Listen to Dr. Donna Harrison and Jacob Barr talk about the marketing spin that is promoting false beliefs in the medical world surrounding abortion, medicated abortions and abortion pill reversal while promoting the truth surrounding these areas and disspell these false beliefs.
Summary
This is Jacob Barr from the Pro-Life Team Podcast. In my recent discussion with Dr. Donna Harrison, a board-certified OBGYN and CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, we delved into critical issues surrounding self-managed abortions and medication abortion. Dr. Harrison highlighted the significant risks associated with self-managed abortions, emphasizing the inability of women to receive proper informed consent or assess their medical risks without a physician’s guidance.
She underscored the dangers of misjudging gestational age and the high risk of complications like hemorrhage, retained tissue, and undiagnosed ectopic pregnancies. Dr. Harrison also shed light on the psychological impact on women who witness the remains of their aborted baby, contradicting the misinformation that it’s just a “clump of cells.”
We also discussed the alarming trend of telemedicine abortions, where drugs like Mifeprex and Misoprostol are prescribed without a physical examination, raising serious concerns about coerced abortions and the inability to screen for abuse or trafficking.
Dr. Harrison robustly debunked the myth that medication abortion is safer than Tylenol and criticized the lack of systematic tracking of abortion complications by the FDA. She emphasized the ethical and moral issues inherent in abortion pill reversal (APR) studies, where giving a placebo instead of progesterone to women wanting to save their pregnancies would be deeply unethical.
Our conversation also touched upon the false narrative surrounding pro-life laws and their alleged hindrance to miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy treatments. Dr. Harrison confirmed that no such laws exist and any claims otherwise are baseless fearmongering.
This discussion was an eye-opening exploration of the often-overshadowed risks and ethical issues in the domain of abortion, highlighting the need for more transparent and fact-based dialogues in the pro-life arena.
#ProLifeTeamPodcast #JacobBarr #DonnaHarrison #MedicationAbortionRisks #SelfManagedAbortions #TelemedicineAbortion #AbortionPillReversal #APR #MisinformationInAbortion #EctopicPregnancy #MiscarriageCare #ProLifeLaws #EthicalHealthcare #WomenHealthRisks #FDAAbortionComplications #AbortionIndustryMisinformation #ProLifeOBGYN #HealthcareEthics #ProtectingUnbornLife
Transcript
The transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.
Jacob Barr :
Welcome to the pro-life Team Podcast i’m Jacob Barr i’m here with Donna and we’re going to be talking about some marketing spin that has that is promoting false beliefs in the medical world surrounding abortion, medicated abortion, pill reversal. And so we want to address these false beliefs and promote the truth, promote the healthy decisions and promote medical ideas and thoughts that should be, that should completely dispel some of these false beliefs that are being promoted and spun into our society. Hi Donna i am so glad that you’re on here. Would you introduce yourself as if you were talking to a small group of pregnancy clinic directors? Pregnancy clinic medical teams? Pro-life friends.
Donna Harrison :
Sure. Thanks, Jacob. I’m Doctor Donna Harrison i’m a board certified OBGYN and I’m the Executive of the Chief Executive Officer of the American Association of pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. We’re about 7000 around the country who do not use killing human beings as a therapeutic option, and that’s what binds us together.
Jacob Barr :
So do it yourself abortions and the danger associated with do it yourself abortions. Let’s talk about that for a moment so for decades a major pro abortion talking point has been that banning abortion wood forest women back to the back alleys, risking their lives through unsafe do it yourself abortions, today however, pro abortion advocates are discouraging fellow pro choicers from using that talking point, instead saying that self managed abortions are safe. What role has the proliferation of medication abortion played in this transition, and can you speak to the history of that development?
Donna Harrison :
Yeah, boy, that’s a great question. And let’s talk a little bit about what self managed abortion is and then i’ll kind of branch out and address some of the other issues that you brought in at the beginning. So what self managed abortion is using dangerous abortion drugs like Methotrex and Misoprostol without ever seeing a physician. And the truth of it is that there is no way that a woman can get adequate informed consent or know what her risks are without seeing a physician why? Because she doesn’t know how far along she is. Half the women that present to an OB GYN’s office for prenatal care have to have their due date change because an early ultrasound shows that they’re not quite as far pregnant as they thought they were, or they’re much more pregnant than they thought they were in fact, half of women have to have that due date change. So what does that mean for a self managed abortion if you are, let’s say, three weeks after your missed period? So that’s seven weeks pregnant. Your chances of needing surgery are about one in 20. Ok, so 20 women that do a self managed abortion at 7 weeks, you know about one out of that 20 will need to go to the for hemorrhage or for retained tissue to get to get the tissue taken out so that they don’t get infected. The problem is if you are just five weeks further along, if you’re at 13 weeks, you’ve got a one out of three chance you get a 33 % chance that you were going to have to have surgery to complete this abortion for hemorrhage or tissue left inside. How was a woman going to know that if she doesn’t have an ultrasound, she won’t. And what’s even worse is that one out of 50 women in this country, when they get pregnant, the pregnancy doesn’t plant in the in the womb, it plants in the tube. That’s called an ectopic pregnancy. Women die from rupturing ectopic pregnancies and the Mifoprex and mesoprostol, the chemical abortion, does not treat ectopic pregnancies it doesn’t cause the baby to stop growing. So the placental tissue will keep growing and the woman will have pain and bleeding, which is what she’s being told well, a Mifoprex abortion has pain and bleeding, so she’ll just think it’s a normal part of a Mifoprex abortion when in fact she’s bleeding to death internally we’ve had women who have died. They’ve called their doc and the doc said, you know, honey, lay down, take a Tylenol. And they bled to death because they didn’t make it to the ear in time because their ectopic pregnancy ruptures and then they don’t make it. So this is really, this is significant stuff here even if you didn’t even think about the human being inside the womb, if you just thought about women, drug induced abortion is a lousy way to do an abortion for a woman. She’s alone she doesn’t know her complications. She doesn’t know how far along she is. You know, it’s awful. And there’s two more aspects to this whole self induced abortion thing. One of them is she’s going to deliver that baby and she’s been told this was just a BLOB of tissue. And she’s going to see a baby with a head and arms and legs and eyes and you know, looking at her and this is, this is a real psychological trauma that women are not prepared for, especially if they’ve been lied to and have been told this is a BLOB of tissue. The other thing that is really important, and we’ll probably get to it at the end in more detail, but if a woman is RH negative, let’s say she has a negative blood or a negative blood and she is pregnant. Then every time she separates from her baby, whether that is birth or an abortion or miscarriage, every time she is supposed to get a drug called Rogam. And what Rogam does is Rogam helps to make sure that her body doesn’t mount an immune response to the next baby. And this is particularly personal for me because my husband lost two sisters at birth from RH negative RH incompatibility disease. His he was fine, but he sensitized his mother. You know it that’s not his fault it just that’s what happens when you have a baby who’s, you know, when you’re an RH negative mom. He sensitized his mother so that the next pregnancy she had a baby who was born, born dead at term because the baby had no blood because her body mounted an immune response to that baby’s blood. He had another sister who had a 95 % exchange transfusion at birth and then he had another sister who made it to about 32 weeks and she died and his mom almost died. So RH negative disease is not something to laugh about. It’s serious and we’ve experienced it in our own family. Like I said, my husband’s experienced it up close and personal. That RH negative disease was almost completely wiped out with the advent of rogam. But you have to have Rogam at the time that the mom separates from the baby, because if you if she doesn’t get it at that time, then she sensitizes her immune system and then she mounts an immune response against the baby after that. So it’s a really serious problem and people aren’t thinking about that when they’re doing do it yourself abortions. And the abortion industry is completely ignoring the realities of these risks for women. In fact, if you go on these websites that allow you to order abortion pills without any prescription, without any doctor’s intervention, they’ll say things like it’s 100 % safe, there’s no complications, which anytime anybody tells you any intervention is 100 % safe with no complications, you better believe they’re smoking something, because it’s not that every medical intervention has the potential for complications. Now there are things that are safer than others, but we know that Methotrex is not a safe drug. And again you’ve got one out of 20 women who are ending up in the needing surgery for hemorrhage and retained tissue that’s not safe. So the whole the whole myth that the abortion industry tries to spin is methotrexate is safe. They have to say that because the FDA can only allow drugs on the market that are safe. And what we have been saying for the last since 2000 is this is not a safe drug. And there’s reasons why the FDA restricted the use of the drug to certain conditions and certain gestational ages to minimize the dangers that are inherent in the use of chemical abortions.
Jacob Barr :
So going back to what you mentioned about the RH factor, what’s the normal procedure so when someone has a pregnancy and they the blood, they’re they, you know their blood type is known and then the blood it’s a blood type of the baby tested or how is that discovered and then based on the results or they give it to every mom perhaps based on her blood type.
Donna Harrison :
It’s given to every mom who is RH negative, unless she for sure has no exposure to anyone with RH positive blood, but we just simply assume that she that an RH negative woman needs RHOGAM at the time of being separated from her baby and.
Jacob Barr :
So when it comes to so if a mom has RH negative blood, I mean RH, is that what it’s called is RH negative or how?
Donna Harrison :
Is RH negative it’s like it’s like O negative or A negative or B negative. If that’s her blood type, then she’s RH negative and she needs RHOGAM at the time of separating from her baby, whether it’s a miscarriage or an abortion or a or birth, or even if she gets in a motor vehicle accident and has some bleeding and she’s pregnant, we give RH, we give RHOGAM to prevent sensitization anytime there’s a possibility that some of the fetal cells, some of the baby cells, would get into her circulation.
Jacob Barr :
So if a woman is experiencing A surgical abortion and she has RH negative blood, Rogam would be needed for her body to not build up that immune system or that those antibodies I suppose, or whatever that would be considered in order to them when she has a future pregnancy for her body to not. Yeah, have that defense built up towards another blood type, I suppose.
Donna Harrison :
Yes, that’s correct. That’s right.
Jacob Barr :
Ok, very interesting and is that include so if a mom is you know how at what age of the pregnancy does that become a concern or is it a concern from fairly early on or is it mostly a concern from some point in the middle on?
Donna Harrison :
Yeah, well, safety wise, we used to give it to moms at any gestational age because even though the baby’s blood volume is low, there is still a chance that the baby’s blood can mix with the mom’s blood, which is more likely during a surgical abortion than it would be during a miscarriage. Because what happens with a miscarriage is that the baby dies and then the blood vessels kind of contract and there isn’t, there isn’t as much mixing. But even with a miscarriage, anything beyond, you know, eight nine weeks we would give RHOGAM and in fact that is actually the recommendation. And so it makes even more sense with the surgical abortion because you have a lot of bleeding with the surgical abortion, you’re scraping off that tissue from the womb you’re opening up the mom’s blood vessels. You’re certainly, you know, spilling baby’s blood as well so there’s a lot more potential there. But even with the chemical abortion you have, the fact that you have a possibility of the baby’s blood getting in the mom’s system, and the further in pregnancy she is, the higher the chance that happens.
Jacob Barr :
So another question that I have pre prepared here is so pro abortion advocates have claimed that medication abortion is safer than Tylenol. Where do they get this data and what’s wrong with that talking point?
Donna Harrison :
Well, they get the data from Thin Air. They probably get it from, you know, their media spin people. But they don’t get it from reality because you have, like I said, one out of 20 women early in pregnancy, at least one out of 20 women end up in the that’s you don’t have one out of 20 people taking Tylenol, ending up in the needing surgery. It just doesn’t happen oK. So they make up these numbers out of thin air, hoping that it’s a great talking point, but it doesn’t have to have any reality behind it. So just, you know, understand you’re talking marketing. This is all marketing speak. It it’s not, it’s not real speak. So the other thing that you need to know about abortion complications is that the abortion complications are not systematically tracked. I’ll give you a great example, the FDA in 2016 when they extended the limit for medication abortion, they said you can use a drug induced abortion like Methotrex originally only up till seven weeks of pregnancy that means three weeks after the missed period in 2016 they said, oh, you can use it all the way up to 10 weeks. And by the way, we’re not going to track anymore. The only thing that the manufacturer is responsible for now is reporting deaths. And the only way that the manufacturer gets to know death is if the abortionist knows about the death. And a lot of times the abortionist doesn’t know about the death. Why can I say that? Because I and a whole team of doctors from the American Association of Pro-life OB Gen’s reviewed every single adverse event report that was submitted to the FDA from 2000 to 2019 And we saw several times, multiple times with a death that the abortionist didn’t know about the death until they read about it in the newspaper. That means the abortionist is not being contacted when this woman dies. Ok, so if they don’t know about it, how can they report it to Danko and if Danko doesn’t know about it, Danko is the manufacturer of Methotrex. How can Danko report it to the FDA? See, there’s no required. Excuse me let me try that again no.
Jacob Barr :
Worries.
Donna Harrison :
There’s no requirement that doctors report complications to the FDA. The only requirement that was put forth by the FDA was that the manufacturer report complications to the FDA well, the doctors aren’t going to know. The doctors in the emergency room is are not going to know what Danco’s address is and why in the world would they report to DANCO they have, they have no idea that kind of reporting even needs to happen now could they report it to the FDA they could, but they’re not going to think about it and again, right now the FDA is not routinely requiring anything but deaths to be reported and only that requirement from the manufacturer and not from physicians who are treating the complications. So this was another thing that came out of our analysis of the adverse event reports. We looked at who actually did the care for women that had complications less than half the time. The abortionist did the care. Most of the time it was the doctor Who did the care for the woman who had a complication. And women are telling their doctors things that aren’t true. Why do we say that well, the abortion industry is recommending that women not tell their doctors they’ve had a Mythoprex abortion. But the data that we got was from no Mythoprex abortions. And even there were times when in the adverse event report, the abortionist would say the woman did not disclose to the doctor that she had the Methoprex abortion. Well, I’ve also been on a team of researchers that have looked at the Medicaid database and we’ve looked at women who have had, who have purchased Methoprex and misoprostol, the two drugs for the abortion. And then there’s subsequent complication rate in the and it turns out 60 % of the time. That’s over half the time women in the after purchasing mythoprex and musoprostol get coded as a spontaneous abortion. So that doesn’t even show up in reports looking at mythoprex complications. So there’s a couple of abortion industry reports that say, oh, well, you know, it’s only 8 % of women that end up in the with a serious complication. Well, the fact is that’s 40 % of the actual number. It’s actually double that based on our analysis of the Medicaid data. So what you have in the abortion industry side is we’re not looking. So because we’re not looking, we think that there’s no complications because our eyes are closed and our ears are closed and there’s no systematic way of tracking. That has to change.
Jacob Barr :
And it’s really good to see. So to try and recap what I just to verify so the is not informing the abortion clinic doctor because it’s they don’t have a requirement, it sounds like for them to. But especially if the abortion if the doctor was not even told it was an abortion and they may be told it was something else which is why. And so they might be getting a different story there at the and then the abortion so by the abortion clinic doctor not knowing, they’re not able to inform Danco, the pharmaceutical company, and then if Danco is not informed, they can’t then pass it to the FDA that’s correct. And so then those numbers are just simply missing. It sounds like there’s requirements, but the actual doctor providing the care, like the the doctor is not included in the requirement set it sounds like that’s the what’s happening.
Donna Harrison :
There used to be requirements. It used to be from 2000 to 2016 that DANCO was required to report complications. They were required to report all complications. However, in 2016 FDA said, oh, we don’t want to know about complications anymore. We just want to know when a woman dies. So there’s been no complication reporting or very minimal complication reporting since 2016 And what makes this even worse is that the FDA did allowed for the use of Methoprex without a physician visit during COVID and when asked why they did that, they said, Oh well, we reviewed the adverse event reports from 2020 and there weren’t many. And it’s like how could you say that you didn’t even require reporting and now you’re saying that you reviewed the events that were not required to be reported. I mean it you got to laugh or you cry because that is such a disingenuous thing for the FDA to say. And yet that’s what they published as the rationale for why they thought it was OK for women to get these drugs. It’s powerful chemical abortion drug without knowing whether it’s safe or not. Because there is no way to know how these women are doing when there’s no systematic reporting.
Jacob Barr :
Well, that’s i’m really glad you raised that and explained it because that’s really important for people to understand And that there is yeah when it comes to reporting missing and not having yeah just that yeah and then they’re pulling yeah but then to then claim stats from the data that was not based on report you know requirements required reporting that that’s that speaks volumes to the dishonesty and the false beliefs that are being portrayed based on based on these numbers what dangers are associated with no ultrasound, telemedicine abortion.
Donna Harrison :
Ok, so the same dangers that we talked about with Do it yourself abortions. Telemedicine is a kind of a do it yourself abortion. So you can’t do an ultrasound over the Internet. You just can’t do it you have to be physically in a place where the person holding the ultrasound transducer is physically on your belly or, you know, doing it intravaginally. So there’s just no way that you can tell without an ultrasound and an ultrasound is critically important for informed consent, for knowing exactly how far along the baby is and for knowing exactly where the baby is, for ruling out ectopic pregnancy. But even worse than that, you know, Jacob, you have no idea who is standing behind this computer screen. The potential for abusers and pimps to be involved in this process is huge. So even if I were talking to you don’t know whether somebody’s holding a gun to my head right now. You have no way of screening for abuse. And that’s horrible for women who are being sex trafficked. If you look at the studies, there was a study by Laura Leader where she interviewed women who would come out of sex trafficking, the single most common place that they interacted with the medical profession. Planned Parenthood. Ok, so they were being taken in for abortions and Planned Parenthood wasn’t reporting they weren’t screening for coercion or if they were screening, they were ignoring it they weren’t reporting things. There was actually a couple of studies that I looked at, one of whom reported a 13 year old girl in Atlanta, georgia who’s coming in for a second abortion. And finally, this got to the level of the authorities and they asked the Planned Parenthood worker, why didn’t you report this and she said, well, she didn’t look like she was being abused. I’m like, I was amazed to read that this is statutory rape. Ok, The girl’s being raped and you say she didn’t look abused. 13 with the second pregnancy. Hello. You know, it’s this kind of i don’t get it stuff that is part and parcel of the danger to women from the abortion industry, and it’s part and parcel of the dangers that are multiplied when you have telemedicine dispensing. Further, if I would order this drug, you would have no idea whether I was the one that was actually going to use the drug. So I may order this drug, and I may use it to take care of a rival’s pregnancy. Or a guy can order it, have a girl sit in, he can order it and, you know, take care of his herd. In fact, the online ordering that we talked about before, the 70 plus different websites where you’ve been ordered, some of them offer a bulk discount. Who’s going to get a bulk discount? Pimps and abusers. And there’s been cases all across the country of men who’ve been prosecuted for slipping abortion drugs into their girlfriend’s drinks, into their girlfriend’s yogurt. Ok, this is the potential for abuse is enormous. This is not empowerment for women. This is making women very vulnerable, especially to reproductive coercion. And I think that that’s part of the danger of separating the woman from someone who could actually screen her for coercion, know how far along she is, actually do some kind of medical care. What you get with the do it yourself for the telemed abortion is baby, you’re on your own. You have nobody who knows about you, and you have nobody who cares about you. All they care about is getting your money and giving you the drug. This sounds more like drug dealing than it does like medical care.
Jacob Barr :
Going back to what that first story you mentioned, a 13 year old with a second pregnancy in the Planned Parenthood person said that it didn’t look like abuse. I’m trying to wrap my head around that.
Donna Harrison :
So me too.
Jacob Barr :
It’s just i honestly, I don’t i don’t i can’t even imagine a place where that would not be abuse like it’s not just like it’s like 99 9-9 % abuse likelihood. There’s not even a, there’s not even a good, you know, not even a small % chance that’s not abuse because of the yeah, what was the first pregnancy, did the first pregnancy end in abortion and that this was the, that’s the understanding. It was the second abortion.
Donna Harrison :
So by definition, when you have a pregnancy in a girl that’s 13, that’s statutory rape, OK? That’s rape. That’s what we’re talking about the covering up of statutory rape and the systematic covering up of it and the covering up of sex trafficking, the aiding and abetting of sex traffickers. And this is a horrible connection with the abortion industry. So the abortion industry aids and abets sex traffickers and abusers to, you know, to continue their abuse of women. It doesn’t intervene it doesn’t bring in law enforcement. It covers it up. And that’s what we have to remember about, you know, the underage girls that are getting abortions. This covers for the abuser. This covers for the rapist.
Jacob Barr :
Wow, I wonder. And it seems like there’s going to be a level of correlation or a high % or a % of correlation between abortion and abuse based on why people choose abortion in several scenarios. Do you know of any studies that have tried to link, you know, that common, you know, try to link abuse with a an abortion decision or someone who is going in that direction?
Donna Harrison :
Well, there’s a really good study by Laura later a few years ago interviewing women who have come out of sex trafficking. And again, most of them had interactions with Planned Parenthood and so you’ve got the whole continuation of abuse. It wasn’t Planned Parenthood that led them out of the abusive situation. It’s Planned Parenthood that aided and abetted the abusive situation. So when you look at reasons women abort, it’s actually will break your heart. If there’s a couple of good studies that even on the Guttmacher website, you know, search reasons, women abort things like I didn’t have any money. I’ve got a couple kids and I don’t have a job. My boyfriend’s gone. My husband didn’t want this child. I was told I’d be kicked out of my family. This does not sound like women’s empowerment. This sounds like pressure, incredible pressure. Like one of the women even said, oh, I was free to choose anything I wanted as long as I aborted. So it’s this kind of cynical, you know, calling this a woman’s choice when in fact she’s not empowered to make any other choice. And I think that’s part of what we need to be talking about is women who are choosing abortion are seeing abortion as a solution to a social problem. And maybe we could work together to solve those social problems so women don’t feel pressured into abortion because most of women, vast majority of women, are pressured into that abortion.
Jacob Barr :
Yeah, it seems like there is this plague or you know, this coercion from maybe from parents, maybe from the boyfriend coercion maybe from culture to coerce a woman and thinking that this is her only choice or she must do this and that. And that’s starkly it’s very much a contrast with when a woman is abortion minded and she talks at a talks to someone at a Presley clinic, 8085 % will change their mind and you know, choose to defend the life within them and to have that baby. And so that just speaks to that the power of coercion versus the, you know, the beauty of listening and providing care and helping, you know, helping support women. And it literally is like evil versus good when it comes to how this is playing out and if you look at it from you know, if you look at it from above and try and see, you know one group is promoting death and one group is promoting life and that woman can be supported in choosing life is you know, 85 % are changing their mind from death to life.
Donna Harrison :
And why? Because they’re because the pregnancy care centers breathe out hope. You know what the key for abortion is despair. And the abortion clinics breed on that despair. Man, you can’t do this now. You know this is going to ruin your life. All these despairing kinds of visions, whereas the pregnancy care center says we’ll walk with you, yeah, you can do this. And there’s a whole support group that we can provide you with and we’ll walk with you through this process. You know, this is something I learned in medical school. It’s just amazing. But women don’t get pregnant by themselves. They actually have. It’s in a context it’s in a context that is meant to be a supportive, permanent relationship. It’s, you know, for the sake of the child, for the sake of the mom, you know so when women are abandoned, they’re in a situation where they’re tempted to despair. And you just said it, the pregnancy care centers, they give hope. They give community, they give themselves to someone. And that’s what women need. They need support, They need help. They need economic help they need real help. They need economic and job help they need training and like you know i’m our epilogue office is in a pregnancy care center and I have seen men’s ministries i’ve seen you know women come in to giving diapers and clothes and supported and training programs and teaching programs. You know it’s wonderful. And the whole thing is this is, this is the heart of mostly women saying you’re part of our sisterhood, let’s support you, let’s celebrate the life that you have. And it’s just amazing the difference when you celebrate life. That’s what the women are looking for they’re looking for hope.
Jacob Barr :
Oh, that’s good. So the next set of questions I have speaks to miscarriage treatment in relation to elective abortion. So pro abortion advocates are claiming that pro-life laws are hindering doctors ability to treat miscarriage. And so the question is, do they? And what’s the difference between miscarriage treatment and elective abortion?
Donna Harrison :
Well, this is probably the most amazing bit of spin I have ever seen in my life. There is a profound difference between miscarriage treatment and abortion. That profound difference is in a miscarriage. The baby’s already died. And in an elective abortion, the baby’s alive but somebody wants that baby dead. Ok, so an elective abortion is a procedure or drugs done for the express and explicit purpose of producing a dead baby. Let me give you an example that will clearly illustrate this. Let’s take an abortion of a baby who’s 30 weeks. Ok, mom’s baby’s 30 weeks along, and that baby lives after the abortion. It’s called a failed abortion. The separation of the baby and the mom did not fail to occur the mom is no longer pregnant. But what failed to occur is the baby failed to die. And this was made explicitly clear during the partial birth abortion hearings before the US Supreme Court. The justices asked the abortionist, well, if you have the baby part way out of the birth canal before you plunge the scissors into their head, why don’t you just take the baby all the way out? And the abortionist answered, because the purpose of an abortion is to not have a live birth, IE the purpose of an abortion is a dead baby that’s the product you pay the abortionist to produce. That’s very different when the baby’s already died. And what you do with miscarriage care is you take the baby out and you take the placenta out and in if you at all possibly can, you take the baby out in a way that the mom and the dad, the brothers and sisters and grandparents, grandparents can hold the baby and grieve the baby because this baby, even though this baby died, this baby was a part of that family, a grandson, a granddaughter, a brother, a sister, a son, a daughter. And being able to grieve that baby is very important for the healing process of the family. So those of us who deal with miscarriage care know that we try to be respectful of the relationship and the baby’s body when it comes out in a state where, if at all possible, we can allow that family to grieve like they will. And it helps to hold the baby versus an abortion, especially second trimester abortions. The baby’s brought out in pieces. It guarantees that the baby dies and there is no body for the parents to hold. So it’s a abortion. The people that do abortions and elective abortion altogether is a complete denial of the humanity of that human being in the womb. And we know that there’s a human being in the womb. Every mom knows it you know, talk to women who’ve miscarried they name their baby some mom’s treasure, the baby pictures that they had. You know, there’s a there’s a whole a whole set of ways that you take care of miscarriage. Again, being respectful of the grief that the parents go through, that’s all denied in an elective abortion. And the procedures for elective abortion are different too. So for someone to say you can’t get miscarriage care is borders on delusional. There is not a law in the entire country and I’ve reviewed them as have other lawyer colleagues of mine have reviewed them. There isn’t a law in the entire country that prevents miscarriage care, that prevents ectopic care, that prevents separating the mom and the baby to save the mother’s life not one law in the entire country. And yet the abortion industry is fear mongering. Oh my goodness. We’re not going to be able to treat miscarriages. If your doctor can’t tell the difference between a living baby and a dead baby, you might want another doctor. So those of us who care about living babies and can tell the difference between a living baby and a dead baby, we don’t intentionally go in and kill that baby. That’s not a medical procedure that’s using surgery to solve a social problem. We don’t kill human beings to solve social problems. That’s part of the Hippocratic Oath. So the Hippocratic Oath itself that doctors used to take and that formed the foundation of medical ethics for the last two thousand five hundred years. The Hippocratic Oath says explicitly, I will not give a person a poison to produce euthanasia. And in the same way, I won’t do an abortion, neither will I refer for them. That’s what the Hippocratic Oath says and that’s the reason that you can trust your doctor is because they have vowed by all that they hold sacred that they will not kill you or your unborn child or grandma. You know that. That’s an important part. So one thing I would encourage every listener here is the next time you go into your doctor’s office, ask them, hey, doc, did you take the Hippocratic Oath? And if they say yes, they, well, what oath did you take? Do you have it somewhere? Because a lot of the Hippocratic oaths today are not the Hippocratic Oath. They’re things like, well, I vow to save the planet, or I vowed to use medical resources wisely. That’s not the oath, and that provides no protection for the patient. The Hippocratic Oath is the protection is the reason that patients can trust their doctor because it protects the patient from the things that the doctor could be tempted to do.
Jacob Barr :
So as a follow up, since Dobbs or the overturning of Roe, we’ve seen stories flying around about women and pro-life states finding themselves unable to reach receive treatment for their miscarriages of these we’ve heard the stories of these. What could be behind all these stories and what are your thoughts on why this is happening?
Donna Harrison :
Well, I first of all, it’s very hard to know the details of a story without looking at the medical record. So anybody can say anything about anything. And without looking at the medical record, you have no way of knowing whether that woman actually was having a miscarriage or not. So and we are privileged to the Privy to the medical record. The second thing is, I think that major media has done an incredible spin to put fear into the heart even of physicians who should know better to say, well, maybe the law doesn’t really say that. And what I would suggest to those physicians is read your law, It’s written in English. You can do this, you know, read the law. They’re very explicit. The laws say things like this. What is banned, are those procedures done deliberately to end the life of a human being for no medical reason. The law does not include miscarriage treatment, ectopic pregnancy treatment that’s what the laws say. They’re explicit, so. For a physician to say, well, I don’t know if I can treat this, there’s a bit of laziness on the part of that physician. Read the law in your state, it’s not that hard. And I think that everybody has to go take a breath because 85 to 93 % of OB GYN’s in this country did not do abortions in their practice. 85 to 93 %. We all treated miscarriages, we all treated ectopics, We all separated moms and babies to save the moms life regardless of the baby’s gestational age and sometimes those babies did die. That is not an abortion. If there’s a medical reason to separate the mom and the baby, that is not an abortion. So I think we have to take a breath and think very clearly about what is an abortion and what it is not. An abortion is a drugs or surgery or procedure done with the primary purpose of producing a dead baby. That’s the purpose of an abortion for no medical reason. If you’re separating the mom and the baby in order to make sure that the mom can live, that’s not an abortion. That’s a separation done with the medical reason of trying to prevent two people from dying. Yes, we know the baby can die and probably will if the baby’s less than 22 weeks. We still separate because if we don’t separate, mom and baby die. So that’s not an abortion. You know, an abortion is done again, I know I’ve said this, but i think it’s important to repeat, an abortion is by definition those drugs or devices or procedures that are done with the purpose of producing a dead baby. That’s the primary purpose of an abortion.
Jacob Barr :
That makes sense and I’m glad you say it again and again because we need to hear it, because that’s something that you know that the media is spinning other stories and false beliefs that are, that we hear often and so we need to have the truth highlighted. So similar to, well in several, there’s been several stories of people not being able to get a topic pregnancy care when they have an ectopic pregnancy. And I’m wondering, are there any laws, pro-life laws or any laws in general that prevent medical care to someone with a topic pregnancy? Because it seems like there’s been people saying that these pro-life laws are preventing people from getting care, you know, life saving care, or they’re having to, their doctors are afraid to provide care or something like that when there’s a ectopic pregnancy.
Donna Harrison :
Well, it’s ridiculous. I mean, again, I’m going to say to the doctors, to the patients, read the law, there is not a law in the country, not one single law in any place in the country that prevents a woman from getting ectopic pregnancy care. Not one single law in any place in the country, any state that prevents a woman from getting miscarriage care or from separating the mom and the baby to save the mom’s life. Not one law anywhere. Ectopic pregnancy care has nothing to do with abortion. It’s even a different procedure. You don’t do AD and C to treat ectopic. You do a surgery that opens up the abdomen. Either you know enough to get a laparoscope in or you know, maybe a bigger operation depending on how big the ectopic is and where it’s located. Or they receive a medicine called methotrexate. But that’s not abortion is when you have an intrauterine pregnancy and you do you do a procedure to end that life so when people are saying we couldn’t get a topic pregnancy care, that’s malpractice. That’s not that has nothing to do with the law that has to do with the person that you went to that didn’t do the right thing. So that’s malpractice.
Jacob Barr :
Yeah, that’s. Yeah, i’m really glad you spoke to that because that’s it just feels like these false beliefs need to be well when there when there’s a false belief, it needs the truth to be, needs the truth to be promoted and shared in order to then dispel or to you know remove the power of a false belief and to call it what it is, which is a lie or an you know, not true and just simply false. So when it comes to Abortion Pill reversal and in this new post row era, can you talk about, you know, how APR and Abortion Pill Reversal is, you know, what’s its role in this new post row era?
Donna Harrison :
Well, I’m really glad you asked that question because there’s a lot of misunderstanding about abortion pill reversal too. What we know, we know exactly how the abortion drug Methoprex works. The abortion drug Methoprex works by blocking the pregnancy hormone progesterone. And progesterone is the hormone that the woman’s body makes that allows her to her body to change and be able to carry and nourish a pregnancy. So Methoprex comes in and it blocks the action of progesterone. It not only blocks the action, it actually blocks the ability of her body to make more progesterone. And when that happens, baby starves. But we also know something else from the drug development literature that is when they were developing Methotrex back in the eighties. There’s all kinds of studies that you have to do to look at how this drug works. And part of the way they know how the drug works is they took Methotrex, gave it to mice and then they gave progesterone is the natural hormone that your body makes. And lo and behold, when they did that, the drugs that got just the Methotrex, just the abortion drug, babies, mice, babies all aborted. The drugs that got Methoprex and progesterone babies didn’t abort. And they’ve also in the drug development literature, they looked at how can this work on a molecular level and they demonstrated clearly that in the presence of progesterone can kick the Methoprex off of the progesterone receptor. And what that does is that rescues the ability of the woman’s body to then care for her baby. But that progesterone, that extra progesterone that’s going to kick the Mythoprax off the receptor that progesterone has to be given within 72 hours why? Because after 72 hours of starving the baby, baby’s going to be dead, baby’s not going to live. So in order to increase the chances that the baby survives, you want the progesterone around, the sooner the better. So given within 72 hours you can take the number of babies who survive Methoprex poisoning, you can take it from 25 % so one out of five will survive the Methoprex poisoning at the best if you don’t give anything and you can increase that to about 68 % survive. It’s not 100 %. Ok, so there are some babies that even if you give progesterone, they’re not going to live. They’re not going to make it, but you can rescue a good % of them. And there’s over 3000 babies now who are alive right now because of abortion pill reversal. So this is information that every woman needs and she needs to have it before she gets pregnant. Why because she’s only got 72 hours after she takes that pill, that first pill for her to be able to access the progesterone that can save her baby’s life, that can increase the chances that her baby can live that’s.
Jacob Barr :
Amazing. So another question on APR is, let’s see so critics of APR have claimed that the treatment is not based on rigorous studies and that and even that it could be a it could be dangerous for women. Why are they saying those things and why are they wrong?
Donna Harrison :
Well, again, the abortion industry says lots of things that is pure marketing and pure spin and has nothing to do with reality. They are completely wrong because the drug development literature is very clear as to how Mythoprex works and it’s for a physician it’s like poisoning treatment one O 1. Ok, let me give you an analogy. If you are in your garage and you get carbon monoxide poisoning, we take it to the hospital. What’s the first thing that’s done? You’re given high dose oxygen why? Because we know the carbon dioxide binds exactly the same place oxygen does and we know oxygen can kick the carbon dioxide off of the red cell, off the hemoglobin and you’re rescued. Ok, that’s poisoning an antidote. Niprex is a poison. It’s a poison of the progesterone receptor. The antidote to that poison is progesterone. It’s the natural antidote. And so it’s such basic science. It’s like the first thing you learn in biochemistry it’s the first kind of things that you learn when you look at Physiology, that is how your body works. So it’s well based in fact so much so there was a when abortion for Reversal was first starting to get some press coverage. The New York Times did a story on it and they ask an endocrinologist, Harvey Klingman, I think was his name, who’s per choice i guess they said, well, what do you think of this and he said, well, probably work. My daughter was pregnant and had somehow gotten some Methoprex. First thing I’d do is give her progesterone. Couple weeks, probably work. I’m sure that’s not what the New York Times reporter was expecting to hear. But the fact is, it’s simple. It’s basic Physiology. So that’s important for women to know. They need to know that there is hope. If they’ve made a bad decision, if they’ve been pressured into taking that first pill, there’s hope that they can rescue that baby and increase the chances that the baby survive. So Google abortion pill rescue or APR and that’s how you get the hotline to be connected with a medical professional who can prescribe progesterone for you and get you into prenatal care.
Jacob Barr :
Can you can you speak to the problem when it comes to doing like a double-blind study when it comes to, you know, let’s say half of the women take APR and half of them take a placebo. And when it comes to all of them wanting to save the life of their baby after taking the abortion pill, what would be the moral problem with a study like that?
Donna Harrison :
Well, the problem is these women want to save their baby. So if somebody were drowning, would we say, well, we’re going to do a study to see if life preservers work or not so half the women were going to throw out just a rope, and the other half we’re going to throw out a life preserver and we’re going to see which ones survive. Is that an ethical study? No, of course not. And what is so galling to me is that in the development and in the study of Methoprex, the abortion drug, there is not one single double-blind placebo-controlled trial why? Because the abortion industry said if a woman wants an abortion, it would be unethical not to give her one, not one single double blinded placebo-controlled trial. And yet when we know that this works because of animal models, because of basic Physiology, because of understanding how Miferex works and we know progesterone is safe. Progesterone has been used in the IVF industry for 50 years. There’s recently been a very large national study looking at the use of progesterone it’s called the prolonged study, the use of progesterone in women with threatened miscarriages. We know progesterone’s safe, We know it works. Every IVF patient is put on progesterone with no increase in complications. It’s a natural hormone. So for people to say it’s dangerous is again, it’s hallucinatory. You know, i mean these people are hallucinating or I should really actually say what it is. It’s a marketing spin it’s fear mongering. So the study that’s cited to say how dangerous Mithoprex or progesterone is, the study that’s cited, this is so ridiculous it was done by an abortionist, Mitchell Kreiman, and he had a total of 10 patients that he could evaluate 10. Ok, five of them got methoprax, the abortion drug. And then progesterone, the other five just got the abortion drug and a placebo. Ok, so in the five that got methoprax plus progesterone, 4 out of five of them, 80 % had a baby with a heartbeat at two weeks. One of them went to the for bleeding but by the time she got to the she passed all the tissues, so she was sent home with no treatment. That’s the ones who got progesterone, The ones who got the abortion drug alone, Methoprax. Two of them, two out of the five south 40 % had a baby with a heartbeat in two weeks. One of them ended up completely miscarrying with, you know, complete completing the abortion. Two of them went to the with massive hemorrhage. Both of them had to have surgery to intervene AD and C, and one of them had to be transfused. His study shows the opposite of what he said. The data from his study show how safe progesterone is after Methoprex and they show how dangerous it is to take Methoprex. And I have to tell you something else about that. And that is in their in our study of all the adverse event reports that were submitted to the FDA, we looked at hemorrhage rates in women who took Methoprex alone and in women who took Methoprexin the second drug Musoprosyl so the two drug regimen, the women who took the two drugs hemorrhaged at a higher rate and the women who took the Methoprex alone. So you have you have frankly a lie in the crime and study and anybody who can look at numbers and read English can look and see and verify. Don’t believe me? Pull the study it says exactly what I said it says and yet the authors of that study came to wrote in their conclusions something that had nothing to do with the data in the study. This is the kind of thing we’re dealing with instead of science, we’re dealing with marketing and everything about abortion is marketing market to the women make and believe things that aren’t true like safe and effective and so if you have to understand these people are out for profit and they’re profiting over your body wow.
Jacob Barr :
So and it feels like when someone is, you know, proven, you know to lie repeatedly that their you know that their ability to be an author in you know in the medical community would be greatly tarnished. And that and the fact, you know, the likelihood of them, the next thing that they say you know should be, you know, the weight of their previous honesty or false belief promotion should heavily influence. Now they’re looked at. Does that seem to be taking place when it comes to the abortion clinic and when they’re caught promoting false beliefs and lies, you know, spinning things, you know, why is that? Why is that not more prevalent when it comes to, you know, the weight as an author?
Donna Harrison :
Well, this comes more from this comes more from experience than anything else when Two and Two makes up five, you’re missing something. And I think unfortunately what we’re missing is that huge amount of cash that’s flowing to support the abortion industry, huge amounts. And so money talks and these people who have deliberately published things that are clearly in error, should not be able to publish, but they are over and over so follow the money.
Jacob Barr :
Wow thank you Donna for yeah, for your time and your just your for sharing of your intellect and your wisdom and your experience.