SPEAKER_02 0:05

Welcome to Catholic in America, a podcast in partnership with OSB News. I'm Jason Atkins. It is estimated that over 70% of abortions in the United States are now chemical abortions, meaning the pregnancy is terminated via drugs rather than the child being surgically removed from the womb. The federal government has continued to allow abortion drugs, including miphopristone, to be sent through the mail, even into states where abortion laws do not allow it, thus essentially nullifying the Dobbs ruling, which overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to put greater legal limitations on abortion, including banning it altogether. But regardless of the laws, the church and the pro-life movement generally must serve women in need and give them an opportunity to choose life. Some women, when they begin to take abortion-inducing drugs, regret that decision and want to back out of the abortion. Miraculously, one doctor put two and two together and concluded that the first pill and the two-pill chemical abortion protocol called mifepristone, which suppresses the pregnancy hormone progesterone. If it does, then an infusion of those progesterone hormones may reverse the effects of mifepristone. And indeed, his experiments worked. Since Dr. George Delgado pioneered the use of progesterone to save pregnancies after mifepristone has been administered, thousands of lives have been saved, and the treatment is proven safe for both women and babies in the womb who show no increased birth defects when brought to term. I'm delighted to have Dr. Delgado join us to talk about his pioneering work of abortion pill reversal and how it gives mothers and babies a second chance at life, as well as why he thinks so many abortion advocates push back against it.

unknown 1:44

Dr.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Delgado received his medical degree from the University of California and in 2012 started the Abortion Pill Reversal Network. Dr. Delgado's recent book, Abortion Pill Reversal, a Check Second Chance for Choice, was published in 2025 by Ignatius Press. Dr. George Delgado, welcome to Catholic in America. It's a privilege to have you on the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

unknown 2:11

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

I'm a family physician in San Diego County, California. And I'm married with four children. And we have eight grandchildren.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Wonderful. And we're going to talk a lot today about abortion pill reversal. I think there's a lot of questions and misconceptions about this. We'll say a little bit about how you came to develop in the abortion pill reversal process. But tell us a little bit about the story first that led you down this really unique path of both practice and becoming someone who's leading the way in terms of research on this question as well.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

I think it's important to know that abortion pill reversal came about not because any doctors had really had the idea first, but it was because two women thousands of miles apart at different times called Dr. Matthew Harrison and myself and asked for help. They wanted to know if we could help them reverse their chemical abortions. Terry is a remarkable woman in Bakersfield, California, who is a sidewalk counselor and also carries a cell phone and has a website called LifeSaver. She fields phone calls from people all over the country. That particular day, she received a phone call from Erin, a woman in El Paso, Texas, who had taken Mifepristone to abort her pre-born baby, but had changed her mind. And Erin was looking for help. Terry did not know how to help her, and so she called me. She had asked me for medical advice in the past. And she said, Dr. Delgado, can you help Erin? She's taken Mifepristone and has changed her mind. Well, I said, Terry, I've never heard of anyone stopping or reversing a chemical abortion. But let me give it some thought. And it was there really that the Holy Spirit put two to two together, two and two together in my mind, because I had a lot of knowledge and experience of using progesterone in pregnancy for women who had low progesterone levels and were cramping or spotting a situation we call threatened miscarriage. And those women, if we give supplemental progesterone, raise the progesterone levels, we can save the baby in the pregnancy. Well, I also had a lot of knowledge about mifepristone. For some reason, God had put an inordinate interest in my head about miphopristone, and I'd read about it and I studied it even before it was approved in the United States in the year 2000. So I knew exactly how it worked, that it worked by blocking progesterone levels. So there I had this idea that perhaps although these women had normal progesterone levels, the progesterone levels were functionally deficient. Perhaps if I treated them like I did the women with threatened miscarriage by giving supplemental progesterone, then I could defeat the mifeprestone, maybe outcompete it. So I came up with a protocol on the fly. However, I had another problem, and that was that the woman, Erin, was in El Paso, Texas. I was in San Diego. So I needed to find a doctor in El Paso who could treat her. I went on the web and I found Dr. Jonathan Belacura. I called, and fortunately, I was able to get a hold of her in her office that day. I said, Dr. Belakura, I have a woman in your town who wants to reverse her chemical abortion. I have an idea of how we can do it with this protocol. Are you willing to help? And she said, Yes, I'm willing to help. And she had progesterone in the office. So she saw Erin that day and treated her. So I thought, okay, I've done my good deed for the day, and I went on seeing my patients, and I didn't think much else of it. Well, a few weeks later, I got a phone call from Dr. Belakura that the baby was still alive. And then through the pregnancy, I got reports, and finally, several months later, I got the great news that the baby was born and was a very healthy term girl with no birth defects, and the mother did just fine.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

That's a wonderful and amazing story. I'm really excited to talk more about this whole abortion pill reversal process with you today on the show. How many lives have been saved in your estimation since this protocol was developed using progesterone and abortion pill reversal?

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Heartbeat International now runs the network that I started, abortion pill reversal. And they estimate that over 8,000 babies have now been saved with abortion pill reversal.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

Amazing. Praise God for that. Let's define our terms. I think you use progesterone, you use miphopristol. So what is what is the abortion drug? I think people have a lot of confusion. You know, Plan B, RU 486, emergency contraception, the abortion drug. Let's define our terms a little bit. First, uh with the uh abortion pill, abortion drug protocol itself. Now, this is the typical process. There's there's others that are being developed, but the two, the two-part MIPApristol misoprostal, say a little bit about that process and how that works.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Sure. Well, I think first uh it's important for your audience to understand why progesterone is so important for a pregnancy. In fact, the name itself gives a lot of clues because it's really an acronym and it stands for progestational steroid kinone. So progestation, it's for the pregnancy. And in fact, without adequate progesterone levels, women would miscarry time after time again. That's been proven scientifically in rat in rabbit models. So we know that progesterone is absolutely essential for pregnancy. One of the most important things that it does, I call it the superglue of the placenta. It keeps the placenta very well adhered to the wall of the uterus so that the pre-born baby can get nutrition, oxygen, and hydration from the mother and can discharge its waste products back to the mother. So progesterone is extremely, extremely important. And you can think of it. Dr.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

Delgado, can we just stop on progesterone? Because I want to go down a little, not a rabbit hole, but just to take it in one direction. You see, I've known so many women who go to pro-life doctors and get shots of progesterone to help preserve pregnancies. But we're experiencing in our culture, in our society today, massive amounts of infertility and it's impacting all of us. Do you see, is there something out there that's lowering progesterone levels in women that might be causing this infertility? That instead of sending people to assisted reproduction and IVF and things like that, more people should know about uh progesterone and causes and getting progesterone levels increased to maintain pregnancies?

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Well, certainly prog low progesterone is a factor in some infertility and certainly in uh some cases of recurrent pregnancy loss. It's not the only factor, but I think that there are multiple factors in our environment that are probably contributing to the epidemic of infertility. One of them is probably uh increased stress, increased screen time, um, toxins in the environment. Um, a lot of these plastics are getting into our body, and we think they're having bad hormonal effects, um, uh highly processed diet, lack of exercise, um, um the epidemic of uh infections that are scarring uh women's uh fallopian tubes, um, different clothing that may be affecting sperm production. So a whole host of things of modern living uh probably are all contributing to uh the epidemic of infertility.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

Okay, thank you for thank you for that clarification. I think it's really helpful. So if progesterone helps pregnancy, miphopristol lowers progesterone or suppresses it. So let's talk a little bit about that abortion drug protocol and just help our list, help our listeners understand that a little bit better.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, so mifepristone works by blocking progesterone receptors. And so if you can think of a receptor as kind of like a keyhole, and the hormone progesterone is like a key. The key goes into the keyhole, turns the lock, and the door opens. The door opening is what we call the hormone effects, one of which is, like I said, the super glue of the placenta. Well, imagine if you've ever had the very frustrating experience of a key that fit nicely into the keyhole but didn't turn the lock, right? We call that a false clean, and that's exactly what mifepristone does. It sits on the receptor but does not activate the receptor. Therefore, you don't get to open the door, you don't get the hormone effect. And while it's on the receptor, it's essentially blocking the receptor so the progesterone can't get on the receptor and do its thing. Well, what happens when you block progesterone receptors? Several things happen. And one thing you're right about progesterone levels do drop because um there are progesterone receptors back on the ovary, and when those are blocked, you get less production of the natural progesterone. But even more importantly, uh in the placenta area, the uh progesterone being blocked then leads to the separation of the placenta from the wall of the uterus. That superglue is dissolved. And what happens when that placenta then separates? Then the pre-born baby doesn't get the nutrition that it needs from the mother. And so you have the death of the preborn baby. That's essentially how the mifepristone uh works to terminate the life of the pre-born baby. Now you talked about the second drug, mesoprostal. Why is that second drug also given? It's usually taken 24 to 48 hours later, and it's given because mifepristone, although it's very efficient at ending the life of the pre-born baby, it doesn't always lead to sufficient contractions of the uterus to empty the contents of the uterus. So sometimes the remains of the preborn baby are not totally pushed out of the uterus. We call that situation incomplete abortion. It doesn't imply that the pre-born baby is alive, it just means that the contents of the uterus have not been emptied. So, because of that situation, many years ago, even before uh miphopristone was approved to be used uh for abortion, they introduced the second drug, mesoprostol, to be taken in a um uh 24 to 48 hours later. And that causes very strong contractions, pushes the pre-born baby's remains outside of the uterus.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Planned Parenthood is now advertising that rather than using miphopristone in the two drug protocol, that you can take four doses of mesoprostol. Is this a way of uh what's going on there? Is this just from their standpoint better science, or are they trying to avoid the uh prospects of abortion pill reversal because of that focus on progesterone?

SPEAKER_00 12:36

And I think you're right. I think they see that um, first of all, there's the threat of uh of abortion pill reversal, but also the threat that miphopristone could be taken off the market because myphopristone was actually approved by the FDA, violating at least two of their rules. So it was really illegally approved. And so this is being reviewed right now by the FDA, and we'll see what happens with that. And there have also been some lawsuits to take it off the market, which have been postponed. So I think they really feel that mipristone is threatened. Now, the reason they've always uh favored mifepristone plus mesoprostol is that from a uh effectiveness standpoint, it's more effective and efficient at causing abortion. Now, using multiple drugs of misoprostal can get the job done. There will be more um complications probably, and there will be uh more incomplete abortions and uh just uh unsuccessful abortions. So it's sort of their second-tier plan. But they want to promote it now, I feel, so that they have a foothold in the marketplace in case mifopristone is ever um uh taken off the market. And in fact, we know that some of the uh pro-abortion states, for example, the state of California, when there was the threat of mifepristone being off the market, when there was a lawsuit in which I was involved with when the FDA was sued a few years ago, they started stockpiling mesoprostol. So we know that this is their backup plan in case miphopristone ever is taken off the market.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Aaron Ross Powell So much for safe, legal, and rare. Uh they're making sure that abortion is widely available no matter what. Tell us a little bit more about those complications. You mentioned there could be more complications and side effects from the mesoprostal, but what are the side effects generally on women's health that we are seeing uh now a few decades into uh methopristone being approved and those drugs being approved for termination of pregnancy?

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Yeah, so it was um advertised and promoted as a very safe and private way to do an abortion. And even I said safer than taking Tylenol, which is of course a big line. But there's studies that show that um things are not as safe as if they uh want us to believe. First of all, there was an excellent study out of uh Finland, now about 10 years ago, where uh in Finland it's a it's a small homogeneous country where they have socialized medicine, and everything that happens in medicine is uh stored in computer databases. So when you go pick up a prescription, it goes in the computer database. When you go to the emergency room, when you have an abortion, everything's in there. And all of these databases are connected, so they're all searchable. So they were able to do a wonderful study from a scientific standpoint, and they compared the short-term risks and complications of surgical abortion, the traditional surgical abortion, compared to chemical abortion, which uh in those days uh already it was almost all miphapristo and then mesoprostal. And they found that the short-term risks of chemical abortion were four times greater than with surgical abortion. So this is a big surprise, but what they found in a very, very good study. Then fast forward now to the last few years, there was a wonderful study by the uh a group called EPCC, and they looked at real-world insurance data in the United States. In other words, what was billed, what was coded, so um they would get really what happened, what happened in the clinical setting, and they found that um with the women who had taken mifepristone and mesoprostal, that they had about an 11% serious uh adverse effects or going to having to go to the emergency department. So much higher than what is uh stated in the package insert uh and what is advertised about mifepristone. So we see that uh taking these drugs is dangerous, and it's becoming more dangerous because now uh since uh the COVID pandemic, the Biden administration lifted many of the restrictions on mifepristone, opening the doors to telehealth procurement of the abortion drugs, so that you can go on a computer and have a telehealth encounter, simple as it may be. Um, or you can also actually go on websites and just do a mail-order uh chemical abortion. I went on a website several months ago, and after only six clicks, they were asking me for my credit card information to send me the abortion drugs. I'm also I'm on the board of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYN's applog, and our CEO, Dr. Christina Francis, went on one of these websites pretending that she was a 13-year-old girl who was taking blood thinners, who had had two previous cesarean sections, who had had a previous ectopic pregnancy, and they still sent her the abortion drugs, even though a woman or certainly a girl with those um risk factors should never take the chemical abortion pills, and certainly not by mail order. So you can see that uh it's become the wild, wild west of um of abortion uh with these telehealth and mail order abortions.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

The federal government hasn't really put a stop to this, even those drugs getting shipped into states with abortion restrictions in the post-Dobbs era, sort of nullifying uh Dobbs and its impact in many ways.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Aaron Powell Yeah, they have it. And it's very unfortunate because they actually even have the tools to do it, because there's a law still on the books from the 1800s called the Commstack Act that prohibits the shipping of abortifacients across state lines. So this Comstack Act should be enforced at least to protect the pro-life states, the states that don't want abortion. I could see if the federal government said, okay, we're not going to enforce this in California, New York, because you know they want abortion as much as they can get it. But in pro-life states, you know, such as Texas, the the women there are essentially praise for predators sending these abortion drugs from websites like AidAxis, Dr. Gomperts in New York. And so it uh it's really a predator-prey situation. And um the um 40 Days for Life has a page on their website called the Scumbag page. There they've documented um these different predators, over 60 men who have uh gotten the abortion pills and given them surreptitiously or forcibly to their girlfriends and to others who have gotten pregnant. And these are all these are s uh more than 60 cases of uh women, men who have been prosecuted for this. Um this is happening um more and more. I'm sure it's happening more than than we've been able to document and more than uh men have been prosecuted. It's become the tool of rapist, um, sex traffickers, and child abusers.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

Aaron Powell Yeah, I think we need to dive into that a little bit. Say more about how that becomes possible because of the abortion bill. I mean, a drug. I think people realize that women are coerced not infrequently by boyfriends or who whomever, pimps or whomever going into abortion clinics and being forced into surgical abortions. But how how does the abortion drug even facilitate more abuse, trafficking, and those sorts of things?

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Well, yeah, and you make a great point. And actually, in sort of in the general abortion population, some studies show that um up to 60% of women face some coercion, even just those who are just in kind of regular relationship. There's some coercion going on 60% of the time, six out of 10. So that's huge. But with these uh cases of sex traffickers and uh child molesters and others, um, well, here uh or or others uh just boyfriends who don't want their girlfriends to have babies, what they're doing is they're going online and they're getting um these abortion pills, and they're often getting miphapristone and mesoprostal. Sometimes they're getting just mesoprostal, and oftentimes they're they're sending them multiple doses because they they're sending multiple doses in case they don't work. Um so they have these multiple doses, and they're um many of the cases they're putting the uh drugs uh in the women's vaginas while they're having uh relations. Uh other times uh the cases where they're putting it in hot chocolate or in coffee or in other drinks. Other times just telling them, you know, you have to take these pills and swallow them right now and watching them swallow them with with a glass of water. Um it's just it's it's becoming rampant and widespread. There's um a case of a very courageous woman in Texas whom I met at uh the recent live action lawmaker summit. She gave a talk there, and she'll be speaking at the March for Life next year. And she um her husband found out that she was pregnant with uh their third child, and suddenly he started being very doting and said, Oh, you you need to rest. You're pregnant, I'm gonna bring you breakfast in bed. He brought her breakfast in bed, she drank uh uh the juice of the coffee and then she started feeling ill. She became suspicious. Then he uh she uh had some cramping, but fortunately did not abort her baby. He kept trying to bring her uh drinks and breakfast in bed. She got very suspicious. She had friends come over, she installed cameras in the um in the house, and she saw um she recorded that he was putting pills uh in her drinks. They took a res a residual on the glass, sent it for chemical analysis, and found that it was at the abortion pills. Fortunately, he was finally convicted, and he wasn't gonna spend uh that much time in jail, however. Uh, she uh I should say. That her baby survived, was born premature, but uh is doing very well now at about the age of five years. Um but he was only given a few years in jail, but he violated his parole, and so now he's facing a much longer jail term, thanks be to God. So um these things are happening within marriages, within other relationships, also by sex traffickers and others.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

How many, what percentage of abortions now nationwide are done chemically as opposed to surgically?

SPEAKER_00 22:31

So these days in the United States, our estimates are that 70%, seven out of ten abortions are done with chemical drugs instead of surgically. In some countries like Scotland, it's up to about 90%. So that's definitely where we're going. That's the trend. It's um it's easier for them to make and to sell pills than to um have uh abortionists and their the surgical abortionists, they're aging, they're they're becoming much older, so it's harder to replace them.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

How is the the growing the preval the growing prevalence of the use of abortion drugs changing the way in which abortion is practiced at the medical and clinical level?

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Aaron Powell Well, it's making it much more anonymous. Um, it's making it more of a kind of a commodity. Um women now don't even have to go into a clinic or an abortion center or a doctor's office. They can just uh get it online either with a telehealth uh encounter, which uh sometimes can be just very bare bones. And in fact, the people at Heartbeat International, which are tracking this, of course, they tell me that now they're having difficulty distinguishing when a woman tells them their story, whether it was telehealth or whether it was simply mail order, that the two are kind of merging together and it's uh just becoming much, much harder to differentiate. So it truly has become extremely unregulated. So that not only are these pre-born babies dying, of course, but these women are putting their health at much greater risk than before when it was more medicalized, at least in the past before all of this deregulation occurred.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

I think it's it's sort of a change of mentality, too, in the sense that we talk about emergency contraception, which is something different, and we just may want to say a little bit about how that works. But this is like emergency emergency contraception. And what I think it does is in many ways anesthetize us uh to the reality that, you know, unlike surgical abortion, where it's I think clear and people know what they're doing, they're removing a human life from their body surgically, and it's it it feels like something different. It feels like abortion. This is almost like emergency, emergency contraception. And I just wonder how, in your mind, how it's anesthetizing us uh to the reality of what is going on, that a life is being taken, even if for convenience or even if for what people consider to be good reasons. But it just changes how we think about this and maybe not just anesthetizes us, those folks who have abortions chemically, but just sort of the culture in general from thinking that this is really a big deal.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Well, you're right. And that's been the um propaganda ploy of what I call the medical abortion complex in my book, um Abortion Pill Reversal, a second chance at choice. So you have this conglomerate, it's a huge business, uh, probably a billion dollar or more year uh per year business in the United States. And what they've wanted to do is first of all, they wanted to uh normalize um contraception. The contraception is great, everybody uses contraception, and we know that in our country contraception is very well accepted. Well, then the the next step, of course, is if either you didn't take contraception or your contraception failed, which it does a high percentage of the time, then you have the emergency contraception, and that's um where you take a high dose of oral contraceptives or another drug called uh ulipristol or ella, which I'll talk about in a second. Um but the high dose oral contraception, what it does is it kind of jams the system. If um the woman is already pregnant with the pregnancy, with the baby implanted in the uterus, probably it doesn't do anything. If the woman is uh ovulating, it probably can stop ovulation. But if it's not right when the ovulation is starting, it probably either doesn't do anything, or if the ovulation has already started or the pre-born baby is moving down the fallopian tomb, if it's anywhere in there, it probably it probably does quote work, but it probably in those cases is actually abortifacient. It uh if if ovulation has occurred um but um conception hasn't taken it can be a faulty ovulation if it's in the process of ovulation, or if the preborn baby is moving down the fallopian tube, probably will have difficulty implanting in that in both those cases. Uh faulty ovulation can lead to conception, but falsity implantation and death of the preborn as well as uh faulty implantation if the pre-born baby is moving down the tube. So that's emergency contraception. Then uh you have ELA or ulipristol, which actually works in the same way as miphopristone, it's a progesterone receptor blocker. So by blocking those progesterone receptors, it can be uh contraceptive, but it also can be abortifacient. And that's why ELA is approved up to five days after so-called unprotected intercourse, because they know that it can be abortifacient. And then, of course, then they call the chemical abortion, they call that sometimes plan C. If emergency contraception doesn't work, then you know you're pregnant. Of course, the difference between the two is that emergency contraception is taken by a woman who either is not pregnant or doesn't know that she's pregnant is very early on, while the chemical abortion drugs are taken by a woman who knows she's pregnant and takes it with the intent to end her pregnancy. But you can see they have um, you know, physiologically the lines are a bit blurred there, but they are also purposely trying to blur those lines. So they're trying to make it a spectrum: contraception, emergency contraception, and then chemical abortion. Whatever you want. It's right there for you if you don't want to be pregnant. And we know that they've even, in their literature, um, some of these pro-abortion researchers have even said that they've tried to change the terms. And so um they're using the term sometimes instead of just contraception, they're using something that's they're saying that's contragestational. In other words, it's against the pregnancy. So that way they try to put everything under the same umbrella so that the emergency contraception is considered just like contraception, so that um people don't uh who discover that it can be abortifation have no qualms about it. And also even calling uh chemical contraception or chemical abortion early on contragestational. So they're trying to blur the terms. They blurred the terms earlier on, too, when they changed uh unilaterally changed the definition of when pregnancy starts. For you know hundreds of years, we've uh known and we still know that pregnancy starts when the sperm and the egg unite, a new individual is uh created right there, that's a new person. And then, but they've changed it to say that pregnancy starts, and they've even used the definition of conception, that conception is implantation. So that's five to seven days later after the pre-born is first created, when he or she implants into the uterus. They're saying that that's when the pregnancy starts, and they're actually saying that's when, quote, conception is. Of course, they change that definition so that anything that's done before that they can claim to be contraceptive and not abortifacient.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

As the uh as there's a deeper indoctrination culturally and medically, if you will, into the spectrum of contraception, uh, from normal contraception to emergency, emergency contraception to the abortion pill. Does it, on the flip side though, and maybe the the silver lining, if you can call it that, is that surgical abortion will seem much more extreme, um, unnecessary, barbaric. Um, and there may be a better argument, broadly speaking, to more of the population that uh when uh chemical abortion or uh these sorts of drugs are available, uh that surgical abortion is extreme, unnecessary, barbaric. Do you think there's an opportunity there for a broader consensus around the barbarity of surgical abortion, especially when there's a heartbeat detected?

SPEAKER_00 30:27

Well, I think that you know, there's it's a double-edged sword when you kind of have that argument, because especially calling, you know, chemical abortion emergency, emergency contraception, I think that kind of plays into their strategy that it's all part of the same spectrum. Because when it comes right down to it, with chemical abortion and surgical abortion, they're really the same thing. You get two results. One is the pre-born baby ends up being dead, and two, the mother becomes another victim of the medical abortion complex. So I think it's important to keep that in mind, first of all. Now, as far as you know, you know, outlawing surgical abortions and things like that with heartbeat loss, I think those are very important. I think um those are incremental gains. And I think it's easier to um prohibit abortion, the more you can um concretely show people the humanity within the womb. And certainly when you see a heartbeat, you make that connection. Well, that pre-born baby has a heartbeat. I know I have a heartbeat. So really we're we're very, very similar. And so passing heartbeat laws becomes easier because there's that concrete association. So the the younger the pre-born baby, the less it physically resembles us. And so then you it's harder to make that concrete connection. However, it's important not to let us fall into that pitfall that's saying, well, then it's just a blob of tissue because it's not a blob of tissue. And like Father Tad from the National Catholic Bioethics Center says that you know, a two-cell embryo is two cells, and it should look like a pre-two-cell embryo. It shouldn't look like an adult human being because they're on different points of the spectrum of human development. And just like a newborn baby shouldn't look like an elderly adult, it should look like a newborn baby. And so we have to really keep in mind that how the actual appearance, either with the naked eye or under the microscope, matches the state of development, but it doesn't confer the dignity of a human person and doesn't confer the rights of being to be protected. What confers the rights of being protected is that at any stage in that development, once the conception occurs with the fusing of the sperm and the egg, it's a new individual, and that new individual must be protected just like any other human individual, no matter how small, no matter how tall, no matter how young, no matter how old.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

That response is a perfect encapsulation of the limitations of rhetorical strategy. You might have a great pro-life rhetorical strategy to make incremental gains, but if it sacrifices something at the level of principle, long-term it's self-defeating. And I that's one of the best answers I think one could possibly give to that. As I laid out for you a rhetorical strategy that might limit and might gain consensus around the worst, most barbaric forms of surgical abortion, but at the end of the day, you lose the principle to a degree, or you could lose the principle that a human life is a human life, no matter how small, uh, as Dr. Seuss once said, right? Um, let's turn to abortion pill reversal more specifically. I think uh, of course, you're saving lives, you're doing the Lord's work, and there's going to be pushback on that, right? So people try to discredit abortion pill reversal. It doesn't work, it's bad science. So, how effective is abortion pill reversal and when it's administered? Tell us a little bit about why it's scientifically sound and why it works.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Yeah, well, so we know it's scientifically sound, uh, Billy on several levels. And um I call them the pillars, the three pillars of support for abortion pill reversal. First of all, there's the basic science. Mifepristone was developed as an abortive patient precisely because it's what we call a competitive inhibitor of the progesterone receptor. That means it competes with progesterone at the receptor. So we know in any biologic system, when you have competition between two molecules, that if you increase the concentration of one molecule, it will win the race to the receptor. In the case of progesterone, we give supplemental progesterone more of the good guy keys lined up in front of that keyhole. So when the bad, the false key comes off, there's a good guy key ready to go in there. So we know it makes sense from a biologic standpoint. And we also have some basic science data where this was very early on, I believe it was 1987, where they um took cells from placentas after women had uh cesarean sections, and they grew those cells in a cell culture, and they saw which hormones they were producing. They were producing three hormones, and then they added miphopristone to the mist, and the cells stopped producing those three hormones. Then they added progesterone to the mix, and the cell started producing two out of the three hormones again. So you could see there that the mifepristone had an effect, but that effect was reversed by progesterone. Then we look at animal studies. My colleague Dr. Stephen Samut at Franciscan University of Steubenville has come up with a rat model of chemical abortion and also a rat model of abortion pill reversal. And he gives these rats miphopristone and shows that they all of the embryos are aborted. And he shows that there are other changes that take place when they get the miphopristone, that the pregnant rats stop gaining weight normally and they start having blood detectable in the vagina. Well, then one group of these rats, they got mifepristone, but then they got progesterone, and he saw that the weight gain slowed down just like the ones who only got mifepristone. They had blood in the vagina, just like the other ones, but then the progesterone kicked in and the bleeding went away, and the weight gain started to recover and regained the normal weight gain of a normal pregnancy, and the embryos did not die. They survived to the end of the pregnancy. So we can see in this rat model that progesterone indeed reversed the effects of the mifepristone. In fact, I use that study as proof that the term reversal is a correct term because I was questioned when I first coined the term abortion pill reversal. Are you really reversing the abortion or are you just stopping it? I think this shows that we really are reversing, that the abortion process begins. And then, of course, we have the human data. We've uh done now uh three studies, others in other countries, particularly Dr. Joe Turner in Australia, has done, I think, three other studies. And all of these studies um show that abortion pill reversal is safe, it's effective, and um the success rates are anywhere from 55 to 68 percent, depending on the protocols used. And so we're very, very happy that uh you know, we've studied now several hundred women, um over a thousand women actually, and showing this. And in fact, it's worth mentioning, too, that there one of our opponents, Dr. Mitchell Crennin at University of California, Davis, that he designed a study to disprove abortion pill reversal. And his study was stopped early because of some bleeding that occurred in the women who did not get progesterone. And what his study, although it did not reach what we call statistical significance, what it showed was that um his data agreed with our data that the women who got the progesterone after taking mifepristone had much higher rates of continuing pregnancy, 68 to 80 percent. And those who only got placebo had only 30 to 40 percent uh continuing pregnancy rates. So um his study, which was designed to disprove ours, actually gives support to ours and also to the safety that the progesterone side of the study was shown to be very safe.

SPEAKER_02 37:56

Do you have any longer-term studies that show um one way or another any impact that has long-term on children who survive? Umortion pill reversal, but have you know longer-term physical maladies, uh, more disease-prone psychological challenges, anything that says that that abortion pill reversal prevents a child from developing into a normal, um, healthy child?

SPEAKER_00 38:26

So we've the data we have uh to delivery uh encompasses a couple of hundred uh women. And so in those, we know first of all, that um the preterm birth rate is either the same as the general population or actually lower. So it probably abortion pill reversal probably prevents some preterm birth. But when you look at the birth defect rates, the birth defect rates are no different or lower than the general population. So we know we can say very confidently that abortion pill reversal does not lead to increase in birth defects. And when you look at the two components or the two drugs that the women have taken individually, first the miphopristone, other studies have not shown increased birth defect rates. And in fact, uh ACOG, the American College of Observation Gynecologist, which has been very critical of us, and they've been attacking us, they're part of the medical abortion complex. Well, they have come out with two or three practice bulletins that say that mifepristone does not cause birth defects. And though, and then when you look at uh progesterone itself, we know that it's been used safely in pregnancy for over 60 years. The FDA came out with a statement in 1999, I believe, that stated that um progesterone does not cause birth defects. So we think on the safety side for the baby, we can very confidently say that um that uh abortion pill reversal is safe for them too.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

What is is to the extent that this is the case, is there a typical case of a woman seeking abortion pill reversal? Is there a uh a type, if you will, someone who's struggling with the same things, or, you know, do what do we know about the profile of women? Is there a typical profile of a woman who seeks abortion pill reversal?

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Yeah, well, I talk about this a little bit in my book, Abortion Pill Reversal, a second chance at choice, in the chapter entitled Common Themes. And what I noticed in looking at these different cases and in reading the firsthand testimonies that are in part two of the book is that these women um often experience immediate regret. Almost right away, they feel regret after starting the chemical abortion. Number two, they almost always have someone in their corner. There's one person at least who is saying, yes, you can do this, you can reverse this abortion, I'm gonna help you. So that they don't feel like they're totally abandoned, forlorn. And number three, almost all of these women who who try or attempt abortion pill reversal have some religious background. They have some connection to God. Many of them have uh strayed from God and have uh you know have sort of weak relationships, but they're always that core of a belief in God and they finally come back to trust it that God will help them. And indeed, of course, he always comes through. And um, and then the the fourth thing that I've seen in many of them is uh transformation. I've seen that abortion pill reversal is truly transformative. So, first of all, of course, we know that it saves the physical life of the pre-born baby. But the other thing is that oftentimes the spiritual life of the of the mother is saved. The mother is often undergo tremendous transformations. We've seen this uh time and time again, have they turned their lives around and become just extremely um uh or changed the course of their lives to a trajectory of a holy, very wholesome and satisfying lives. Um, several examples of of this in the uh in the book. One of them is Sarah Herm, who um she was, she had two children, no, three children already with two different fathers. She hooked up with her high school fling. She thought that she was a wonderful, that he was a wonderful man, that this would maybe be the guy. Uh, found out that she was pregnant. She thought that he was going to be understanding and supportive. But when she went to tell him that she was pregnant, he came back with some crushing comments. He said, Four babies, three baby dads, that doesn't look good on you. I want you to get an abortion. So he was not supportive of all. Those words just uh were ringing in her head, and she knew that's what other people would be thinking of her, that here she's failed again. And so she went and took the miphopristone. Now, when while she was waiting to take the second drug, she actually wrote a letter to her pre-born baby. And in the letter, it reads much like a suicide line. And the letters in the book, it's very, very compelling. And she writes about how well, how much she loves her pre-born baby, but I had to do this because your father didn't want you. And then when she was um hanging out, waiting for the um to take the second pill, she was sitting with her her children, and one of them was a toddler. The toddler kept wanting to face her and wanted to interact with her and touch her face, but she couldn't bear to have eye contact with her toddler because knowing what she was doing to her her next baby, her pre-born baby. So she kept turning her toddler away from her, but the toddler kept coming back like toddlers do to interact with her. Well, finally her sister found out what had happened, and she said, Do you know that you can reverse your chemical abortion? And she said, I'll be there for you. So this was the supportive person. And so Sarah did then finally um call the hotline and um underwent abortion pill reversal. It was successful. She had a term healthy baby born several months later. And now she's become a spokesperson for abortion pill reversal. And at last year's. Or actually this year, sorry, 2026, Rose Dinner, which is held in conjunction with the March for Life, she was the keynote speaker and she gave a stirring address. And I think she's now influencing other people who are considering chemical abortion, and also those who've already started the process that they know that now women do have a second chance at choice. So we've seen these turns around and uh turnarounds and these just magnificent transformations in these women. Um I think um that's why abortion pill reversal, I'm calling it now the tip of the spear of the pro-life movement, because it is so transformative and because um chemical abortions are so prevalent. So this is really where the action is, where we can do so much good.

SPEAKER_02 44:45

Indeed. And I think when people hear about abortion pill reversal, the first thing that comes to mind for some folks is Narcan or nalaxone, the way in which we reverse opioid overdoses and opioid emergencies. Should we treat abortion pill reversal like Narcan? I mean, there's so much education funding to make Narcan available everywhere. Um, is could something similar be done? Because I think we need to build awareness about abortion pill reversal that people can do this. Should should, is that a is the Narcan uh availability training access is that a model here for abortion pill reversal as well?

SPEAKER_00 45:21

I'd say it's an analogy, not necessarily a model. Um, because you know they work the same way. Narcan is a competitive inhibitor of the opioid receptor. So the opioid and the narcan are competing just like progesterone and miphopristone are competing. So very, very analogous. However, the difference is that while we see what's happening to women with this totally unregulated chemical abortion, uh, wild, wild west, where they're getting it online. Um, I don't necessarily think that it should sort of be on hand so that anybody can just give it right away. I do think because we care more about the women than they do, and we think it's important to have medical supervision for abortion pill reversal. Now, I think the other components of it, I think the education, we should have the education just like we have about the narcant, so that everybody knows about it, and that's one of the reasons I'm on this podcast to tell people about abortion pill reversal, so that anybody who may be considering a chemical abortion or has already started one already has in her head that she knows that reversal is possible. That part I think is very critical. We should have the level of awareness equal to narcant or even greater than narcant. Certainly we should have progesterone more available, maybe even over the counter, although those would be big hurdles to make it over the counter. But I think it's safe enough to have progesterone over the counter. And why would that be important? Not so that there's not medical supervision, but so it's easy for the woman to go get it. So she has a visit with the doctor, then she wants that she hears about all the uh benefits of abortion pill reversal, the risks of because anytime we give any medicine, there's a risk of some side effects, what the side effects are, what she should look for if it doesn't work, and then she can go and get it very easily, not have to wait in a long line for a prescription. So certainly I think there there may be some room for that. That would be in the future. But um otherwise, um making it so that it is highly accepted in the medical community, that's probably even that's more important. So that a woman who decides she uh wants a second chance at choice, then she can either call her primary care doctor, call her OBGYN, or just go to the nearest emergency department or urgent care. Because just this is really a 9-1-1 situation. It is an emergency. And we're saving life just like CPR saves a life. You want to get to CPR right away, you want to get the abortion pill reversal going right away. So they should be able to go to any of those. And there should be no qualms about it. There should be no questioning her. There should just be, okay, let's find out what you did. Make sure that um you know what's entailed with abortion pill reversal. Make sure that you um you understand what you're doing and that this is uh what you want to do, and then go forth with it and give it to her, even if you are happen to be pro-choice. Give her the treatment that that she wants that's been proven to be safe and effective so that they uh the second chance of choice is easy to get. That's I think how the analogy to the to the Narcan model would work.

SPEAKER_02 48:12

That was you anticipated my next question, which is I think naturally, you know, unless you know about Heartbeat International's hotline, I think most people don't know where they would turn in an emergency situation to find abortion pill reversal. So uh, you know, if you and you'd naturally go to an emergency room, like I did this, I took these drugs, what do I do? Do you have a sense that um doctors in emergency rooms, even toxicologists, know the first place to go or know even about the abortion pill reversal process? And how prevalent you mentioned the medical schools and the uh schools of medicine, nursing, and things like that. How prevalent is uh education around abortion pill reversal in those places, or do we have a long way to go?

SPEAKER_00 48:56

We have a long way to go. It's only a minority of uh residency programs and medical schools and nursing schools that are teaching about us, and that's because of the huge bias by mainstream medicine against this. ACOG and American Medical Association have come out against it. So there's a huge bias, there's huge persecution, but we have to fight against that with education, with increasing awareness. We're doing more studies. So eventually, those in the middle, those who are reasonable, will be convinced by the evidence. Those who are on the extreme fringe who are extremely pro-abortion because of ideology or because of profit motive, they're always probably going to be against this. I think grudgingly they'll accept abortion pill reversal eventually, but they will uh never promote it, and they will always uh probably try to disparage it. But the people in the middle are the ones I think we can convince, and we are convincing them slowly but surely. We have heard um anecdotal stories, stories of emergency physicians in the emergency department who started abortion pill reversal because they had heard about it or made the proper referrals to a pregnancy help center. Most pregnancy help centers these days in the U.S. uh. know about abortion pill reversal. Either they are equipped to offer it, or they know about the abortion pill reversal hotline and can connect women to that and be very, very supportive in that process. Unfortunately, the abortion, uh the um abortion centers are greatly outnumbered by pregnancy help centers. I think it's something like five to one now, maybe even more than that. So there are lots of um very well-equipped, um very well-trained people at these pregnancy help centers who can be there to assist these women who want a second chance at choice.

SPEAKER_02 50:29

Aaron Powell Have you had any better luck with um medical schools? And by that I also mean schools of osteopathy. There's a couple of new ones coming online at Catholic universities around the country. Have you had any better luck with Catholic institutions, medical schools?

SPEAKER_00 50:44

Well, you know, it's important when you say Catholic institutions, uh sort of the old school, traditional Catholic uh institutions. Unfortunately, most of them have lost their way, and they're in many senses Catholic in name only. So with those, we have not had had not had uh not had any uh foot uh success at gaining a foothold. But these newer schools that you're mentioning, yes, they they are actually starting themselves founded in solid Catholic principles, and they are unapologetically and expressly faithfully Catholic. And yes, we've had uh some conversations with people involved with those. They are definitely on board. They know about abortion pill reversal, and they will be um teaching their students or their residents about it. So so yeah, the the the future is bright with those to really uh help uh continue and grow authentic Catholic health care. I think uh that will be on the horizon for sure with that with them.

SPEAKER_02 51:41

Wonderful news, but still more work to be done in the even in the Catholic world. Uh you mentioned the medical abortion complex. I think uh folks have a general sense of what that is. But my deeper question is if it's really about choice, well, we know it's not always about choice, but you can say more about that. But why are people trying to discredit abortion pill reversal? You've got good data, good science. Um, what what's what's going on there? In your mind, I have my opinions, of course, but what's going on in your mind about the efforts by the medical abortion complex to attack abortion pill reversal?

SPEAKER_00 52:12

Yeah, and I'll preface that by just making a comparison like I do in my book about what's CPR. And the chapter in the book is Would You Ban CPR? So it's important to know that CPR, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, when we do chest compressions and breathe for people when they have heart attacks, was approved and promulgated without any randomized control trials. They didn't do a study where they said, okay, you've had a heart attack, let me look on the list. Okay, you're on the list to get CPR, we'll do CPR. Or the next person, you're on the list to not get CPR, you've been randomized to no CPR. We're going to see what happens if we just watch you. That never happened, of course, because that would be unethical. So same thing with abortion pill reversal. There's no reason we should ever do a control trial with a placebo group where we didn't give the mother anything. That would be unethical. So since there's no alternative, then this the certain the current science certainly supports using abortion pill reversal because a certain science shows that it's safe and that it's effective, so we should we go with it until we find something better. So so uh it was puzzling to me why these so-called pro-choice people were so against me, and it puzzled me early on. But I think that my question was answered when I saw a quote from um from Dr. Daniel Grossman, who's at uh University of California, San Francisco, and also part of the Bixby Center. Bixby Center is a big pro-abortion institute at UCSF that's been accused of being an abortion colonizer of colonizing uh third world countries with abortion and contraception. He was interviewed on a liberal platform called Slate, and then he was asked about this, and he said something to the effect that, well, if a woman is given progesterone in this circumstance under medical supervision, I think it would be safe. So the first, what he's saying there is that abortion pill reversal is safe because we are giving the progesterone under medical supervision. We're very carefully supervising these women. So he agrees with us on that point. But he went on to say that, however, he doesn't want this publicized because he thinks that it will give the public a false impression about the extent of abortion regret. So bingo, that answered my question. They know that if you know that some people change their minds after starting their chemical abortions, that blows a huge hole in the narrative that abortion is a great good for all women. Because if it were such a great good, why would some women change their minds and try to reverse their abortions? So that answered the question for me. Um, that um this just changes the narrative and it attacks them ideologically because they they promote that abortion is a great good, but also from a financial standpoint, they see that um that this could attack their bottom line because we know that Planned Parenthood, that uh abortion is a cash cow for them and for us other abortion providers. And now for these um these um uh distributors of uh online chemical abortion drugs, huge profit margins for for these uh organizations.

SPEAKER_02 55:04

You mentioned some practitioners and some opponents in California. You're in California, a practical example of the pushback against abortion pill reversal, a lawsuit in California. What's going on there uh with that lawsuit?

SPEAKER_00 55:16

Aaron Powell So yes, this lawsuit um was uh uh filed by the state of California, the state attorney general Rob Bonta, who uh probably like Letitia James in New York has his sights uh his eyes set on higher office, and so he's trying to increase his liberal credentials. So he sued a clinic called Real Options in the Bay Area, as well as Hartbeat International, for quote, pr uh promoting false medical practices, for giving misinformation, and for um unethical business practices, if you can believe it or not. And so this trial um is about at its conclusion. I was one of the expert witnesses, testified in it, and on um just uh on uh September 17th, the attorneys on both sides will present their closing arguments to the judge, and then the judge will have three months to render his decision. And we're hoping hopefully to get a positive decision there because the state is uh suing these two organizations for over uh over $10 million, um, essentially wants to put them out of business. And of course, these allegations are false, and um, but we need to stop this. And so we're coming at this uh very aggressively. We have a great legal team with the Thomas Moore Society. Also, our um our nonprofit Culture of Life Family Services, where I serve as medical director in San Diego, we've preemptively sued the state of California in federal court in order to stop this kind of nonsense. And right now we're at the appeal state uh in the uh the Ninth Circuit, so we're hoping that that goes well. We think there's a good chance eventually that one of these cases we'll make it to the Supreme Court and that we will eventually prevail. But hopefully we'll prevail at the early stages, um, and this uh the local judge in California will rule for us.

SPEAKER_02 57:09

Aaron Powell What are the allegations that Attorney General Bond is making against uh Heartbeat International in that clinic in the Bay Area?

SPEAKER_00 57:16

Well, one of the big allegations is uh they're saying false advertising. They're saying that there's no scientific evidence that abortion pill reversal works. Um and um the other thing, uh charges are spreading misinformation and false and offering uh uh unsuccessful medical practices. So those are their charges. Um, but even their own um expert witnesses testifying um have undermined their charges. And because uh Dr. Mitchell Crennin, which I mentioned earlier, who conducted the study, well, because um our site was able to subpoena a lot of records, we saw a lot of what happened behind the scenes in his study as well as in uh email communications concerned with a commentary that he wrote for the uh the general contracep uh contraception. So he's testified in his, and he said that his study showed that abortion pill reversal is um is ineffective, although when you really look at his numbers, it shows that it supports the effectiveness of it. Well, um one of the contentions is that uh some of these people have said that, well, if you do nothing at all after a woman takes mifepristone, don't do anything, the baby will survive 50% of the time. So really the progesterone is not doing anything. But when when Dr. Mary Davenport, my colleague, who's also an expert witness in this uh trial, she did a study in 2017 where she looked at the early, early mifepristone studies where they only gave mifepristone, they hadn't yet added misoprostol to the cocktail. And in that she showed that at best, survival, if nothing is done, is only 25%. Well, Dr. Krennin uh Dr. uh Grossman had written a commentary where he claimed it was 50% survival. And um that his was an erroneous conclusion because he was including those where the pre-born baby was dead, but the uterus hadn't been completely empty. Well, then years later, Dr. Crennin wanted to write a commentary commenting both on Dr. Grossman's and Dr. Davenport's article. And he had some private communication with the journal before his article was published, where he said, actually, I've looked at the data and I think survival is actually only about 8%. In other words, if you give mifepristone only, 92% of the time the pre-born baby would die. Only 8% would survive if nothing else is done. Therefore, that makes abortion pill reversal much more effective because you compare 8% to 55 to 68% instead of comparing 25%. So you see the comparison is much more favorable. Well, it turned out that he didn't include those comments in his article because he got pushback and he actually didn't included the numbers that he was looking at, but without his conclusion. And so we see things like that that were revealed in the um in the trial, uh, including also some other things about his trial that weren't publicized. And we see that um actually their their charges are baseless. And so if the judge looks at all the evidence that was presented and what they actually testify themselves, I think he will conclude that uh their case has no merit and he'll he'll he'll uh rule in our favor.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:35

So that's what I think. So this case, this case is really just another tactic that's being used across the country, not just against abortion pill reversal, but also um pregnancies, pregnancy resource centers as well, consumer fraud, challenge charges of consumer fraud, allegations of consumer fraud, not just to discredit them, uh, but to put them out of business as well, precisely because uh those politicians, the uh medical abortion complex understands that at this point, at this stage, uh these two things are really the tip of the spear of the pro-life movement because they are saving lives uh and doing so in a way that uh helps women make the choice for life. So persevere in that. Thank you for that and that expert witness. What do you think we need to do as a pro-life for the pro-life movement? How does the pro-life movement need to adjust? Um, I think it's trying to get its bearings. It wasn't necessarily prepared for uh Roe v. Wade being reversed, uh, quite frankly, if we do a candid assessment and it's getting its bearings in the post-Dobbs era. And obviously, there's a new challenge with regard to uh the shipment of abortion drugs nationwide, even in violation of state laws restricting abortion. How does the pro-life movement need to adjust to the reality of 70% and growing uh percentage of abortions being done chemically?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:50

I think, yeah, the pro-life news movement needs to be laser focused on this new reality, on the wild, wild west. And it has to be um multi-pronged approach. First of all, um, I think uh, again, the tip of the spear being APR, the pro-life movement, I think, really needs to promote APR more, get the word out, not just to pro-lifers, but to the general population so that women know about it. Um, because not only are we saving babies and saving the spiritual lives of these women and helping them transform their lives, but the more that people see and hear the stories of I started my abortion, I changed my mind, and I saved my baby, that narrative is very powerful so that people who are in the middle or consider themselves pro-choice but are not radically pro-choice, they will say, Well, wow, if she thought it was so important to stop her abortion and save her baby, then that baby must have some real value. And maybe I need to question my own beliefs in abortion. And maybe abortion isn't as great as it is. And of course, that's why we're being attacked, because it challenges that narrative. So that's very important to share these stories. Number one. Number two, um, we need to stop these shipments across state lines of the abortion pills to pro-life states. And so that means we we need, on a state level, to pass laws that allow uh citizens to sue these people in other states. So Texas has a law like that. And right now there's a lawsuit going on. We need to promote those laws and we need to find ways to trace where these abortion pills are coming from, find out who they are, go after them. We need to also, however, have federal laws, because of course, states like New York are passing laws that are, quote, shield laws that shield their abortion providers from uh suits by uh outside states. So we need to have uh federal laws. For one, just enforce the Comstack Act that prohibits the shipping of abortion-causing uh substances across state lines. So I think that after these midterms that are coming up in November of 2026, I think politically we'll have a chance to maybe do that. And we we as pro-lifers need to hold those who were elected with pro-life support. We need to hold their feet to the fire and make them um you know keep their promises. And one of these is to uh enforce the Comstack Act or pass other laws and you know, even eventually pass a federal law prohibiting abortion. That would be uh one of the end games, of course. And I think we need to focus on that. That can't be our only focus because if we devote all of our energy to that, we're gonna miss the chances for incremental gains. And I see you know, the pro-life movement is kind of like a football strategy. You run the ball, run the ball, you gain some yardage, and then you throw the long pass for the touchdown. So you need both. You can't just keep trying, if you keep trying to throw the long ball for the touchdown every play, well, the defense is gonna be in a pre-vent defense, you're not gonna be able to do it. If you only run the ball every play, you're not gonna gain enough yardage fast enough to make a big effort. So you need both. You need the incremental approach, we need the um home run approach. Um, so so we need to we need to focus on that. And we need to focus in each and every state because you can see right now that the pro-choice strategy is to pick off pro-life states one at a time. You see, every year there's a ballot initiative in these states. This year, we know uh in um November they'll be voting on question six in Nevada that would make abortion legal throughout the entire pregnancy. So they've um picked off uh pro-life states. They did in Missouri and Ohio. They've hoodwinked the electorate most of the time. They brought in huge outside money. In Florida, they were able to fight off that attack. So the Florida model is the model that should be followed in all of these states in order to repel these pro-abortion attacks that are trying to pass laws to force abortion on these pro-life states. So we need to really focus on that too. And it's gonna be very labor uh labor intensive, time intensive, and it's gonna be very expensive monetarily, but it's something we have to fight because they have deep pockets. They're relentless, they're gonna be coming after us state by state.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:51

Doctor, scientist, uh political strategist, and I think you would have been a better offensive coordinator than Kevin O'Connell has been here in Minnesota for the Vikings the last few years. He recognized the importance of mixing it up with a little bit of the run game. So thanks for that. My last question for you, Dr. Delgado, is as a deep man of Catholic faith, uh, what do we as a church and as Catholics uh need to do uh generally to be better witnesses for life and to save lives? Not and not just, again, we love them both. We love the mother and we love the unborn baby. We want to save the life of the mother, we want uh the life of the baby, we want to promote the mother's flourishing and not just physically, uh, but psychologically and spiritually as well. How does the church need to adapt to the new realities, the evolving realities of abortion in America today?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:39

Well, I think the the church needs to re really redouble its efforts. Um first uh we we need to acknowledge um explicitly and implicitly that this is first and foremost a spiritual battle. And so prayer and fasting um are gonna be very important, staying close to the sacraments, you know, leave leading holy lives. That that's that's the foundation for for any kind of change. But I think from from a kind of a broader standpoint, I really um I pray that the more priests um preach the pro-life message from the pulpit. We hear it so infrequently, unfortunately. There's some priests who are really great at it, other priests who shy away from it. And um and I think the the bishops need to really step up and and and give the directives to their priests that we need to preach about this more often. You know, we're talking about other social justice issues which are really important. But when it comes down down to it, if we have more than a million of our citizens being killed every year by abortion, what's more important than that um on a societal level? Um this certainly becomes this is more important than um um homelessness, then immigration, all of these things that are very important issues that we shouldn't ignore. But let's look at what's most important first. Life is the fundamental gift that we've been given from God. Without life, then we are unable to um to enjoy uh having a home, enjoy having food on our table, enjoy being able to immigrate and and to do the best for our family. So so we really we need to shift our perspective. And I think um sometimes you know the church has to realize that uh unless it's being persecuted for its views and criticized, it's probably not preaching the gospel fully. And uh we're not here to get along, we're here to be charitable and loving, but to preach the truth. And that's I think what the what the church really has to focus on, in season and out of season. And Jesus promised that if we did his work, we would be persecuted. So if um parts of the church are not being persecuted, I think they're too comfortable, they're not out there preaching the correct message that um that lives are worth saving, that the the pre-born baby has value, has dignity, and that we need to stop abortion in our country, stop the Holocaust.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:48

It's a preeminent priority according to the bishops of the United States, and they called us to live a gospel of life uh following the call of John Paul II almost 30 years ago, and it's a commitment we need to renew constantly. Dr. Delgado, you have uh you're doing some research, you've got a new institute. Where can people find uh out more information about you and your work? You mentioned your book, um uh Abortion Pill Reversal, A Second Chance for Choice from Ignatius Press, but you're also involved in a new institute as well to make uh research and uh information more widely available about abortion pill reversal.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:22

Right, so they can go to Stenoinstitute.org, S-T-E-N-O-Institute.org. It's named after Blessed Nicholas Steno. If you're interested in reading about him, he has a fascinating story uh on our website. We have a biography of uh Blessed Nicholas and the Steno Institute. I started it uh in order to increase education, awareness, and research around abortion pill reversal. You find lots of great resources, um, all of our peer-reviewed articles, articles in the lay literature that uh are not medical articles, but just general interest articles, as well as great videos and lots of links on stenoinstitute.org. You can also get uh buy our book through that. Um, you can click on book, or you can go to ignatius.com or Amazon to buy the book, Abortion Pill Reversal, a second chance at choice, which is written for general audiences. I think people will find it very interesting and compelling.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:14

It's uh it's an outstanding book. I've read it, and that's exactly uh why you're on the show. Uh share more with us today, and people can go to that book and find out more and uh for a little bit deeper dive into these issues. Dr. George Delgado, thank you for joining us on Catholic in America. Thanks for your consistent and strong pro-life witness and really this is the miracle of your work with abortion pill reversal. God bless you.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:34

You're welcome, and thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:38

Abortion pill reversal is a gift that is giving many a second chance for choice, but many people are unaware of it altogether. Further attempts by ambitious politicians in the medical abortion complex to discredit APR as consumer fraud, thwart and impede this life-saving remedy from becoming more mainstream. As Dr. Delgado noted, much is to be done in the areas of education and training regarding abortion pill reversal, and vigilance will be required in the courts of law and the courts of public opinion to safeguard it. There is a hotline put out by Heartbeat International, which allows people to have greater access to the abortion pill reversal protocol and doctors and healthcare providers in their area who can provide it in the state of emergency. That link will be put up on our show page so people can have greater familiarity with it. In the meantime, we can also take action against the abortion pill itself. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is raising greater awareness this October during Respect Life Month about the prevalence of the abortion pill. And the USCCB is inviting Catholics to take action by contacting pharmacies discouraging them from providing it. That link can be found at USCCB.org. And there are other efforts to publicly held, encourage publicly held companies such as Federal Express to stop shipping abortion drugs, as it could create liability for them and their shareholders under the Comstock Act. How the prevalence of the abortion pill and the decline in surgical abortion will continue to change people's attitude about abortion itself is unclear. But we know abortion proponents will never cease to evade laws, promote easy access to abortion as good for women, and also suppress efforts that offer true compassion and accompaniment that give women real choice. In other words, irrespective of the laws, we must continue the work of walking with women in need, which takes many forms and requires creative thinking guided by the Holy Spirit to live the gospel of life and offer real hope. Thank you for listening to this episode of Catholic American During Respect Life Month. I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Dr. Delgado. Please check out our show links for more information about this life-saving protocol for women in need. And until next time, I wish you and your family many blessings. Keep me in prayer, in prayer, and I will do the same for you. God bless.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:52

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