Roger Marsh: Throughout the entire month of December, we're highlighting our most listened to broadcasts from the past year. Now, before we hear one of those popular shows, I want to share some news with you. A few weeks ago, a group of generous donors blessed us with a generous matching grant for this Christmas season. This effectively doubles every donation we receive, until we've reached our goal. Learn how you can be a part of this match by going to drjamesdobson.org. That's drjamesdobson.org. Or, you can call for more information, at 877-732-6825. That's 877-732-6825. And now, here's another one of our most popular broadcasts from 2019, on this edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.
Announcer: Today on Family Talk.
Roger Marsh: In Psalm 1:39, David praises God because he was fearfully and wonderfully made. We can rejoice in that same truth as well. Each and every person is molded and formed by the very hands of Creator God and we must celebrate life and defend it, especially in the mother's womb. You're listening to Family Talk, a division of the James Dobson Family Institute. I'm Roger Marsh with your host, Dr. James Dobson. In a moment you'll hear the conclusion of Dr. Dobson's riveting interview with Dr. William Lile.
Roger Marsh: Dr. Lile is a pro-life obstetrician and gynecologist with a private practice near Pensacola, Florida. On yesterday's program, Dr. Lile shared his passion for kingdom service and why life begins at conception. Today He'll be sharing stories of lives saved through a revolutionary new procedure that actually can reverse an abortion. There's a lot to get to. Here now is Dr. James Dobson to reintroduce today's guest here on Family Talk.
Dr. Dobson: Dr. Lile you were here with us yesterday and that was a deeply moving program. I'm still touched by what you had to say about the unborn child and your love for that youngster that's developing there. You don't refer to it as an unborn child but as a pre-born child because that's a human being that's soon to be delivered in an 80-inch strip down the birth canal does not change anything but the address.
Dr. Lile: Correct.
Dr. Dobson: For us to kill 60 million of those babies, I don't know how God can withhold his judgment on us. That is so wicked and so evil. I want our listeners to hear today a fairly recent experience that you had that is also deeply moving. This is an example of what we've been talking about, what we were yesterday. It's really about reversal of abortion.
Dr. Lile: Correct. Abortions can be performed two ways: surgically and medically or chemically. Right now, the medical abortions where a medicine is given to the mom up to 70 days, 10 weeks after the first day of the last menstrual period. The estimates are that up to 30% of all abortions are now being performed with medicine. In fact, there's an organization that is trying to have abortion pills be available online and through the mail services but it is referred to as Self Induced Abortion, SIA and there are many advocates around the country that are trying to make this much more available. It was started by an organization called Women on Web. They also are involved in providing abortions and other countries in especially South America that would not allow abortions but medical abortions are becoming much more common but the thing is a medical abortion can often be reversed. Just like we look at the narcotic problem that is affecting the United States in 2017, 72,000 people lost their lives due to an overdose of a narcotic.
Dr. Lile: We have a medication called Narcan where if somebody comes to our labor and delivery or present to our emergency room, the police officers, the EMTs, the paramedics, even in airports, Narcan is available if somebody has a narcotic overdose. It is like a switch. It immediately will take a patient that is unconscious, might not even be breathing. We give them the shot and immediately they can wake up, they start breathing and answering your questions.
Dr. Lile: We have the technology to reverse narcotics. Well, with 30% of all the abortions now also being performed with the medication, a lot of physicians wonder, well, if somebody is given that medication and it has a change of heart and realize I made a wrong decision, just like somebody who took a narcotic-
Dr. Dobson: How common is that? That a woman will change their mind after she's done this?
Dr. Lile: We don't know. It's probably a lot more common than we think because somebody might not know that once they change their mind that there are physicians throughout the country who can actually say, "Okay, you change your mind. Do you realize that we can reverse what was already started?" There are two primary medications that are used to induce an abortion. One is called RU 486? It is an anti-progesterone medication. Progesterone is the hormone that the body releases when it's pregnant that sends a signal to the whole body, "We're pregnant." Let's start preparing for the change. Pro-gesterone, pro-gestation.
Dr. Lile: The medication RU 486 blocks progesterone. The body says, "Hey, we have progesterone we're pregnant. Let's keep the pregnancy going." Then RU 486 is given blocks that signal in the body goes, "Well, I thought we were pregnant," and then three days later they'd take a medication called Cytotec, which causes uterine contractions and that expels the baby from the inside.
Dr. Lile: If an anti-progesterone medication is given, there was a gentleman who's a family practice doctor named George Delgado, who years ago thought, "Well, if it's an anti-progesterone, what if I can convince the body that is pregnant, that it's still pregnant," and we can do that by giving supplemental progesterone. We use progesterone in our practice every week. Patients who have a history of preterm labor are given injections of a medication called Makena. A progesterone that keeps the pregnancy going.
Dr. Lile: Patients who've had recurrent miscarriage are given progesterone to keep the pregnancy going. The thought was, "Well, can we reverse this started and initiated abortion?" Dr. Delgado recently published an article in a peer reviewed journal over 100 successful abortion reversals. A lot of pregnancy centers don't know that we can reverse the abortion process even after it's already been started. A lot of doctors, a lot of emergency rooms don't know.
Dr. Dobson: Is there an opposition to it?
Dr. Lile: Oh, of course. This is an all or none phenomenon when it comes to reversing RU 486. Look at the name. Anybody who has worked in the restaurant industry realizes that when the chef says, "86 the meatloaf," what does that mean? It means we're out of meatloaf, kill the meatloaf special. So when you look at the name of this drug, RU 486-ing? Are you 486-ing this life with-
Dr. Dobson: Do you think this was intentional?
Dr. Lile: No, it just, it was not intentional. That just happened to be the numbers that were used to identify this particular compound that they will work with.
Dr. Dobson: I thought that when it was just coming into legal practice, I fought it like crazy and we lost.
Dr. Lile: We have now had cases. I've had three successful reversals just in the past year. One was a successful reversal of RU 486 and we had people all over the country. In fact here at Family Talk, we had people praying for this young girl and for this baby. Week later we had a heartbeat. Two weeks later we had a heartbeat. Third Week she didn't show up. We called and she had received such pressure from family and from the boyfriend that she went and had a surgical abortion. It was a punch to the gut. Here we really thought that we had been successful and we celebrated that but it was not our fault. We had a duty to be faithful.
Dr. Lile: We shared the truth, we were successful but then she made a decision. What we also realized was that we can't get discouraged when somebody makes the wrong decision. Just like if you share the gospel with somebody, you don't share the gospel with somebody and they say, "No, that's just not for me," and then say to yourself, "Well, I'm never doing that again."
Dr. Lile: No, we have a duty to share the gospel. We don't save, that's up to the Holy Spirit but we have a duty to share the truth. We also have had successful reversals that have continued on. We recently had a mom who was pregnant who had been given RU 486 and had taken the medication, Cytotec to cause the contractions and she presented to the emergency room in our hospital. I went down, we did an ultrasound and she didn't just have a baby on the inside, she had twins on the inside. Twins that both still had a heartbeat even though she was bleeding.
Dr. Lile: We talked to her and we said, "You know, we'd like to help you." She said, "I didn't realize what was going on. I didn't realize the life that was inside, especially that it was twins," and we said, "Well, we have medications and we have protocols that we can help support the pregnancy and reverse the medication that you've already taken."
Dr. Lile: Well, we gave her the progesterone and we were successful and she still has the heartbeats on these babies but then we got a call from what's called the IRB and IRB is the institutional Review Board. They are the group of physicians and ethicists that overlook all the decisions made in the hospital as far as research projects and interventions that are performed. They wanted me to come and present before the IRB and I actually I couldn't-
Dr. Dobson: You called on the carpet for-
Dr. Lile: I was calling the carpet and I, at first I didn't know what I was being called to the IRB for because this case wasn't even in my thought process. I'm like, "I can't even think of anything." I called him back and they said, "Well, we wanted to go over how, we have a concern that you're practicing experimental medicine in the emergency room." I'm like, "When?" They said, "Well, that case of the lady who was pregnant and had taken the abortion pill and you reversed it". I said, "Oh my goodness! Why?"
Dr. Lile: I knew all the science and the facts and even had the written consent form, so I presented before the IRB what I had done, how we had informed the mother of what we were doing and how that was the desire of the mother. After reviewing it, the IRB said that they could determine that was a reasonable course of action.
Dr. Dobson: Was that still controversial within your medical community?
Dr. Lile: Our community and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of course does not want abortion reversal. ACOG, is the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. It's my governing body which discusses what is considered standard of care. They are establishing a fifth fellowship. Our fellowship is training in addition to what you learn in medical school and the four years of residency.
Dr. Lile: After 12 years, four years of college, four years of medical school, four years of residency, you can do additional training on maybe cancer or high-risk obstetrics but they're offering a fifth fellowship now, which would be in family planning with the real emphasis being on providing abortion services for second and third trimester pregnancies. You spend all of your career learning how to save the lives of the sickest moms in the sickest babies and then you look and you can do additional training on how to take those lives.
Dr. Dobson: Dr. Lile, the IRB could, if they chose, remove your medical license for doing something that they consider to be experimental. In fact, that was a possibility. You put your profession at risk for doing this. Was there a discussion about that possibility?
Dr. Lile: That's always a possibility; an IRB, Institutional Review Board, is there to protect the interest of the patients and of the hospital. When a physician would be found to be risking the lives of patients or would be putting at risk, the hospital itself, a far as from the liability standpoint, if they deemed that I had behaved outside of the scope of medicine, that would be reasonable and acceptable, I could've lost my privileges at the hospital.
Dr. Lile: But I think when I presented the data, presented the patient, presented the story, presented the patient's desires and the outcome. There was no denying that it was the right thing to do, it was a safe thing to do. It met the desires of the patient and her choice was to protect the life of their baby. And if we're talking about choice and so many people do, her choice was to save the life of the baby and that's what we honored.
Dr. Dobson: The choice has come to mean abortion.
Dr. Lile: Correct. We need to emphasize the protecting of the life. So, I saw this as a life that was threatened from abortion, and mom's choice was to protect that life and she regretted the decision that she had made. So, whether it was putting my privileges at the hospital at risk, well, it's still the right thing to do. A lot of people do the right thing for Kingdom Service knowing that it might put their own job in jeopardy. There are a lot of people who will stand up in their workplace and say, "This is the right thing to do. I will not do X. I will not do Y."
Dr. Dobson: You're minimizing that, but this was a very courageous thing for you to do, wasn't it?
Dr. Lile: It was the right thing to do and I would do it again.
Dr. Dobson: The twins, both survived.
Dr. Lile: When we saw her on follow-up, we had successfully reversed the abortion. We still had heart tones and she's now following with a different physician because she lives outside of our town, out of state.
Dr. Dobson: So, the babies have not yet been delivered?
Dr. Lile: Correct. There's another medication which can be used to cause a medical abortion, and it's called methotrexate. Methotrexate is a chemotherapy. Chemotherapy works by attacking rapidly dividing cells. Methotrexate can be used to reverse GYN cancer such as choriocarcinoma. It's also used for some types of arthritis, but methotrexate attacks rapidly dividing cells; and a new pregnancy and new baby is an amazing collection of rapidly dividing cells. Within 28 days you have a heartbeat.
Dr. Lile: Methotrexate will attack that pregnancy. Well, we had a patient who you know was actually a nursing student and she found out she was pregnant. She went to a local abortion clinic, and she went there not seeking an abortion, but that's where she was used to going for her GYN care. She was used to going there for care, so she knew their address, she knew their phone number. She was there for about an hour and they convinced her that having a baby now was not good. So, she signed a consent. She swiped her credit card and she was given the medication methotrexate and walked out thinking, "What did I just do?" She went out with her partner. They sat in the car and they're like, "What just happened?" She went home and just was sullen and was somber and she started doing some research, and she found that website abortionpillreversal.com, that was set up by Dr. Delgado.
Dr. Lile: It was a Sunday morning. She called that 800 number. She spoke with a volunteer nurse in California. Told her what was going on. She did not want to lose her baby. That nurse then looks on the internet and looked for a pro-life doc that's nearby her. Well, I happened to be about an hour away from her. It was Sunday morning, we're getting ready to go to church and we're actually at church and we're getting ready to start our church service, and I was getting ready to sing in church, and I get the call.
Dr. Lile: They said, "Can you call this lady? Get some information. She doesn't want to lose her baby." I said, "Absolutely." So, I call her, talk to her, explain the options. At this point there'd only been three abortion reversals with methotrexate that had ever been performed in the United States and as far as we know in the world. We got the information from her and then I need to find the medication that's the reversal medication.
Dr. Lile: It's a medication called Leucovorin to reverse the effects of methotrexate. My pastor's getting ready to go to church and he says, "Bill, come on. We're getting ready to start." And I said, "I can't." He goes, "What's going on?" I said, "I'm trying to reverse an abortion," and he says, "Go, go, go." He says, "Good luck. We'll be praying for you." Well, when somebody says, "We'll be praying for you," you kind of think, "Well, what does that really mean?"
Dr. Lile: While I'm calling around to different pharmacies looking for this medication in Mobile, Alabama, he stops the church service, has everybody stop. He tells the story, and the whole church service prayed for this young girl, and for what we're going to try to do. So, I found a pharmacy and I call this pharmacist and I said, "Hey, do you carry the medication Leucovorin?" She goes, "Yeah, I do. What dose do you want?" I said, "It can be there 15 or 25 milligrams," and I gave her the dosage and the prescription that I wanted the patient to use and the pharmacists stops and she pauses and she said, "Dr. Lile". She says, "Are you trying to reverse an abortion?" I paused and I said, "Yeah, yeah I am." And she said, "Dr. Lile" She goes, "I'm with the on this. I will take care of this young lady personally."
Dr. Lile: So that I called the patient back and I say, "Hey, you've got to go to this pharmacy, ask for this young lady, and they had the medication in stock." So, she goes to the pharmacy and she says her name, and they take care of business. When I talked to the patient later that day, I said, "Hey, did you get to go to the pharmacy?" And she said, Dr. Lile, that is an interesting pharmacy." I said, "What do you mean?" She goes, "I got there. I told her my name." She said the pharmacist came from around behind the counter. She gave me a big hug and she said she'd be praying for me. I went to go pay for the reversal medication and the pharmacist put her hand up and say, "Oh sweetie, I got this." The pharmacist from her own pocket paid for the reversal medication.
Dr. Lile: I'd never met the patient before. So, a week later the patient came into the office, and we did an ultrasound. Methotrexate at that gestational age has about a 90% chance of inducing a successful abortion, 98%. We did an ultrasound, and we had a heartbeat. We had her back a week later, we had a heartbeat. While we're concerned because methotrexate can cause damage to a developing baby. We had our maternal fetal medicine doctors do ultrasounds and then just a few months ago, we delivered the baby. Baby's perfect.
Dr. Dobson: Healthy baby.
Dr. Lile: Healthy baby, but the real key is there are a lot of things involved, there was a lot of prayer that was involved in this. But you know, when we all look at how we do Kingdom Service, we think, "Well, I'm just doing this in my church. I'm just teaching Sunday school. I'm just working in the nursery. I'm blessed and I'm working here at Family Talk." Look at how many people were involved in the saving of the life of this one baby. There was a gentleman who set up a website called abortionpillreversal.com. He didn't know what was going on. There was a volunteer nurse who was manning the 800 number, who happens to take the call on a Sunday morning. She then calls a gynecologist over in Pensacola, Florida. He then calls a pharmacist over in Mobile, Alabama.
Dr. Lile: If any one of those links in that chain had not been there, we would not have been successful. I have never met the pharmacist. I've never met the nurse over in California, but everybody was involved in Kingdom Service. They all had their role to play. So as we're spending our 70, 80, 90 years here on this planet, we've got to really look at how are we performing Kingdom Service, what am I doing? Am I possibly going to be one of those links to save a life? I mean, I showed you the picture of this little baby earlier.
Dr. Dobson: Yes, beautiful.
Dr. Lile: Beautiful baby, and that baby had a 98% chance of not having that beautiful little smile. So, it's the right thing to do. Can we win? Absolutely. But I think we really must win.
Dr. Dobson: You know, I've said this before, but we can't do anything to earn our salvation. We all know that, but there are times in our lives as we try to serve the Lord, that we think we feel Him or see Him smile. Have you ever felt like he's saying, "I saw that? I saw what you did."
Dr. Lile: Yeah. I mean, here's some free advice, medical advice for everybody out there, unless Jesus comes, y'all are going to die, and that is just the inevitable part of life; that we're all going to die, but then what happens? Well, to be absent from the body is present with the Lord, and I think about that moment when we will be face to face with Jesus and we think about eternity here in heaven and we're going to think back to the 70, 80, maybe 90 years we had for Kingdom Service here on this earth and we're going to think back about what we did for Kingdom Service.
Dr. Lile: I think that all of us, when we look back at events like doing the right thing, sharing the Gospel, standing up for somebody else, standing up for the pre-born, defending the lives that are threatened by abortion. What's our goal? Our goal is to have Jesus look down at us. Maybe because we're going to be on our knees yelling, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you," because we're here for eternity and I think we all have that goal for Jesus, to put his chin down and say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant," and that should be all of our goals as we strive for Kingdom Service, everybody here at Family Talk, and everybody that's listening.
Dr. Dobson: I care about that more than anything else in the world.
Dr. Lile: If it takes our fastest rocket ship 54,000 years just to get to our closest star, that's distance, and distance and time are related. Hundreds of billions of stars, hundreds of billions of galaxies, gives you an idea of what eternity is and we may get 80, 90 years here on this planet to do that Kingdom Service, and we'll have new roles when we get to heaven. But this is our primary role now, is service kingdom.
Dr. Dobson: Dr. William Lile, you've been our guest for two days. I'm just so grateful that you came here. You have ministered to me again and I've had this same passion that you have, to preserve as many of those tiny precious lives as possible. I will devote myself to it for as long as I have breath on this earth and if I can influence more people through radio and books and what we've tried to do, to make the right choice and, do the right thing that you just talked about. What a wonderful use of time and energy and your belief system. You've helped us do this today.
Dr. Lile: If people still have questions, they can always go to our website. Our website is prolifedoc.org. We have DVDs that are available that go through a lot more things than we were able to cover in this show, and just a lot of videos that are posted, and is abortion a sin? Yes. Is it a forgivable sin? Yes. And our goal is to share that forgiveness and to share that healing that only comes through the blood of Jesus Christ.
Dr. Dobson: You are a hero of mine, sir.
Dr. Lile: Thank you sir.
Roger Marsh: Well indeed. Dr William Lile is a champion for the pro-life cause, and an advocate for the pre-born. You can learn more about his practice and the DVD presentation he just mentioned, when you visit the broadcast page at Drjamesdobson.org. Well, that's all the time we have for today, here on Family Talk. Be sure to join us next time again for more of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.
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Roger Marsh: Hi this is Roger Marsh for Family Talk with some exciting news. We've selected 18 of the most popular broadcasts of the past year, and present them to you, together on six audio CDs, in the 2019 Family Talk Best of Broadcast Collection. Join Dr. Dobson and many incredible guests, like Dennis Prager, Rebekah Gregory, and Rabbi Jonathan Cahn in this compelling audio collection. You can get your CD set as our thank you for your gift of any amount in support of our ministry. Join Dr. Dobson in serving families: call 877-732-6825, or, visit drjamesdobson.org.