In this episode, we talk to Dr. Kelly about abortion. We discuss abortion and the pro-life movement, and how abortion affects women and their mental health. We also talk about why abortion should be legalized in the United States.
00:00:00.000Thank you. I'm curious. So you're a doctor.
00:00:02.640Yeah. Did you like what's your experience with have you ever like worked with doctors that have done abortions or what's your.
00:00:09.180Oh, yeah. I actually have a friend who ran BPAS, the largest abortion provider in the country.
00:00:14.700She was the CEO, but she's a very sincere, honest woman who thinks she's doing the right thing for women.
00:00:19.540And so, you know, yeah, we have a good friendship.
00:00:23.680I have plenty of colleagues who do abortions. I obviously disagree with them.
00:00:27.040You know, in the Hippocratic Oath, it's it literally explicitly says I will not do abortions.
00:00:31.240It's been pretty, pretty integral to the medical profession for centuries and centuries.
00:00:36.440I did not know that. Yeah, it's most people don't know.
00:00:40.380Actually, someone said, did you not take an oath? Why are you pro-life?
00:00:43.340And the oath literally says you can't do abortions. It's pretty wild.
00:00:48.280Yeah. For me, you know, this is this is an issue that is both ethical, but it's also medical.
00:00:52.540Like when you look at the outcomes, women who have abortions for an unwanted pregnancy, this is women who have an unwanted pregnancy.
00:00:59.820If you have an abortion, you have a 30 percent increased risk of anxiety, a 70 percent increased risk of suicide, a 130 percent increased risk of alcohol abuse and a 300 percent increased risk of drug abuse.
00:01:12.040And that's if you don't have one, if you if you have an abortion, if you have one.
00:01:15.920Yeah. Yeah. Compared to the same women with the same previous psychiatric issues, the same socioeconomic stuff, the same unwanted pregnancy.0.86
00:01:24.300Correlation doesn't equal causation. There could be a number of variables for those reasons.
00:01:28.060But that's why they take into account all of those things.
00:01:30.240So they adjust for socioeconomic status, for previous psychiatric history, for domestic violence, for all sorts of things.
00:01:36.040And they find even when you keep those constant, the women who have abortions have much worse mental health outcomes.
00:01:41.320Well, and I think it's just common sense, to be honest.
00:01:44.140This is why sometimes I'm like, you don't even need to study to tell you that.
00:01:47.140Like, I know women that have had abortions. They're never happy after.1.00
00:01:50.880The women that are keeping them are more likely to be in happy relationships in the first place.1.00
00:01:54.480If they have the support, they're going to have better mental health outcomes.
00:01:56.240But this is like, it's always a cope. It's always there's something.
00:01:58.820You know, it's so funny. Women have never heard that argument when we're talking about pay gap.
00:02:12.520So you would never hear a woman say, well, there are so many other factors that could contribute to it.
00:02:17.800But it's funny how they say that for abortion.
00:03:31.460So what they do is before they do the abortion, they will put a needle through the mummy mother's tummy and they will stick it into the baby's heart or sometimes into the head.0.99
00:03:40.460And they will pump in potassium chloride and that will kill the baby.
00:03:44.460Now, this has been banned, potassium chloride, in capital punishment.
00:03:48.740So if you look at human rights groups, they say you cannot use this chemical in capital punishment because it's inhumane to kill rapists and murderers this way.
00:03:57.840But this is exactly the same chemical they use to perform fetus side in late term abortions.
00:04:02.740Now, those are a small number, but, you know, they still occur.
00:04:05.160There's still hundreds of them each year in this country.
00:04:08.880Surgical abortions are quite different.
00:04:41.980And if you read academic papers where abortion providers give their thoughts on it, many of them say, actually, this is terrible.
00:04:49.480Many abortion providers say, I'm only going to do it up to 12 weeks because after that, it's just too horrible.
00:04:53.900So it's something that, you know, most abortions are in the first trimester.
00:04:59.340I'm not pretending that most abortions are these horrible, gruesome, late-term things.
00:05:03.200But just as an example, there are 3,000 abortions in this country after 20 weeks each year.
00:05:08.560So after 20 weeks, five months, when the baby's pretty much viable, 3,000 abortions take place by those sorts of methods.
00:05:16.700And so it's still something that, you know, if 3,000 children were being killed by that method in any other circumstance, we'd say that's way too many.
00:07:24.840I'm not trying to pretend that from the moment of conception, the baby will feel things and will always feel something during an abortion.
00:07:30.120But certainly by the end of the first trimester, I think, is extremely likely.
00:07:34.920And we don't know exactly when consciousness begins, but it probably does begin within the first trimester.
00:07:40.200And at that point, if you deprive the baby of oxygen, it doesn't matter whether you're covering its head or just cutting the umbilical cord or whatever.
00:07:49.080When your body is deprived of oxygen, if you are conscious, then, you know, that will affect you.
00:07:56.280And that is what causes the demise of the baby.
00:07:58.540Yes, but I guess with a consciousness argument, it does not bother me because babies don't even get self-awareness to 15-odd months.
00:08:06.500And I don't advocate for throwing babies into dumpsters.
00:08:09.100So the consciousness that a thing this small has is relatively irrelevant, in my opinion.
00:08:23.740But that doesn't mean I think babies should be thrown in dumpsters.
00:08:26.420Just because it doesn't have self-awareness capabilities yet, it hasn't even reached stage one, doesn't mean that I don't think it is an entity that is existing that should be protected and has protection.
00:08:36.220Sure, but I think most neurologists and psychologists would say the mirror test is not a good test of self-awareness.
00:08:41.760Well, it doesn't pass any self-awareness tests until around that age.
00:08:44.860But again, I don't think it's important because I don't advocate for destruction of babies when they're born.
00:08:52.140So whether there is any like valuable consciousness there doesn't really matter too much to me.
00:08:59.480So you think if it feels excruciating pain as like a newborn baby, that doesn't matter?
00:09:26.120And so they would just do surgery on newborn babies without any painkillers, without any anesthesia.
00:09:31.000But they changed that a few decades ago because there was a pretty unanimous consensus within medical science that newborn babies can feel pain, even if they can't pass the mirror test.
00:09:41.740Yes, but regardless of when they feel pain, if they are not of any kind of valuable consciousness to me, which I don't think they gain until much older, it doesn't matter because it's just trying to put an emotional response on a blob.
00:10:05.080It is not an entity that is developed enough for anything to be of any importance.
00:10:10.760The pain receptors are just irrelevant to me.