Focus on the Family with Jim Daly

Preview:

Dr. Lile: We protect turtle eggs in Florida. In fact, during the turtle hatching season, you will see signs, triple layers of signs around all the turtle nests over on Pensacola Beach, all of these signs that say, “Do not disturb sea turtle nests.” So how are we giving protection to pre-born sea turtles left and buried in the beach on Pensacola, yet we’re not giving that same kind of protection for the babies in the womb?

John: That’s Dr. Bill Lile. He’s our guest today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly sharing about the value of every human life, every pre-born baby. Dr. Lile’s going to pull back the curtain on the atrocities of abortion, and he’s going to encourage us to take a strong stand for life.

Jim: You know, John, at its core, abortion raises profound questions about the authority and power of the creator, God, over life and death. I mean, I think we as human beings have it in our heart to know that God’s in control of those things, uh, up until more recently, right? Now we have euthanasia, and we have the whole battle for pre-born children in the womb and what’s morally right, what’s morally wrong. And I’m kind of, uh, struck by the fact that many, many states are now passing pro-abortion legislation, because are we really thinking through what this means as-

John: Hm.

Jim: … a species, as humanity?

John: Mm-hmm.

Jim: What are we saying about each other? And we’re gonna get into some great content today. And the one thing I really wanna encourage you is, certainly if you believe in what we’re talking about, share it with a friend, both believer and nonbeliever. Help persuade. Uh, get this message out. It will not embarrass you. We’re gonna talk about the science of the pre-born baby, what is true, what is false and what’s going on in the culture today. So, I’m looking forward to it.

John: Yeah, we have a right, um, to speak out. We have a, a responsibility to know what’s going on in this realm. And we’re so glad that Dr. Bill Lile has joined us. He is, as you said, Jim, known as the Pro-Life Doc. Uh, he is passionate and active, both in his OBGYN private practice and as a national speaker who, uh, talks about the magnificence of the pre-born life. And Dr. Lile, uh, also serves Focus on the Family as a member of our Physician’s Resource Council. They help guide and direct us in matters like this.

Jim: Dr. Lile, welcome back to Focus. Good to have you.

Dr. Lile: It’s great to be back, sir.

Jim: Yeah. And, you know, the, the good thing, what I so appreciate about where you’re coming from, both as a believer, first of all, but then as a trained physician, an OBGYN. How many, uh, women have you served over your career?

Dr. Lile: Since 1999, I’ve delivered over 5,000 babies now, um, mostly singleton, but twins, triplets, quadruplets.

Jim: Wow.

Dr. Lile: So, the mom is my patient, but the baby’s my patient as well, and especially with high-risk obstetrics, we are now not diagnosing, not just treating, but we are curing the babies in the womb. So, if I have quadruplets, I have five patients that walk into my office-

Jim: (laughs)

John: (laughs)

Dr. Lile: … every time they come for a visit.

Jim: Now, the skeptic’s gonna say, “Do you get to bill it five times then?”

John: (laughs)

Dr. Lile: Do not.

Jim: (laughs) Okay. I just wanna make sure. But in, in light of that, one of the things that is so amazing, and I, I would like a little more of filling in the picture of those in utero surgeries that are going on now, I mean, for things like spina bifida and other things that ail a child in the womb. We are able, you are able because you’re trained, to go in and do those surgeries, uh, to correct some of those issues that they’re facing, right?

Dr. Lile: We spend 12 years in training on how to treat moms and babies as patients, and we have federal law regarding patients’ rights. We have state laws regarding patient’s bill of rights. So, if they are a patient, then they deserve protection. And we are now providing blood transfusions to babies in the womb as early as 18 weeks gestation. We’re doing open heart surgery where the babies actually have their own anesthesiologist and they’re removing tumors from the heart. We’re doing brain surgery, spina bifida corrective surgery is now in its third generation. We all remember 25 years ago, in 1999, the picture of the hand that came out from the womb-

Jim: Yeah.

Dr. Lile: … that was Samuel Armas. Well, Samuel Armas is now out of college, he has a girlfriend, he plays basketball. Samuel was a patient in the womb, and now he has an improved quality of life for the rest of his life. But then we started to do these same surgeries fetoscopically, where we placed a scope inside the womb, and without making an incision in the womb, we can repair the spina bifida. So, we now are treating the babies in the womb, we are curing the babies in the womb.

Jim: Bill, it’s so profound to hear what you’re saying, that this is a human being. Why, um, for those that oppose life, the pro-abortion doctors, for example, they’ve been through the same training you have been through. Why is there such a discrepancy about what life is?

Dr. Lile: It’s a matter of whether it’s not life. We recognize that at the moment of conception, that one egg is genetically unique from mom, dad, and the other eight billion people on the planet. This, we use science, and we use legislation, but this is a spiritual battle. It’s like, well, how’s this a spiritual battle? You’ve seen people burn the American flag. Well, why would somebody burn the American flag? Because the American flag is the image which represents the United States. So, if somebody hates the United States, they want to destroy the image which represents the United States. In Genesis 1:26, God said, “Let us make man in our image.” So, we are created in the image of God at the moment of conception. So, at its core foundation, abortion is an attack on the image of God out of a hatred for God. It’s just like the children of Israel doing evil in the sight of the Lord in the Old Testament, where they did evil, they were worshiping other idols, and they were offering their children as sacrifice. And God said, “Not only am I gonna take my hands off, I’m gonna strengthen your enemies. I’m gonna deliver you into the hands of the enemies for seven years, 10 years.” So, it’s a spiritual battle, it is evil.

A lot of the physicians that are performing these surgeries also are advocates for abortion. The fastest-growing fellowship in obstetrics now is a fellowship called complex family planning, where after 12 years of learning how to cure and heal moms and their babies, you spend two years in additional training on how to do late term abortions, and even selective terminations where you might have a mom who is pregnant with triplets and in order to increase the likelihood of a term delivery they can go and they can guide a needle right into the baby’s heart and take the life of one or two of the babies. That is Sophie’s choice. How can you decide which baby you’re going to kill? But that is the fastest-growing fellowship now. It’s called complex family planning, and it is purely evil.

Jim: Ah, that’s breathtaking, really. You know, this is a good spot to play this. Uh, of course in the recent presidential debate, the issue of abortion came up, and, you know, I’m not gonna speak to the politics or the candidates, but one candidate, along with the moderators of that debate, uh, seemed to suggest late term abortion does not happen, shaking their heads, no, no, no, seventh, eighth, ninth month, it just doesn’t happen. But I wanna play a clip for you that I came across on YouTube of a young lady from Students for Life of America. So called a clinic here in Colorado probing to get information on late term abortions. The clinic has been featured in The New Yorker magazine and on NBC News, known for its third trimester procedures. So, let’s play a clip from that phone call and get your reaction, Bill.

Clinic Representative: Yes, we do them a lot. We have been a third trimester, uh, abortion clinic since the ’70s.

Caller: Oh, okay. Okay. So, it’s normal to have, um, an abortion this late and everything?

Speaker 4Clinic Representative: Yes.

Caller: Okay. Um, thank you. Um, and I’m just curious, is the baby gonna feel any pain or anything?

Clinic Representative: No. No, it shouldn’t. So, what we do is on the first day, um, we do an injection of a medication called uh, digoxin. Uh, digoxin what it does is it will gently and slowly stop the fetal heartbeat. And then on the next two days, you would have your, uh, start working on dilating your cervix. And on the fourth day, that will be the procedure day, and, um, basically they will break your water, um, and induce the contractions of the, of your uterus. And when the sufficient dilation happens, then the fetus is removed and the placenta as well.

Jim: Did you catch what that woman on the other end of the line just said about late term abortions? “Yes, we do them a lot.” And remember, on that debate stage, we were told it never happens. And I wanna apologize for all the graphic nature of that, but let’s get to the truth. So, Bill, as a doctor, what’s really going on here? How would you, uh, critique the call we just heard?

Dr. Lile: It happens very frequently, that’s why there is now a fellowship in training on doing procedures just like this. We have eight states where abortion is legal at any gestational age for any reason. So, it is evil. This baby feels pain.

Jim: Wow.

Dr. Lile: And then even as far as laboring. Normally a labor takes one day, two days. This is a five-day process. It is incredibly painful, incredibly emotionally traumatic, but this is why they have a fellowship. It is not rare, it’s happening all across the country, including, despite what some people will say, they are allowing babies to die even after they have delivered.

Jim: Hm. Uh, Bill, that just, that does take my breath away, like, wow, how inhumane are we? Um, I wanna turn to another story that’s in the news right now. This young woman who died tragically. Her name was Amber Thurman. That’s now been pulled into the political arena as well. One side is saying Georgia’s lack of abortion law to provide a medically safe abortion is what killed her. She had to go to North Carolina where she was prescribed the abortion pill.

I think before we get to that specific case, just describe the number of abortions, the percentage that are now being done by the abortion pill, the lack of medical oversight in that context, and then specifically to Amber’s, uh, terrible situation.

Dr. Lile: Well, since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the number of abortions has actually gone up. Uh, legislation has changed, the abortion pill has increased from just a few years when we were here last, the number and percentage of abortions performed with the abortion pill has gone from 54% to 63%. The abortion pill is 98% effective in killing a baby in the womb up to 10 weeks gestation. Most new pregnant patients that come into an office are only about six to eight weeks pregnant. At 10 weeks, these babies have fingers, toes, they are moving, they are jumping up and down on the inside. And this is now 63% of all the abortions.

Dr. Lile: With the case of Amber Nicole Thurman, Amber was pregnant with twins, they were nine weeks along. Georgia has a heartbeat law, which means that if the baby has a heartbeat, you cannot abort that baby in Georgia, same as with Florida. Amber then sought care at an abortion clinic in North Carolina. She ran into a lot of traffic, she arrived late, they couldn’t do a surgical abortion, so they gave her the abortion pill and then they sent her back home to Georgia. The clinic in North Carolina never called to check on her to see how she was doing. Five days later, Amber was very, very sick. Amber then went to the emergency room, she had a fever, elevated white blood cell count, she had an infection. They contacted the OBGYN on call. He said, “Well, just start her on some antibiotics and I’ll maybe do a D&C in the morning.” The standard of care since there was an infection on the inside of Amber’s uterus would’ve been to empty the uterus. And here’s the key, neither of the twins had a heartbeat. So how can you blame Georgia’s heartbeat law for the death of Amber when neither twin had a heartbeat? But then the medical errors continued. He didn’t do a D&C the next morning. It wasn’t until 20 hours after she’d been admitted to the hospital that they took her to the operating room. Amber was septic. Amber was so sick they had started her on medications to try to raise her blood pressure. They were just gonna do a D&C, but then they realized she was sick, they needed to do a hysterectomy. They opened her up, not only was the uterus infected, but the bowel was ischemic and dead.

John: Hm.

Dr. Lile: They… Unfortunately, Amber died on the table in Georgia. Not because of the heartbeat law, Amber died because of the incompetence and malpractice of an OBGYN who did not follow the standard of care. Our opposition isn’t just against heartbeat laws, our opposition is against heartbeats. They do not value life. They will abort a baby at any gestational age. They will even selectively abort multiples like triplets and quadruplets by injecting individual babies with potassium chloride to kill “these” babies, but not “these” babies. So, it’s not the heartbeat laws which save lives, it is the heartbeats that our opposition hates, and that is why this is a spiritual battle.

John: Mm. Indeed, it is a spiritual battle. And, uh, we here at Focus on the Family are committed to continuing that battle for babies in the womb and their moms. And we want you to know that we’re here for you if you’re in tough spot, uh, give us a call.

If you’re able to support us, we have so much that we’re doing to support these women and their babies. Uh, get in touch with us and donate generously as you can. Our number is 800 the letter A and the word FAMILY. 800-A-FAMILY. And we’ve got details and help at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jim: Uh, John, let me put a, an emphasis on that. It’s 60 dollars-

John: Yeah.

Jim: … to save a baby’s life. We’ve been able to do the metrics. We’ve been doing this Option Ultrasound Program for 20 years. We know the results, over half a million babies saved over those 20 years. And it’s 60 dollars, so Jean and I are doing it every month, uh-

John: Mm-hmm.

Jim: … putting in that 60 dollars to save a baby’s life. And Robyn Chambers and her team, uh, every day they walk into the doors here thinking, “How do we do this better, more effectively?” And they work very closely with these pregnancy resource centers and other pro-life groups around the country so that we can bring that message of hope to a woman who’s desperate. We get that, there’s no recrimination toward the woman. She’s in a desperate spot. We need to help her make that right decision.

John: Hm.

Jim: Most women say, “If I had one person that was talking to me and able to help me, I would’ve chosen life.” How about that?

John: Mm-hmm.

Jim: So, we want to, boy, we want to, uh, encourage you to get engaged with us and do ministry together. I think it’s one of the most critical things we can do in the culture today.

Uh, Bill, before we leave the political environment, I wanna also clear the deck on another falsehood that was out there that there are no babies, uh, dying after they are born. That’s just absolutely not true.

Dr. Lile: It’s a lie. And even when it comes to physicians and politicians, if they can’t win on the truth and the reality, they will use deception and they will use lies. I mean, Satan is the author of lies and deception. But we know that even in Minnesota, we have testimony and evidence of at least eight babies that were delivered and allowed to die. That is violation of human rights.

Jim: Let me, uh, make this point. I did not realize this, I was reading the prep for our discussion today and our producer, Scott Welch, lifted this up. The US Endangered Species Act of 1973, ironically, the same year that Roe v. Wade was passed, was put in place to protect the turtle eggs on the beaches of, uh, Florida, your home state.

Dr. Lile: Yep.

Jim: … and to do other things. I was shocked that there was a pro-life group, a couple of them that filed suit, went all the way to the Supreme Court, to include the pre-born baby in the Endangered Species Act. And the Supreme Court denied it.

Dr. Lile: Correct.

Jim: So, what we’re doing, basically, and elaborate on this from a physician’s standpoint, we’re saying turtle eggs, these other endangered species, are far more important than the pre-born human baby.

Dr. Lile: We protect turtle eggs in Florida. In fact, during the turtle hatching season, you will see signs, triple layers of signs around all the turtle nests over on Pensacola Beach, all of these signs that say, “Do not disturb sea turtle nests.” Then it tells you what the penalty is for disturbing sea turtles.

Jim: It’s big.

Dr. Lile: You can have $100,000 fine and spend one year in jail. Meanwhile, at that same time over on Pensacola, it was legal to perform an abortion up to 24 weeks gestation even though we had babies surviving in our NICU at 23 weeks gestation. So how are we giving protection to pre-born sea turtles left and buried in the beach on Pensacola, yet we’re not giving that same kind of protection for the babies in the womb?

Jim: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s terrible. Um, the abortion pill reversal, you work with that, again, as a trained physician. This political battle, you have district attorneys now attacking these pregnancy resource centers that Robyn and her team work with every day here at Focus on the Family, claiming they’re bad medicine, they’re, you know, harmful to women, et cetera. But the reversal pill works, and there’s been something like four or 5,000 babies that have been saved through that practice. Again, for truth telling purposes, what’s the truth about the reversal pill and how’s it used and how does it save lives?

Dr. Lile: First, let’s talk about the abortion pill, how does it work? It blocks a very important hormone called progesterone. Big word. Progesterone is the pro-gestational steroid hormone. This is the natural hormone that is released by a woman’s body to keep a pregnancy going. We have the abortion pill; how does it work? It works by blocking that hormone progesterone. And within 72 hours, it will kill that baby in the womb. The mom takes the abortion pill, that can kill the baby. Then the next day, she takes a medication which causes contractions, a medication called Cytotec. We use Cytotec in normal obstetrics all the time. If I am inducing a patient who is 40 weeks pregnant with an eight-pound baby, I give her 25 micrograms of Cytotec. The protocol with the abortion pill is 800 micrograms of Cytotec. So, when women complain of bleeding, cramping and pain, it is intense.

Well, we all make mistakes. I have said things that I regret, I have done things that I regret. We have a lot of patients, 640,000 women each year have taken the abortion pill, and a lot of them have regrets. We have a hotline, abortionpillreversal.com, a ministry affiliated with Heartbeat International in Columbus, Ohio. So, when a woman has regrets and says, “What did I do?”, she can call the hotline, the nurses will connect with a physician geographically loaded close to them. How can we reverse the effect of the abortion pill?

Well, it’s just like with fentanyl. We have over 110,000 people that died of drug overdoses last year, the most prolific we’re gonna be with narcotics with fentanyl being one. Everybody who makes a bad decision does not die because we have Narcan. You can order Narcan on amazon.com and it’ll be at your house in two days.

Well, we have another antidote, and that is the antidote for the abortion pill. It blocks progesterone. How do we reverse that effect? We just give the moms progesterone bioidentical to what her body is already making, progesterone that we use with prevention of preterm labor to save moms and to save babies in the womb. We have over 500 doctors that can reverse the effect of the abortion pill, and we have documented that over 5,000 times. And I’ve attempted that 19 times, been successful 15 out of those 19 times.

John: Mm.

Dr. Lile: That’s the story of redemption. We are buying back the lives of these babies the same as when it comes to being redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, where 100% of us were heading toward eternal separation from God, we are bought back, we are redeemed through the blood of Christ out of love. These babies have 98% chance of heading to death, and yet, we can buy back those lives with $100 worth of progesterone.

Jim: Dr. Lile, I mean, we’re zeroing in at the end here, there’s only time for a couple more questions. We could talk all day about this. But, um, this culture of death that’s permeating our United States, how can we reverse this and nurture a culture of life? The other side has been so effective at making the baby a blob of tissue, to where women, moms that have the God-given instinct to love that child, to be the mother, the nurturer to that child, somehow they have been profoundly successful at separating that naturally God-given emotion to where they celebrate, they do a TikTok about their abortion, and they’re happy about it.

John: Hm.

Jim: I don’t believe that’s true underneath, maybe for some women, but just that, even that psychological disconnection seems unnatural.

Dr. Lile: I agree. One of the most effective tools that we’ve developed over the past year is actually a curriculum. We know that the truth will set you free, and it is giving them education. So, we’ve developed an eight-week curriculum complete with videos of… animations, not the actual surgeries, ’cause some people don’t like watching blood, but we have animations of open-heart surgeries, spina bifida corrective surgery, –

Jim: Wow.

John: Yeah.

Dr. Lile: … laser vascular surgery. But we also link that with scripture. And we show how the relationship that God has in the womb and why we have a duty to defend the image of God in the womb. So, we have poured our hearts into this. We wanna provide it as a tool for the church to use to teach our kids that a pregnancy is a new life created in the image of God.

Jim: Leaning just into the spiritual side of this, taking your doctor hat off, which-

Dr. Lile: Mm-hmm.

Jim: … again I so appreciate and respect the way you are the pastor of your surgery room if I could say it that way. And I’m sure you come in every day to work with that attitude, you’re the minister of medicine for these patients.

Dr. Lile: Absolutely. I pray over every baby that I’ve delivered.

Jim: Yeah.

Dr. Lile: 5,000.

Jim: Yeah, that’s, that’s awesome.

Dr. Lile: What an opportunity to bring new life from the inside to the outside. Of course you have to pray over that baby.

Jim: Yeah, that’s great. And then in that spiritual context, it can feel heavy for all of us in the Christian community that are doing this. So, two parts: What can we do as the lay people, uh, people listening to Focus, watching us on YouTube. If we did more to support women and life, I think this thing would be over, this argument would be done. What are the things that we can do to support your efforts as a pro-life OBGYN, the patients that you see? What are those things that we can do?

Dr. Lile: You have amazing tools right here at Focus. The ultrasound ministry shows that life in the womb and shows the development of that baby there in the womb.

Your local pregnancy center. We have hundreds and thousands of pregnancy centers. We spoke at a banquet here last night. The pregnancy centers need to be supported. They are providing counseling and love and the gospel for these young ladies and men.

Men’s ministries in pregnancy resource centers are incredibly important. There’s only one pregnancy that I know of that did not involve a man, and that was 2,000 years ago. Every pregnancy involves a man. We need to bring those men along.

We need to encourage our pastors. This is a spiritual battle. We spoke at a group of pastors at a conference, 120 different pastors in Alabama, and we asked them, most of them went to Christian colleges for undergrad and then went to seminary. We asked them, “How many of you had at least one day of training in how to discuss the issue of life from the pulpit?” After 120 pastors, only three had had one lecture on how to discuss the issue from the pulpit.

Paul, when he wrote to the Church of Ephesus, he said, “Pray for me that I would have the courage to speak as I must.” This is Paul. Paul, who got beat up and stoned, got up and went to the next city and did it all over again.”

Jim: (laughs)

Dr. Lile: We need to go to our pastors and say, “Listen, I support you. I’ve been here for years. I need… We need to hear this message coming from the pulpit for the adults for the matter of forgiveness, because between 18 and 24% of the members of our churches have personally been involved with an abortion. They are hurting, they need healing. Healing comes from true forgiveness, and true forgiveness only comes through the gospel.

Jim: And I am… You know, the, the point being that no matter what the circumstances in the culture, we fight for life.

Dr. Lile: We fight for life.

Jim: Whether we’re on… if we’re on the mountaintop with great court decisions or in the valley with not-so-great decisions and the culture, uh, leaning against us, we keep fighting. And I so appreciate what you’ve done over the years, Bill, and the way you continue to lead the fight as a professional, as a physician, for these little children and their moms. Thank you for that.

John: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lile: You’re welcome. It’s an honor.

Jim: Let me, uh, turn to you. Here’s the uncomfortable part. Can I make you a little uncomfortable? Let’s pour into this. Be part of saving a baby’s life. $60 is all it takes. And if we can depend upon you to do just that, I mean, writing a check is often the easiest thing to do. But going and volunteering at your local pregnancy center, getting involved, go to the school board meetings and other things where you can be a champion for life. Uh, I would encourage you to do that. Let’s take actions in our faith that back up our words.

John: Mm-hmm.

Jim: And you can start today by helping us with Option Ultrasound.

John: Yeah. And, uh, along those lines, Jim, of learning more, we do have a new website that we’ll link over to, for medical professionals, church leaders, businesses. We want to equip you with a multitude of ways to get involved. Uh, there’s a continuum of care that you can provide these pregnancy centers and that you can get involved with to make a statement for life. Uh, donate today, get equipped. We have all the details at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast or call 1-800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY.

Jim: And finally, vote life, you guys. If we are bible believing Christians, the Lord is for that baby in the womb. I have no doubt. You may be on the fence, uh, in that regard. There are some pro-abortion Christians. So, I would specifically speak to you to look into the scripture and let the Lord guide your heart-

John: Mm-hmm.

Jim: … on this issue. Don’t make it political. This is a moral crisis in the country, so vote life.

John: And on behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.