JustPearlyThings - August 01, 2023


Doctor BREAKS DOWN The Graphic Nature Of Abortion

Topics
medical abortion pills
Hosted by
Hannah Pearl Davis
You Won't Believe Who She CHEATED With The TRUTH On Why Men End RELATIONSHIPS

Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

193.36

Word count

1,990

Sentence count

157

Harmful content

Misogyny

12

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I speak to pro-life advocate and author, Dr. Rachel Ward, about abortion. We discuss the difference between late term and early term abortions, the pros and cons of abortion at different stages of pregnancy, and the benefits and disadvantages of different types of abortion options.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So, yeah, because I get that question a lot because I'm pro-life, but I don't have, like, a science or, like, medical background.
00:00:07.260 So people will ask me questions about late-term abortions. 0.97
00:00:10.760 And I've heard, or, like, the life, when the life of the mother is at risk.
00:00:15.340 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:00:15.920 But I've heard that that's super rare and they kind of mislead you on a lot of that data.
00:00:22.320 Yeah, absolutely.
00:00:23.020 So, like I say, there's 200,000 abortions in the UK every year, and at most 100 are because the mother's life is at risk.
00:00:30.640 So it's a tiny percentage of, a tiny fraction of 1%.
00:00:34.080 Even when you look at those abortions, some of them still say they're for mental health, where having an abortion isn't going to save a woman's life for mental health reasons.
00:00:43.980 One of them was even done for high blood cholesterol.
00:00:47.020 Like, it's really not something that is life-threatening.
00:00:49.840 Now, there are situations, very rarely, where you do have to deliver the baby early to save the woman's life.
00:00:57.540 So if the woman has an infection in her uterus, if the woman has particularly high blood pressure as a result of the pregnancy, in many of those situations, you have to deliver the baby.
00:01:09.980 And if you do that before the baby is viable, then, of course, the baby will pass away as a result.
00:01:14.920 No one wants that to happen, but that's what you have to do medically to save the woman's life. 0.74
00:01:19.000 Now, some people call that an abortion.
00:01:21.460 I would call it an abortion. 0.97
00:01:22.860 And so, yes, those abortions are medically necessary, but they're extremely rare.
00:01:27.420 Some people don't even call them abortions at all.
00:01:30.640 So this is a sort of misconception because there's often a debate about, is abortion ever medically necessary?
00:01:36.860 And we know that delivering the baby early can be necessary.
00:01:41.220 The real question is, do you call that an abortion?
00:01:44.140 So, yes, it is necessary to do that sometimes, but it's extremely rare.
00:01:49.120 And what happens during an early abortion?
00:01:52.500 Like when they give you the—because it's a pill at first, right?
00:01:56.260 And then there's a surgical abortion, right?
00:01:58.960 Well, you can kind of do either at any time up until about 24 weeks.
00:02:03.940 No way!
00:02:04.720 Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, generally early abortion.
00:02:08.080 Really?
00:02:08.400 So you can do an abortion pill at six months, basically? 0.99
00:02:11.800 Yeah, you can do abortion pills any time. 0.93
00:02:14.320 But if it's late in pregnancy, it's basically inducing labor.
00:02:17.560 Like it's pretty much the same thing.
00:02:19.060 You just—you have to kill the baby first with an injection, but then you just induce labor.
00:02:23.580 And, you know, it's a normal birth if it's really late. 0.63
00:02:26.160 So that would be a late medical abortion. 1.00
00:02:28.740 You can't really do late surgical abortions just because the baby's so big at a late stage.
00:02:34.300 So you generally have to kill the baby before about 20, 24 weeks, and then you can do a surgical abortion. 0.87
00:02:41.300 But you couldn't do a surgical abortion on, like, an eight-month baby easily because it's, you know, it's too big and tough.
00:02:47.500 So, like, if I got an abortion at six weeks, what would that look like?
00:02:52.660 So, yeah, so typically an abortion at six weeks would be a medical one, which means it uses pills. 0.98
00:02:57.660 So for any medical abortion, you take two pills.
00:03:00.720 The first of them breaks down the lining of the uterus. 0.62
00:03:03.780 And, of course, that is what helps the baby to survive.
00:03:06.280 So you're sort of getting rid of all the things that the baby needs to survive, particularly oxygen is the key thing.
00:03:11.700 So you deprive the baby of oxygen.
00:03:14.240 Then the second pill, misoprostol, causes contractions.
00:03:17.800 It causes a miscarriage.
00:03:19.760 Oh.
00:03:20.920 Yeah.
00:03:21.220 So usually the first pill kills the baby.
00:03:24.260 If it doesn't, then the contractions of the uterus will kill the baby at that stage. 0.99
00:03:27.940 No way.
00:03:29.320 Occasionally, at a later stage, the baby might survive it and live outside of the womb for a little bit, but then usually passes away because it's not supported.
00:03:36.700 No.
00:03:37.060 Oh.
00:03:37.820 So, yeah.
00:03:38.620 At six weeks, the baby survives outside of the womb for a little bit?
00:03:43.040 It would probably be exceedingly rare.
00:03:45.280 So there have been a couple of studies.
00:03:47.260 This is where, actually, they get the brainwave statistic from because at six weeks, the baby would be – this study was from miscarried babies.
00:03:56.640 So it was a natural miscarriage.
00:03:58.300 And some of those babies survived not on their own but in, like, a salt solution.
00:04:03.360 So they could survive a very, very short time in a salt solution at that time.
00:04:07.260 Wow.
00:04:07.980 But not much longer and certainly not without a salt solution.
00:04:11.820 So, like, yeah, you don't – but at later stages, you know, there have been babies born at, say, 23 weeks from a medical pill.
00:04:20.260 And because they didn't do the foeticide injection first, the baby survived.
00:04:24.240 And then legally, they're supposed to keep the baby alive at that stage.
00:04:28.400 And sometimes they do.
00:04:29.420 In many cases, they just leave the baby to die.
00:04:31.440 And there's been a lot of scandals about that over the last 20 years or so.
00:04:35.080 Wait.
00:04:35.340 So the baby will be born and it's alive that early?
00:04:40.000 That would be later.
00:04:41.200 Oh, later.
00:04:41.940 Yeah.
00:04:42.180 So – sorry, let me clarify.
00:04:43.880 So later on, if the babies, say, like –
00:04:47.200 But it's the same process.
00:04:48.680 Yeah, it's the same process.
00:04:49.540 The only difference early and late is that in a late-stage abortion after about 20 weeks, you have to perform foeticide.
00:04:56.840 Now, the clue is in the name.
00:04:58.100 It's, like, homicide or suicide.
00:04:59.600 It's killing and it's on the foetus.
00:05:01.560 So the way this is done typically is that they get an injection, they put it through the mother's tummy, and they would inject usually potassium chloride straight into the baby's heart, sometimes into somewhere else.
00:05:13.800 But I think usually they would aim for the heart.
00:05:17.360 Now, this chemical, potassium chloride, is used in very low concentrations in medicine all the time.
00:05:23.240 So it's not the fact that they use it.
00:05:24.760 But at the sort of high concentrations to kill someone, human rights groups all over the world have protested against this when it comes to capital punishment.
00:05:35.060 So say there's, like, a rapist or a murderer who's on death row, you will get all the human rights groups in the world saying you cannot use these high concentrations of potassium chloride because it's excruciating, it's torture, it's just so painful, no one should ever go through that, not even murderers and rapists.
00:05:52.560 Now, that exact same chemical is used, and I should say that vets don't use it for putting down animals either.
00:05:59.200 Like, it's just to all the veterans.
00:06:00.620 Because it's so painful?
00:06:02.080 Yeah.
00:06:02.520 How do they know it's painful if they die?
00:06:06.360 To be honest, I don't know exactly how they know.
00:06:08.000 I guess they would have done it in some cases and they, you know, it doesn't kill people immediately, right?
00:06:13.660 So this is a big problem with euthanasia stuff is that, you know, often actually it doesn't kill the person or the animal straight away and there's a lot of suffering first.
00:06:22.560 And so I assume they've, you know, had those sort of bad situations before.
00:06:28.900 So, yeah, they would normally have to do foeticide first at a late stage so that the baby comes out dead.
00:06:34.940 Because if you don't do foeticide after about 20 weeks, if the baby comes out, it might live and you'll have to take care of it.
00:06:43.280 And, of course, that's against the point of the abortion.
00:06:46.400 So just finally then on to clarify about the early stage, in the early stages, say like 10 weeks or so, if you do the abortion pills and the baby survives, which is rare, but it could happen, it could only really survive if you put it into like a salt solution.
00:07:03.360 It couldn't survive on its own at a really early stage.
00:07:06.100 So, I hope that makes sense.
00:07:07.780 So, okay, I just want to make sure I understand.
00:07:09.820 So you essentially, early on, they give the woman a pill, if an earlier stage abortion, and that destroys the lining of her uterus.
00:07:20.800 Yeah, so that pills me for Pristone.
00:07:22.100 Which, in turn, deprives the baby of oxygen and nutrients.
00:07:28.460 Nutrients, too, I'm guessing.
00:07:30.060 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:07:30.460 Okay, okay.
00:07:30.940 And that kills the baby.
00:07:32.960 Usually, yeah.
00:07:33.720 Usually.
00:07:34.720 And then they take a second pill, which then they give birth to the baby, basically.
00:07:40.680 Yeah, yeah.
00:07:41.500 And those two pills are the same for any age, any gestation of abortion.
00:07:45.660 Okay.
00:07:46.140 And so then the girl is just like at home and it just like comes out.
00:07:50.380 Well, yeah, so this has been one of the big concerns about medical or chemical abortion, because this is something that has, you know, it's only become really mainstream in the last 10 to 20 years.
00:08:00.640 So before that, you know, 50 years ago, abortions pretty much had to be surgical.
00:08:05.200 They had a few other ways of doing it, but it was generally surgery.
00:08:08.780 Whereas now they have the abortion pills.
00:08:10.820 And so there's been a lot of, you know, concern about these for various reasons.
00:08:14.940 One of them is a big court case in the U.S.
00:08:17.280 But one of the concerns is that if women are going home and having these pills at home and they're basically having a miscarriage at home and aborting their baby at home, you know, it's not like a surgical abortion where the doctor takes out all of the baby and removes it and hides it from the woman, because that's what they're told to do is hide it because it's clearly a baby.
00:08:36.760 In a medical abortion, the woman has to do it herself and see the baby. 0.99
00:08:41.580 Now, sometimes if it's very small or there's a lot of blood or whatever, they won't see it.
00:08:46.080 And so you'll get some people say, oh, I had a medical abortion and it was just like a blood clot.
00:08:50.460 It was just like a heavy period.
00:08:51.960 For some women, that will be what they experience. 1.00
00:08:54.020 But there are also many, many women who say, you know, at eight weeks or nine weeks, it was a baby and I saw its arms.
00:09:01.980 I saw its head.
00:09:03.340 I saw, you know, this was a human being there and they have to flush it down the toilet or put it in the bin or something else.
00:09:09.340 They have to dispose of it themselves.
00:09:11.060 So there's been a lot of concern about the mental trauma that this would, you know, impact on a woman in that situation.
00:09:16.560 So, yeah, we had a girl on our show that said that.
00:09:20.660 She said she had no idea it was going to be that, like, developed.
00:09:23.360 Right, exactly.
00:09:24.100 And when it came out, she was just like, she couldn't believe it was so, I mean, then she did it again, though.
00:09:28.840 So I was like, yes, she's like three.
00:09:31.820 I was like, Jesus.
00:09:33.020 It's common.
00:09:33.660 I mean, it beats abortion, about 40% of abortions.
00:09:37.020 Yeah, exactly.
00:09:37.780 It beats abortion. 0.74
00:09:38.540 So my question with the, so, okay, first abortion, they deliver it.
00:09:47.300 It was surgical before, so 15 years ago, what did they do?
00:09:50.960 They cut you open and then took it out or?
00:09:54.140 Typically, no.
00:09:55.180 So you still get surgical abortions now and they can be done at any time up until, like, the third, you know, to the end of the second trimester, roughly.
00:10:02.820 So at an early stage, they would use a vacuum.
00:10:06.700 So this can be manual or it can be an electric one.
00:10:09.600 They would basically vacuum out the embryo or baby.
00:10:12.860 And the force of the vacuum is what kind of destroys the baby in that situation.