The John-Henry Westen Show - March 10, 2021


From Jewish to Catholic to Pro-Lifeļ¼š a Physician's journey


Episode Stats


Length

38 minutes

Words per minute

151.3513

Word count

5,813

Sentence count

334

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Dr. Robin Perucci is a neonatologist who was born Jewish and is now a practicing Roman Catholic. In this episode, she shares her story of conversion from Judaism to Catholicism and how her faith has changed her life.

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 .
00:00:00.220 Hello, and welcome to this episode of the John Henry Weston Show, where I'm very pleased
00:00:04.280 to bring you someone who is quite unique, actually.
00:00:07.620 She is a neonatologist, but not only that, she is someone who was born Jewish and is
00:00:13.540 now a practicing Roman Catholic, and that has a great impact on also what she does in
00:00:18.660 her life.
00:00:19.060 It's going to be great.
00:00:19.920 Please stay tuned.
00:00:30.000 Dr. Robin Perucci, please welcome to the program.
00:00:42.720 It's a pleasure to be here.
00:00:44.260 Praise God.
00:00:44.840 Let's start as we always do with the sign of the cross.
00:00:47.080 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
00:00:50.620 Amen.
00:00:52.260 Robin, I really want to start with your conversion story, because it's such an incredible journey.
00:00:58.420 You know we have Mother Miriam, who is a great friend of mine.
00:01:02.060 She runs a daily show on LifeSite News called the Mother Miriam Live Show, and her journey
00:01:06.940 is just so fantastic.
00:01:08.420 It's inspired so many people, and yet you have a similar kind of a journey.
00:01:12.780 Where did your journey start?
00:01:14.360 It really, in earnest, began when I went back to school at Loyola, although growing up, I
00:01:24.780 had always been the kid who liked Sunday school, and I couldn't wait for people to be able to
00:01:33.180 talk about God, because it felt like I'd always been talking to Him.
00:01:39.520 And then I learned kind of quickly that that wasn't normal, and the rest of my family and
00:01:46.240 friends kind of looked at me like, oh, that's a little odd.
00:01:49.220 So I kind of learned to, you don't talk about prayer, and you don't really admit that God
00:01:58.520 is an active partner, is an active part of your life.
00:02:02.440 And I ended up, I was in a dance company and toured with them for a number of years, but
00:02:08.360 the life in the performing arts world is every bit as weird as you hear.
00:02:16.040 Organized religion just kind of went away for a while, although it always felt odd that I had
00:02:23.540 done that. And when I left the dance company, I went back to Loyola, really because, I thought,
00:02:33.620 because they got their application back to me first. I had no idea what a Jesuit was.
00:02:38.820 I truly, I wanted to go into medicine, because I was dancing at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic,
00:02:49.700 and many dear friends were dying, and it was awful. One of them, I remember actually even saying to me,
00:02:57.500 my doctor has the personality of a bedpan. And I was like, oh, I can do this better than that.
00:03:02.860 And so away, away I went. I never had a desire growing up to be a physician. No one in my family,
00:03:11.920 they're doctors, they're teachers. But I always just knew I was going to be working with people,
00:03:16.940 caring about people with Central. So I went back to Loyola, and we had to take theology classes. It
00:03:25.060 was part of the core curriculum. And on the schedule, it said, you know, introduction to Christian
00:03:31.580 thinking. I'm like, no, that's not going to fly. But there was a, there was a class in Old Testament.
00:03:37.640 I was like, ah, that one's mine. Okay, I'm in. It did not occur to me to ever look to see who was
00:03:43.480 teaching the class. And so I still remember Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 11 o'clock, kids are all filing
00:03:52.400 in and standing outside the door of that classroom was a priest in full clerics. And I was,
00:04:00.640 at first, I was just terrified. I'm like, this is the enemy. I mean, my, I grew up with stories about
00:04:07.300 pogroms. My great grandmother came here from Russia and escaped, you know, the Soviet Union,
00:04:12.660 when Jews weren't allowed to escape or to get out. So this, this was very scary. And then by the time I,
00:04:23.780 you know, in the crush of kids coming in the room, by the time I already got to my seat,
00:04:27.100 I had gone straight from being absolutely terrified of this guy to just really kind of
00:04:33.560 ticked off going, all right, priest, bring it. Let's, let's hear you say a Hebrew name.
00:04:40.600 Let's hear you talk about these characters that I love and adore. And our Lord, in our wisdom and
00:04:47.180 interesting sense of humor, gave me the absolute perfect person to talk about this. Father Mitch
00:04:55.480 Pacwa, who's known and beloved from EWTN was my, was teaching at Loyola. Father had just come back,
00:05:03.220 I think, finishing his PhD in Old Testament from Jerusalem, speaks, you know, at that point,
00:05:10.940 I think he only might've spoken nine or 10 languages as opposed to now he's up to 13,
00:05:15.460 including ancient Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek. So I listened to him talking. First of all, he didn't,
00:05:25.560 he speaks way better Hebrew than I ever will in this lifetime. So let me clear on that. And he spoke
00:05:31.520 with such love and reverence for these characters that I was like, hmm, okay.
00:05:37.660 Okay. And as usual, because it is really so ingrained within the Jewish tradition,
00:05:45.700 you ask questions. I mean, that's what the Mishnah and the, you know, the Talmud are all about.
00:05:52.300 You don't silence voices, you ask questions, and then you write down the answers, and you argue about
00:05:57.840 it. And that's just part of that wonderful tradition. So I couldn't resist the chance
00:06:04.100 to ask questions. And by about class number three, I did get up the nerve to say,
00:06:10.780 Father, I'd like to compliment you on your Hebrew. Could I talk to you maybe outside the class about
00:06:17.240 this? Well, he was ecstatic. And I once again was like, oh, now what have I done? And he claims on
00:06:26.940 that first visit that I yelled at him. I don't think that's quite true. I do remember absolutely
00:06:35.380 pointing at a Bible that he had on the front of his desk and said, okay, do you believe in that?
00:06:43.220 I mean, all of it, not the parts and pieces. And he kind of chuckled at me and said, yeah.
00:06:48.560 And from that moment, we spent the next three years, actually, it's now been closer to 30 years
00:06:56.600 still arguing with each other, but he and God won. In those early days, boy, there were three
00:07:03.880 different Bibles open in Greek, Hebrew, English, as we argued and debated and wrestled with
00:07:11.960 everything under the sun, as Solomon would say. What was for you, one of the hardest things you
00:07:18.960 remember going through that you had to confront? I remember reading Isaiah for the first time
00:07:25.300 with eyes open, go and I don't know what I read before, because I had seen parts of it. But I
00:07:32.000 remember the night I was in the library, reading Isaiah 53, you know, reading the suffering servant.
00:07:37.860 And just, I was in tears going, when, when did Jesus get into this? Here he is. I mean,
00:07:46.300 this is describing what happened. And then of course, I went back to Psalm 22 and just,
00:07:52.560 oh my goodness. I didn't know what to do. There was a point when, from a cerebral way of thinking,
00:08:02.960 you know, I agreed, yes, Jesus fulfilled everything, but the biggest stumbling block,
00:08:09.520 bar none, was disappointing my family. I mean, I was the kid who just wanted, you know, to make
00:08:17.080 Aliyah, to go back, you know, can I go back to Israel? Can I be part of youth group? And so for me to
00:08:23.180 be the one that was going to say, I think there's something else, you guys. And one of the things,
00:08:30.740 you know, in hindsight, Father Mitch has always commented on, he said, what he enjoyed about my
00:08:36.300 story is I didn't get rid of the Judaism I loved and grew up with. I actually refound it. And I got 0.90
00:08:45.720 to build on that. I got the second chapter. It wasn't a rejection of anything. If anything,
00:08:55.460 he always laughs at me that I became a better Jew and started following the laws a little bit better,
00:09:02.520 having to deal with facing my family was kind of put a stop to things for, for, for a fair amount of
00:09:10.840 time. And then, okay, this is the part that always gets uncomfortable to tell because it's just weird.
00:09:17.620 It still is. But it brings me smack to my knees every time we had gotten to the point. It was just
00:09:25.260 before Easter. I remember we were talking about our Lord on the cross. And I said, well, what is wrong
00:09:35.360 with you people that you just, you pray to this guy up there bleeding and no one goes to help him.
00:09:41.680 You don't take him down. Nothing. What I don't understand this. And also growing up in a Jewish 0.98
00:09:48.060 home, the cross, the cross was a sign that from everyone else who for years said, it's okay to 0.99
00:09:55.840 kill the Jews. I mean, I kept reading, looking at the old, the new Testament going, where's the part 1.00
00:10:01.140 where it says, go kill us. And it wasn't there. Um, and I knew I would be as big a hypocrite to turn
00:10:08.800 back as the people who had spit on me growing up. Cause we grew up in a little bit of a anti-Semitic 0.97
00:10:15.340 neighborhood. I can't turn away from this because what I'm reading is all this goodness and truth
00:10:21.420 and light. And, um, no, I can't look away. And so we had father and I had been talking about the cross
00:10:31.920 and he had said, well, just spend some time and pray. Okay. One night out of nowhere, I literally
00:10:38.100 was, you know, in the apartment, uh, by school and I, in front of me should have been the route to my
00:10:45.180 bedroom and to the side, it was turning into the kitchen. And I literally turned and there was our
00:10:52.700 Lord, our crucified Lord. And I knew for the first time in my heart, the words I had put him there.
00:11:05.500 And from that nanosecond, it's like every molecule in my body changed. Nothing else mattered except how
00:11:15.720 do I follow him? And as important as that moment was the follow-up conversation where I still was kind
00:11:22.320 of asking, cause why wouldn't I still be arguing? Um, he said, how do, can I take you down? How do I
00:11:28.780 help? And it very clear within my heart, he very said, um, Oh no, I save you. Not the other way around.
00:11:41.300 And it is those, the gift of, of those moments that changes everything. And I knew my family would be
00:11:52.220 disappointed. I knew that there was not going to be whatever road was going to be ahead. Okay.
00:11:59.120 Nothing mattered except I have to follow truth. Um, and it, all of it was gift cause I didn't know
00:12:07.040 any of it before him.
00:12:09.020 There are a lot of people who go through similar experiences, not that usually that stark,
00:12:16.500 um, but ones where they come to the point of faith and have to make that decision, whether they're
00:12:20.140 leaving a Protestant church or another faith and disappointing their families. Once you even make 0.98
00:12:27.700 the resolution, there's still the after effect. There's still the actual dealing with it, uh, as,
00:12:35.000 as you live, how have you done that? How have you put up with that?
00:12:38.920 I wish I could tell you, I've lived this well, nonstop from the moment I said, yes, uh, no. Um,
00:12:48.940 and ironically, probably one of the biggest examples of that is the whole pro-life movement. I mean,
00:12:58.100 um, growing up in a home that really embraced the ideology of abortion is fine. Um, and it was always 0.92
00:13:09.820 a very cerebral discussion about how dare someone else come and make a decision for me that is,
00:13:16.700 you know, very personal. Um, but I didn't realize how ingrained that was, um, until confronted
00:13:27.560 um, well after my baptism with, are you pro-life? Um, and in that, by that point, it was in the
00:13:35.700 medical context in medical school and in residency and good boy, I I'm right there with Peter. I
00:13:43.740 denied our Lord. I mean, I, I talked around the question. I avoided it. I said, Oh no, I'm not
00:13:50.140 pro-life. You know, no boy, a number of things happened. And it was, this one wasn't as stark
00:13:55.940 a transition as that one moment. It was the little dribbles of things that keep happening. Um,
00:14:03.260 I met my amazing husband, but we had miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage. Um,
00:14:10.120 and I wasn't at one point, I remember I wasn't mourning an idea. It was mourning the loss of real
00:14:18.760 people that I wouldn't have the privilege of meeting or caring for. And that was brutal. That was already
00:14:25.820 while I, here I was, uh, doing my fellowship in neonatology, um, caring every day for, you
00:14:33.020 know, for babies, um, whose mom didn't know who dad was. And here I had this wonderful husband
00:14:39.460 and, and, you know, these, you know, 16 year olds who ate nothing but Cheetos and we were trying
00:14:43.980 everything we could. Um, and that was rough, but it was eyeopening as to why was this,
00:14:55.460 so troubling. And it was, it was about the loss of a real person. Um, even, and the sadness of not
00:15:04.440 getting to meet them. Um, and then even when I would admit it to myself, I still wouldn't admit
00:15:10.100 it out loud to anyone. Um, until it was funny, I got called, um, to go speak at a 40 days for life
00:15:17.520 rally. And this woman called me out of the blue and said, Oh, you've done all this amazing pro-life
00:15:24.960 work and some things that I had written. And I'm thinking, I don't even admit to myself, I'm pro-life.
00:15:30.880 How do you know that? And it was just, it was really odd. I can't name any one moment that was
00:15:37.460 the aha second when I stopped denying that. Yeah, of course I'm pro-life. Um, how can I be anything
00:15:45.640 else? Um, but yeah, over time that the, yeah, I've clearly become more comfortable with that label.
00:15:53.940 Um, and speak now as frequently as I can at pro-life dinners and, uh, and write, um, uh, op-eds and
00:16:04.400 other things that to try to say, yeah, these are real people. How do we care for them? And if obstetricians
00:16:11.420 have two patients, how come one can end up dead? Um, that doesn't seem to be caring well for both
00:16:19.760 patients at the same time. It's truly fascinating that you're in the, in the fetal field of neonatology
00:16:25.280 because that comes with a, just an incredible insight all by itself into what's going on. Um,
00:16:31.940 particularly with, um, the, the late term abortions, which, because you're seeing them, you're seeing
00:16:38.160 these little kids, um, who are sometimes literally taken out of the womb and then put back in after
00:16:44.340 surgery. Uh, so it's unreal. Um, let's talk a little bit about that and about, um, your work.
00:16:53.380 Now you, you wrote a recent piece on fetal pain. Um, and, uh, if you can tell us, uh, how you got there
00:17:00.580 and really what is the understanding? Because I know we were talking earlier about the lack of
00:17:08.220 understanding that most people had on this. Um, and just, this is actually a fairly new understanding
00:17:13.140 that people have today. The, these little people who I get to care for, I mean, they are very much
00:17:17.780 part of my story. Um, and who rescued me as I, I cared caring for babies who are 23, 22 weeks. I mean,
00:17:28.060 they're literally the size of your hand. And the fact that these little ones, I, if they're born and
00:17:35.620 I'm present, it is my, literally my ethical job, my medically and legally, ethically, I have to
00:17:43.780 intervene. And yet you can still legally destroy the same person who in my hands, I get to try to save
00:17:53.600 that, um, incredible paradox that we exist in is, is absolute craziness. Um, how come it's a person
00:18:03.720 in my hand and not someone of any worth and somebody else's that doesn't make, that doesn't
00:18:09.040 make any intuitive sense. Uh, and then when you get to the fetal pain discussion, first of all,
00:18:14.640 so I, this is not theoretic to me. I care for babies who still have fetal physiology, meaning
00:18:23.160 the fetal period, you know, if you start using the medical terms, literally starts at the eighth week,
00:18:30.160 you know, after they complete the eighth week of gestation all the way through term. So the babies
00:18:35.600 I care for are in the fetal stage of development and I watch them react to pain. It's not a theory.
00:18:43.980 They grimace, they move, they cry, they smack you. They literally take their tiny little hands and we'll,
00:18:51.640 we'll bat at the offensive weapon that is being poked, um, at them. So it, it,
00:18:59.940 it actually came as a total surprise to me that that was controversial. Um, until someone that
00:19:05.180 actually was at a, uh, I was speaking about palliative care at a, uh, at a conference and
00:19:10.320 someone in the audience came up to me and said, well, what do you think about fetal pain? And I
00:19:13.660 looked at them like, uh, it exists. Why, what, why are you asking this? And she was an obstetrician
00:19:21.400 and said, have you read, you know, there was some work of some people who were actively doing
00:19:26.880 abortions. And I'm like, Oh, that's a problem. Um, so I started looking, I started doing the
00:19:34.080 research of why, why, why the disconnect. And I was, I was horrified to realize that, um,
00:19:44.040 as recently as 1992, which is the year that Dr. Anand and his group published in the New England
00:19:51.540 Journal of Medicine, a remarkable article where they actually did a randomized study and compared
00:19:59.200 term babies who were going to cardiac surgery. Some, one group had appropriate anesthesia.
00:20:06.800 One group did not because even physicians didn't believe that babies could feel pain now, which is
00:20:14.620 weird. Come on. There had to be physicians who were parents, you know, your baby feels pain,
00:20:19.900 but yet we went to actual surgery, um, until that recently, not giving good anesthesia to the
00:20:28.260 babies. And it was in that publication that they said, look, the babies have increased stress hormones.
00:20:34.920 They have lactic acidosis, hyperglycemia. There was all these measurable changes when the babies were
00:20:42.780 in pain, not to mention they tend to, they did better in surgery and post-op. They lived, um,
00:20:49.160 more than the kids who didn't have good anesthesia. Wow. Um, and this opened up a flood of research,
00:20:55.940 which shows measurable changes, both acutely and long-term behaviorally and neurologic
00:21:03.620 developmentally, all this stuff that happens when you consistently give pain, painful stimulus
00:21:11.200 to someone whose nervous system is immature. Um, it's the effects are dramatic. Um, and once again,
00:21:18.840 they're measurable, they're real, um, there's, there's nothing make-believe about this. Yeah.
00:21:25.460 This is, this is real science. And what that does is it actually amplifies, hopefully in people's
00:21:31.880 minds, the horror of what taking a life in the womb is really all about. This so-called choice of,
00:21:38.460 of killing your baby in the womb is just an unbelievably horrific thing. At what age do these
00:21:44.680 children begin to feel pain? As far as the science can tell? The science itself is still immature.
00:21:49.200 If I can use that, um, uh, there, there is for sure solid evidence that at my 20 weeks,
00:21:56.820 you know, they're the babies react period. That's just not controversial. That's really solid. Go.
00:22:05.600 There is growing evidence that down, um, as low as 12 weeks. I've seen eight weeks that, that because
00:22:15.140 pain receptors are present, the part of the argument that had gone on is even just because you've got
00:22:23.700 the pain receptors that are forming, they're not well hooked up to the central nervous system in your
00:22:29.660 brain, uh, specifically out into the cortex. But what's developed in more, more recently is the
00:22:38.440 admitting that there can be something called subcortical pain that you don't even have to be
00:22:43.860 maturely hooked up to the central nervous system for there to be long-term effects and at least a reaction
00:22:50.960 to what they call noxious stimulus. It's not, it's, you know, just like how you develop throughout
00:22:57.660 your entire life. You have different stages of development. Um, they're not inappropriate.
00:23:02.380 They're just immature. Well, the same kind of things going on with the babies there, their sense
00:23:10.140 of pain is immature. They can't raise their hand and complain about it and tell you, please stop.
00:23:17.200 That hurts, but their bodies physically react there. There's actually a study, um, that was done on
00:23:24.700 fetuses that shows this. Um, one of the things that, uh, baby sometimes needs is a blood transfusion
00:23:31.260 in utero. And so they did a study to show that when you gave the transfusion by a painful procedure,
00:23:40.420 by basically putting the needle through the baby's abdomen to get to the hepatic vein,
00:23:44.920 that hurts. And those babies, they could once again, even fetuses in utero measure the stress
00:23:54.060 hormone increase in the, that stress hormone increase was not there when the blood transfusion
00:24:00.020 was given basically through the umbilical cord, which doesn't have any neural endings. Um,
00:24:05.660 so they even measured the mom's hormone levels to make sure you couldn't say it was moms that were 0.89
00:24:11.240 giving it. No, it's the babies. Um, yeah. So that happened at 18 weeks. So like I say, there's,
00:24:18.360 and it's hard to do a study in utero. I mean, you couldn't ethically, you can't repeat some of the
00:24:23.320 stuff that's been done before, like going to surgery without anesthesia. Um, we know this
00:24:28.860 works and fetal anesthesia is you, you're starting to talk about where the baby technically is still
00:24:34.180 in utero, fetal anesthesia. The anesthesia literature says, yes, you got it. You've got
00:24:40.200 two patients there, the baby and the mom, and you have to treat the baby's pain too. And they have
00:24:46.220 better outcomes. It's an incredible thing. And, and it just, when you're talking about the ages as
00:24:51.980 at which they're, they've already got pain receptors, that gets really bizarre because
00:24:56.900 most women don't even know they're pregnant at eight weeks. At eight weeks, you've missed one 1.00
00:25:01.140 time of the month and that's it. And you're thinking, oh, maybe I should go, you know,
00:25:04.900 for the most part, you don't even know. And so most abortions are happening, uh, in and around that
00:25:11.500 time. So yeah, America, the whole world, uh, but you know, in America we have, you know,
00:25:18.360 a million a year, it's impossible even to think about, but you've been, uh, in this field, how long
00:25:25.160 now in, in doing neonatology? I've been in practice 20 years. Wow. So have in my privilege
00:25:31.260 to see so many changes, um, as we become better at not just rescuing babies, babies at smaller and
00:25:38.400 smaller ages, their long-term outcomes are better. So that is, uh, you know, amazing to be, to be part
00:25:48.940 of that advance. Um, one of the things actually along the same topic that has changed in the practice
00:25:57.240 of neonatology is recognizing that it's not just about decreasing the obvious painful stimulus, you
00:26:06.000 know, blood draws and, um, that kind of stuff, but also improving the whole environment of the baby.
00:26:13.860 Um, something called kangaroo care, where we get the babies right onto mama's chest. Um, I always argue 0.95
00:26:19.500 about who's happier mom or baby. Um, but you know, all of those things, just parents looking at them
00:26:27.600 and saying, I need you at the bedside. Your baby was listening to you in, in utero and literally will be
00:26:35.320 neurologically better off. We know their outcomes are better. If you come in, hold your baby, talk to
00:26:42.580 your baby, read to them at the bedside. Um, even if it's a band, Dr. Seuss book, please go ahead and
00:26:48.840 read to them. Your presence is important in their development and you are part of their medical miracle
00:26:57.220 of what goes on. Um, so, you know, one of the best things neonatology teaches us again and again and
00:27:05.220 again is a little humility before what we don't know. Like I say, the, you know, the fetal pain,
00:27:12.080 like I say, there's increasing research at, you know, down to 12 weeks, eight weeks, at least we know
00:27:16.880 there's a receptor. So I don't want to be too heavy handed, but we also don't know how, I mean,
00:27:23.200 we can't be in utero and say, are you awake? What do you know? Um, one of the best things I've heard
00:27:30.280 about this is this, uh, it was the anesthesiologist I believe who said they called it, um, a procedural
00:27:35.880 memory. When even before we, we can complain about it, they were able to show that babies, um, from very
00:27:43.560 young fetal ages. If you bug them enough later on there, they have changes. If the same noxious
00:27:52.880 stimuli is applied to them, they have a fetal, they have a procedural memory of being hurt
00:27:59.160 and it changes them. But you know what? We do that as adults, something traumatic happens to us. We
00:28:06.900 don't always remember all the details, but we get in a situation and we start feeling uncomfortable
00:28:12.340 and you don't always know why. And some of it is kind of that your, our bodies are programmed to
00:28:20.180 keep us safe. So if something has happened to us, we often can react before we know that we're not
00:28:28.840 in a safe spot. And yet we are created, whether that's a soul, whether it's a garden angel or your
00:28:36.340 neurons telling you get out of the way. I don't know, but that combination, we are, we are kept safe,
00:28:44.800 um, in amazing ways that we don't always understand a little, uh, humility before the science we haven't
00:28:52.600 yet discovered. Um, and just awe at, at how much we still have to discover. One of the things I wanted
00:29:01.220 to ask you was that being a doctor in who is pro-life in the medical community, that can be a
00:29:09.420 real challenge because I'm sure lots of your colleagues don't agree with you there. And yet
00:29:14.820 you are part of a college of physicians that does in fact support, uh, support you in your pro-life
00:29:21.880 beliefs. If you could talk a little bit about that, because I think a lot of people, A, don't know
00:29:26.600 about the pro-life college of physicians that you're part of. And, and B, I think a lot of
00:29:32.420 patients might be able to tell their pro-life doctors because all the patients know who they're
00:29:35.640 the doctors that are pro-life, but the doctors themselves, a lot of them don't know. So if you
00:29:40.860 would tell us which, uh, what physicians group, the college are you part of?
00:29:44.420 The American College of Pediatricians or ACPeds is a pro-life, pro-family group of pediatricians.
00:29:54.460 Um, and it's really only in, in the last couple of years that I had the great joy of discovering
00:30:01.400 them. Once again, it was someone in the audience who reckon, who recommended them to me. I was
00:30:05.740 speaking at a conference and they said, Oh, are you part of ACPeds? And I said, who, um, because I
00:30:12.440 didn't know there was anyone out there. So first of all, to the doctors out there, we exist, um,
00:30:20.480 um, which is astonishing. Um, because you're right there, there's quite a bit of pushback
00:30:27.720 about, you know, Oh, that's just hocus pocus, weird, religious, crazy people. No. And there, 0.93
00:30:36.560 there is a growing number of us, um, who get to say, yeah, I'm not always in charge and thank goodness
00:30:43.860 because there's a Lord who knows better than I do and helps quite a bit. Um, so the American
00:30:49.920 College of Pediatricians is amazing as opposed to some other groups. The most well-known is
00:30:57.180 the, um, AAP, the American Academy of Pediatrics, which while it has some brilliant doctors, they
00:31:04.520 have developed this pro advocacy left-leaning arm that has stifled a lot of people from speaking
00:31:15.700 out about topics and even being able to publish, um, truth about whether it's transgender issues.
00:31:24.360 Please don't give your, your kids, um, steroids that are going to sterilize and alter them when,
00:31:32.580 at an age when you wouldn't even let them choose what they're going to get for dinner means that
00:31:37.300 doesn't make sense. Um, as well as advocating for things, you know, in my world, like, um,
00:31:44.840 all the prenatal screening, prenatal screening cannot become a euphemism for kill the baby
00:31:50.820 because they're not perfect. That's just horrifying. And yet that's how it's being used. Um,
00:31:57.740 I, after all the miscarriages, I had the privilege of successfully we had babies, but I kept getting
00:32:06.580 asked along the way, don't you want to do more screening? I'm like, no, because it doesn't change
00:32:13.680 the outcome. It's a boy or a girl. And I'm, I promise to care about them. And you cannot believe
00:32:19.320 the amount of pushback I got from the obstetricians. Um, and I was with high risk doctors cause I was
00:32:26.020 quote old by then being above 35, um, having babies. And they were like, what do you mean? Uh,
00:32:34.200 you're not going to find out every possible thing. I'm like, cause it's a baby. That's all that
00:32:40.880 matters. The first diagnosis is it's a baby and anything else comes afterward and never negates
00:32:48.440 the first diagnosis. It's a little boy or a little girl. Sorry. The original question about ACPeds.
00:32:54.920 This is, um, this is, um, a pro family, um, group of doctors and it's not, it there's, there's folks
00:33:03.740 from every persuasion of religion, but it's people who have figured out that life and intact families
00:33:12.100 help us survive better, um, and better care for each other. So yeah, that's what ACPs, their heart is
00:33:21.420 all about. And it's not only, um, one religious group, um, which is actually for me really cool.
00:33:28.300 Um, and a gathering of like-minded folks who truly I'm meeting such courageous doctors. I,
00:33:37.240 I am just, you know, one small tiny piece, um, of some amazing people who are also out there.
00:33:45.660 You have been given quite the journey in your life from, uh, where our Lord took you from,
00:33:51.000 uh, and where you've come now. Um, you know, if you were to do it all again, despite its hardships,
00:33:58.720 would you? Oh gosh. Yeah. I wouldn't change any of it. Um, cause I'm, you know,
00:34:08.540 our Lord has a better imagination than even I do. Um, and where I, I don't know what he's got,
00:34:18.620 you know, in store, which actually I try not to ask cause it's usually terrifying.
00:34:22.600 If I knew I would probably like, you know, curl up in the fetal position and, you know,
00:34:26.780 in a corner and go, you have got, actually I've tried, I've tried to say you have got the wrong
00:34:31.700 person. This is not what I should be doing. And yet he was going, come on, come on in. Um,
00:34:37.980 and I just promised to show up and, and use his, whatever gifts and talents that he wants to give
00:34:46.540 to me. My biggest fear is facing him and not having used the talents he's given me to the best extent
00:34:56.600 that scares me. Um, living here and now in this bizarre time. Okay. Perhaps that's why
00:35:07.880 we're created all of us for this exact time and place. He doesn't make mistakes. Not only does
00:35:14.660 God not make mistakes, he keeps all his promises. Um, and he, I promise he's already promised us
00:35:20.620 what the ending is. So now how are we going to get there? So yes, the road that I've taken has
00:35:26.140 been a strange one and it's probably going to get stranger, but it's his road and I get to follow it.
00:35:32.880 Amen. Robin, it's been a great privilege and honor for me to speak with you. God bless you.
00:35:38.080 And thank you.
00:35:38.920 God bless. Thanks.
00:35:40.660 And God bless all of you. We'll see you next time.
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