24-48 hours later to cause uterine contractions to expel the dead baby.
	This is gaining popularity, and during the pandemic, it was when there was a problem with...
	Access to abortion clinics.
	It was used more frequently.
	And I think various reported that, variously reported that about 25% of abortions now are medication abortions.
	So if you take the medication prior to about seven weeks, it's probably about 90% effective.
	And that is 90% effective that it won't, that will cause a complete Expulsion of the whole pregnancy.
	The other 10% are going to wind up having to go through the surgical procedure of removing the products that we talked about earlier anyway.
	The further along you get, the higher the percentage of failure it is.
	Not to mention the side effects of the medication, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, severe cramping, heavy bleeding, Hemorrhage, sometimes requiring hospitalization, transfusion.
	There have been several deaths associated with the medication.
	There's a push to allow these medications to be administered without a doctor's visit, without an ultrasound, without a doctor's visit.
	And there are several problems with this.
	I'll talk about two or three of them.
	One is, if you don't do an ultrasound, you don't know whether or not the pregnancy is in the fallopian tube, which we call an ectopic pregnancy.
	In an ectopic pregnancy, the pregnancy actually implants in the fallopian tube and not in the uterus.
	And it can't grow much beyond seven or eight weeks there.
	It will rupture the tube.
	There will be internal hemorrhage.
	It can lead to death.
	Well, if the pregnancy is in the tube, the patient may not be aware of this, and take the medication if she doesn't have an ultrasound that would rule out an ectopic pregnancy.
	She may bleed and cramp and think that she's past her pregnancy, when in reality the pregnancy is still growing in the fallopian tube, and she's unaware of it, and it could rupture and lead to death, actually.
	That's the first problem.
	The second problem is the issue of RH sensitization.
	We all know our blood types.
	We talk about your blood type being O positive or O negative, A positive.
	Everybody's familiar with that.
	Well, the positive or negative part of that is called the RH type.
	Now, women who are RH positive...
	We are, as a rule, not going to form antibodies against RH-positive blood cells.
	But a woman who's RH-negative, if she has a pregnancy that's RH-positive, the baby's RH-positive blood cells can get into her circulation and stimulate an antibody response.
	And it's usually not a problem in that pregnancy.
	But if she's recognized Rh-positive blood cells and her immune system may in the future recognize an Rh-positive baby as a foreign Invader, so to speak.
	And those antibodies cross the placenta and actually attack the baby's red blood cell.
	So with that as a background, if a woman has an abortion or has a medication-induced abortion and doesn't know her blood type, and she happens to be arch-negative, and she successfully aborts the baby, but it's RH positive.
	The baby that she aborted was RH positive.
	She very well could form antibodies and have difficulty in a future pregnancy because she will form antibodies against the baby's red blood cells or can.
	The antibodies cross the placenta and start attacking the baby's red blood cells in the uterus.
	Now, this is in a subsequent pregnancy.
	This is when she wants to be pregnant.
	This leads to a condition called erythroblastosis fetalis, which basically results in a baby becoming anemic and having heart failure in utero.
	It has to be given intrauterine transfusions, which can be very dangerous.
	And in years past, before the advent of rogam, which is now given in those situations, if a woman...
	Is pregnant and is RH negative.
	She's given RhoGAM to help basically vacuum up all of the baby's red blood cells to prevent potential sensitization.
	Or if she has an abortion and she's RH positive, she's given ROGAM. Excuse me, if she's RH negative, she's given ROGAM for that purpose.
	But if she takes the medication and she doesn't know her blood type, and most of us don't know her blood type, there's a possibility she will have this problem in a subsequent pregnancy.
	We don't see that very often anymore, this erythroblastosis fetalis.
	We don't see that because of RhoGAM and how it's impacted so many pregnancies in arch-negative women over the years.
	But I'm afraid we're going to see a resurgence of that if we start relying on medication-induced abortions.
	So those are a couple of problems that are facing us as this becomes more prevalent.
	You know, we pass off medication-induced abortion or chemical abortion is sometimes called as more private and less invasive and all of that.
	And if the woman is further along than she thinks she is and she takes it, she's going to wind up with a Having to have a DNC, having to have a surgical abortion anyway because she's not going to pass it or has a higher percentage of chance that she will not complete her abortion.
	And I think the FDA recently has approved the prescription of the drug without a direct physician contact, that this is going to become more widespread.
	And so when that happens, there'll be more unintended consequences, I think, of the complications.
	So, who was Dr.
	Bernard Nathanson and what did he admit later on in his life about the abortion movement?
	Dr.
	Bernard Nathanson was a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist in the 50s and 60s.
	In his book, The Hand of God, he talks about aborting his own child.
	Bernard Nathanson was one of the co-founders of NARAL, which is a National Abortion Rights Action League back in the late 60s.
	And the whole purpose there was to change the perception and the acceptance of abortion by the American public.
	They had a hurdle to overcome.
	First, they claimed that, you know, abortion is a medical procedure.
	It's not a moral procedure.
	Well, that's really a false dichotomy because you can ask most medical students today and they'll tell you the first tenet of medicine is first do no harm.
	And that basically gets us to a moral argument.
	I mean, when medicine loses its view of what is morally right, then we've lost our way.
	So when we take care of patients, we want to provide medical care that's in their best interest.
	We want to be True to moral tenets.
	I will tell you that I think we are born as human beings.
	We are born with a sense of right and wrong.
	It's a nascent or just a budding sense of right and wrong.
	I know when I was short of my third birthday, my mother was pregnant with my younger brother.
	And so he's three years my junior.
	So I couldn't have been three years old yet.
	I was two.
	And I remember having a dream that occurs to you just before you wake up in the morning.
	My mother was slumped in a chair in a very compromised position and smoking a cigarette.
	And my mother didn't smoke.
	It was frightening to me.
	It was not her character at all.
	And I remember waking up and running into the living room, and my grandmother was there, her mother.
	They were talking, and I leaped in her arms, and I was sobbing and sobbing and sobbing.
	I was too young to actually express what was going on.
	But I remember what she said.
	She said, Steve, what's gotten into you?
	Even at an age where I was too young to express or understand how to talk about good and evil, I understood it.
	And I think that's true of all of us.
	We understand good and evil.
	And I would say that if the average person could see abortion through my eyes just one time, just one time, That the polls would indicate a high percentage of the American public would oppose abortion, particularly for any reason.
	The second thing that Dr.
	Nathanson and his group tried to push was the number of women that would die annually from illegal abortions if we didn't legalize them.
	The truth is, 90% of the abortions that were performed in the United States before Roe v.
	Wade were done by qualified physicians in the first place.
	They weren't done in a back alley with a coat hanger.
	And the year before...
	Roe v.
	Wade was handed down in 1972.
	I think the number of abortions in the United States was something like around 250.
	Abortion deaths was somewhere around 250.
	They were telling us that if abortion was not legalized, that 5,000, 10,000 Women would die every year from illegal abortions.
	Well, I knew that was an exaggeration.
	Dr.
	Nathanson later said we knew that was a lie, but the greater good, from our perspective, was to change the law, to change the perspective.
	And one of the things that we in the pro-life era are accused of is being religious zealots.
	Well, again, When you're losing the argument, the first thing you do is you start calling the other person names.
	Well, and I make no bones about the fact that I'm zealous about my faith, but it's not my faith that I'm forcing on people.
	You know, Jesus never forced anybody to follow him.
	I'm following in his footsteps.
	I'm trying to talk to people about the good news, but I'm not going to force you to believe that.
	I think there's compelling scientific and moral reasons to explain to you why I think the pro-life position is the right position.
	So I don't really have to resort to my Christian faith to do that, although I think my Christian faith informs the science and informs the moral underpinning of why I would I understand life the way it is.
	One of the things that I think that the pro-abortion or even the pro-choice movement, I guess, would do would be try to appeal to conservatives and liberals both that abortion is necessary to solve the social and Overpopulation problems.
	I heard just recently that we have 10 million jobs in the United States that people are dying to fill right now.
	We don't have enough people to fill the jobs that we have that are open right now.
	We've murdered 60 million babies over the last 49 years.
	And those, many of them would have already had children too.
	So the number of people, the population that we would have, it would be, you know, if we're just talking about the social aspects of this, devoid of the morality, we would have many more people in the community.
	System now.
	Taxpayers paying taxes.
	You know, us baby boomers now are being phased out.
	I'm still practicing, but a lot of my contemporaries have retired.
	And a lot of people my age have retired.
	Most of them have.
	So, you know, things like Social Security that was based on paying in enough to support us in our old age.
	You know, that money's already been spent.
	So we're relying on a population base to support that.
	And most experts now say it's going to fail in a few years.
	We're not going to be able to keep paying those because we don't have enough people in the market.
	So I think that falls flat on its face on destroying a baby because We don't think we can support it.
	People have had children in times of war and poverty.
	Choosing not to have children because you can't Provide for them the luxuries that you have is, I think, unfortunately, an American idea that is a false idea.
	And so I would just basically say that I'd be wary of anybody that says that we need abortion, that we can justify killing babies in utero to solve poverty and And social problems.
	It certainly hasn't done that the last 49 years.
	So these are the four directions, the four lies basically that were perpetuated by NARAL that Dr.
	Nathanson later admitted or the lies that they used to change the landscape.
	I think that Abortion is going to have to, if we're going to change the landscape back to respect for life again, it's going to be changing the hearts and minds of people and not necessarily changing the law, but changing hearts and minds.
	And my prayer is that abortion will die a natural death.
	Beautiful.
	Last question as a bonus.
	Is the future pro-life?
	Is the future pro-life?
	Well, only God knows that.
	And all we're required to do is to speak for those that can't speak for themselves.
	And I think that's what we're called to do, to be a voice for the voiceless.
	And that's what I want to be.
	If it's a matter of convincing, People to be respectful for life.
	Each of us has our part, and I hope that my words and my testimony will convince people of that, that human life has dignity and a purpose, and that abortion is wrong in any of its forms, whether a surgical or medical abortion is wrong.
	It's morally wrong.
	And that's the part that I play, and I would hope that abortion dies a natural death.
	I think probably what I would suspect would happen if we see a resolution of this with the recent Dobbs v.
	Jackson would be that many states becoming pro-life, outlawing abortion, and others Perhaps continuing to approve of it.
	Now, that's going to lead to some consequences of its own, people having to travel to get abortion.
	But I think it'll lead to more women deciding not to abort, particularly in areas like we're in Tennessee right now.
	Tennessee has a, as I understand it, has a trigger legislation that if Roe v.
	Wade is overturned, Tennessee will no longer allow abortions to occur.
	Now, Will there be illegal abortions?
	Probably.
	But I think what will happen is more women will choose life.
	And that over time, It's going to become more the default position than abortion.
	I could tell you about Poland.
	It was under the influence of the Soviet Empire or Soviet Union for 45 years, and abortions were allowed, paid by the state. and abortions were allowed, paid by the state.
	And they averaged about 150,000 abortions a year for those 45 years.
	And then when they gained their independence and under the influence of Pope John Paul in 1990, shortly thereafter, I think, the law was changed and outlawed abortion, Well, all the predictions of all the horrible things that would happen did not come to pass.
	The abortion rate dropped.
	I think by 1998, there were only 250-something abortions done in the entire country over the year.
	And what was remarkable about it was that their death rate, the perinatal death rate, dropped by 30%.
	And their miscarriage rate dropped by 25%, which is a little hard to explain.
	But what I think we take away from that is that women were healthier not aborting their babies.
	And that stopping abortions didn't lead to increased criminality and deaths from abortion.
	All the things that we worry about didn't happen.
	So, you know, that was Poland's experience, and I have no reason to believe it wouldn't be ours as well.
	The abortion industry uses women for their own profit.
	These lies are pervasive.
	They're not difficult to refute, but it can be difficult to penetrate that culture of lies to get the truth out there.
	We have to do it.
	We have to do it because it's right.
	We have to do it for the victims of abortion.
	We have to do it for the women who are taken in by this industry, who are used for dollars, even to their own detriment.
	If you enjoyed this conversation with Dr.
	Steve Hammond, you'll want to check out our Daily Wire original documentary, Choosing Death, The Legacy of Ro.
	In it, we take a wrecking ball to the four fallacies keeping the abortion industry alive.
	To watch it right now, go to dailywireplus.com.
	Today, if you join, you will see not only this full movie, Choosing Death, The Legacy of Roe, but you will have access to The Daily Wire's entire catalog of content, which we can only produce and distribute because of you, with your support.
	I'm Michael Knowles.
	This is the Choosing Life Podcast.
	We'll see you next time.
	The Choosing Life Podcast is a Daily Wire production produced in association with Outer Limits.
	Our technical and support team includes Ian Reed, Jesse Eastman, Ryan Moore, Mariah Cormier, and Jim Wirt.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2022.

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