From Jewish to Catholic to Pro-Lifeļ¼ a Physician's journey
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
151.3513
Summary
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
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
00:00:30.000
Dr. Robin Perucci, please welcome to the program.
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.
00:00:52.260
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
00:01:08.420
It's inspired so many people, and yet you have a similar kind of a journey.
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
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
00:09:48.060
home, the cross, the cross was a sign that from everyone else who for years said, it's okay to
00:09:55.840
kill the Jews. I mean, I kept reading, looking at the old, the new Testament going, where's the part
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
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
00:12:09.020
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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.
00:35:40.660
And God bless all of you. We'll see you next time.
00:35:42.780
Hi, this is John Henry Weston, the co-founder and editor in chief of LifeSite News. I'm coming
00:35:48.500
to you today because we want to be sure that we're communicating clearly with you, our loyal
00:35:54.660
followers. Things are really heating up. As I'm sure you can see Christians, conservative truth
00:36:00.920
tellers are being targeted, are being banned from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter,
00:36:06.680
YouTube, and Instagram at an alarmingly fast rate. They are attempting to suppress any narrative
00:36:13.960
that does not fit that of the mainstream media. We knew this day would come. We have been warning
00:36:20.580
everyone who would listen and attempting to build up alternative platforms to continue to reach you.
00:36:27.420
We have established ourselves on all sorts of platforms. I'm going to explain in a minute,
00:36:31.440
but the most important thing to do is come direct to LifeSiteNews.com because there we will always be.
00:36:39.080
But we've also established ourselves on platforms like Parler and MeWe, and our videos can be found
00:36:44.920
on Rumble as well. We would love to see each of you on those platforms too, as they are not censoring
00:36:51.480
or suppressing the truth that we are sharing every single day. More than these alternative social
00:36:57.600
media platforms, we highly encourage you to subscribe to our email newsletter. We have really
00:37:03.800
built up a large list of loyal readers on our email marketing platform, and we have prepared several
00:37:09.520
backup plans for, well, I want to say if, but it's really when, we are removed from our current platform
00:37:16.800
as well. Additionally, I really encourage you, as I said before, to make it a regular habit to go
00:37:23.440
directly to LifeSiteNews.com. Make it your homepage. While all of these different platforms
00:37:29.720
are an excellent way to curate your news, going directly to our website means that you will never
00:37:35.680
encounter any censorship or sudden loss of LifeSite News reporting. Here's the thing. We will never stop
00:37:43.640
sharing the truth. We founded this organization with the mission to be the life, family, and culture
00:37:49.660
source for men and women who seek to know the truth. We have established a track record of honest
00:37:56.320
reports, and this will never stop, even with censorship happening around the globe. Again, I'm encouraging you
00:38:05.040
to join us on Parler, MeWe, Rumble, and on our email list. You can find all the direct links in the
00:38:12.180
description of this video. May God bless you and keep you, and we are so thankful that you've chosen to
00:38:17.880
follow and support LifeSiteNews. I'm John Henry Weston, co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews.