The ProLife Team Podcast
Content for ProLife Leaders from ProLife Leaders
The ProLife Team Podcast
Episode 209: Reversing Regret – The Power of Abortion Pill Reversal with Dr. George Delgado
•
Jacob Barr with ProLife Ribbon and iRapture.com
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this compelling episode of the podcast, host Jacob Barr dives into the groundbreaking world of abortion pill reversal (APR) with trailblazing pioneer Dr. George Delgado.
0:17
Okay, I want to start over, guys. Hello everyone. Welcome to webinar Wednesday. Here at I Rapture, we are passionate
0:23
about serving lives and pouring our passion into supporting your incredible teams in every way possible.
0:30
And one of our favorite ways to do that is through these monthly gatherings with um inspiring pro-life voices that truly
0:36
make a difference. We are absolutely thrilled today to um and honored to have Dr. George Delgado
0:43
with us and as the trailblazing pioneer behind abortion pill reversal.
0:49
He serves as a medical director of the APR network and president of Steno
0:54
Institute. Um, plus he's just released his powerful powerful new book, Abortion
1:00
Pill Reversal: A Second Chance at Choice, which is sure to spark meaningful conversations. Um, to all of
1:07
you tuning in, whether you're familiar face or joining us for the first time, we're so grateful to have you here and
1:13
can't wait to share this time together. Um, if a question pops up during our discussion, if you could either raise
1:19
your hand or put it in the chat, that would be so helpful. And then just keep
1:24
those mics muted until your moment to share. That way we don't have a lot of background noise going on. Um don't
1:31
worry if you miss anything. Um a full replay will be landing in your mailbox
1:38
um by Friday or Monday. Um so anyway, welcome you guys. I'm so glad to see you all here. There's um a
1:45
large group today, so that's really awesome. Um, and we're just gonna pray
1:51
and then we're going to open this up to Dr. Delgado. So, um, let's just go ahead
1:57
and open this time up in prayer. Dear Jesus, we thank you so much for, um,
2:02
your love for each one of us, your, um, the support you give us and the hope
2:08
that we have in you for eternal life. And we pray for these babies that we're
2:14
out there to save. We ask, God, that we can touch the hearts of women. Um, and we thank you for people that stand in
2:22
that gap and find ways to minister to them, to save those babies and those
2:28
lives. And we pray that you would just continue helping us in this work. We thank you, Lord Jesus, and we give this
2:34
time to you that we may be blessed and to learn and um to grow. Thank you in
2:40
Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, Dr. Delgato, we are ready.
2:51
Well, great. Well, thanks so much for having me everybody and thanks for joining us. And today we're going to talk about abortion pill reversal.
2:57
And as you probably are aware, please mute your microphones if you haven't already. If you're probably
3:04
aware, you're probably aware that um these days in the United States, my estimates are that 70% of all abortions
3:12
are chemical abortions. So because of the increased numbers of those abortion
3:17
pill reversal in my mind has become the tip of the spear of the pro-life movement. So, I guess it's very important for those of us who are
3:25
dedicated to saving the lives of the pre-born and also helping save the spiritual lives of their mothers that we
3:32
be very up to date on abortion pill reversal and that we do whatever we can to support abortion pill reversal and to
3:39
make it available to any woman who wants that second chance at choice.
3:45
Now in um in doing so um I decided to write the book abortion pill reversal a
3:50
second chance of choice which is available from ignatious.com you can also find it on our website
3:57
stenoinstitute.org or or um on Amazon in order I wrote it in order to increase
4:03
awareness about abortion pill reversal to spread the message that all of our studies have shown that it's effective,
4:10
it's safe, and that women who are given the opportunity are extremely grateful.
4:16
So, I'd like to do is first go in um a little bit of how I got in involved with
4:22
abortion pill reversal because people often ask me that and it wasn't necessarily a big idea that I had. It
4:28
really abortion pill reversal which is it's really a movement. It's a movement that started when two women in different
4:35
places at different times thousands of miles apart asked two different doctors, Dr. Matthew Harrison and myself if we
4:41
would help them reverse their chemical abortions. And so that's really why it started. It was a cry from help for
4:47
these from these women. My particular first case, I was uh I got a phone call
4:52
one day from Terry Palmquist, a sidewalk counselor in Bakersfield, California.
4:57
And Terry had gotten a phone call from a woman in El Paso, Texas, who was at who had taken methoprista on the first drug
5:04
in the cocktail and wanted to stop her abortion. So Terry called me to see if I
5:10
knew how to help her. I said, ' Terry, I've never heard of anyone stopping a chemical abortion, but let me give this
5:16
some thought. And it was there that the Holy Spirit put two and two together in my mind because I had two related but
5:23
separate knowledge uh banks, you can say. One was that I was very experienced at using progesterone in pregnancy and
5:31
women who have low progesterone levels and are what we call threatening miscarriage or cramping or spotting. And
5:37
those women, you can give progesterone, save the baby and save the pregnancy. And I also knew how mephristone works
5:43
because for some reason God had placed in me a a a robust curiosity about
5:49
meristone even before it was uh released in the US in the year 2000. So I knew exactly how it worked. I know that
5:56
meristone works by blocking the effects of progesterone. And for those of you
6:01
who don't know progesterone the name itself is an acronym progesterational steroid kone proestation. So it's a
6:08
hormone that is absolutely essential for the maintenance of a normal pregnancy. So mephipristone by blocking the effects
6:15
of progesterone causes separation of the wall of the placenta the placenta from
6:21
the wall of the uterus and causing the death of a pre-born baby. So I knew exactly how it worked and I thought to
6:27
myself, well although these women may have normal progesterone levels, their progesterone levels are being made ineffective by this chemical
6:34
mythopristone that is blocking the effects of the progesterone. So I thought maybe if we give them
6:40
supplemental progesterone, raise the progesterone levels, then when the methopristone comes off a receptor,
6:46
there'll be a progesterone molecule ready to take its place and we can out compete the methopressone at the
6:53
receptor site. That was my theory. I came up with a protocol right there on the fly. But then I had another problem
7:00
that was that this patient Aaron was in El Paso, Texas. I was in San Diego a
7:06
thousand miles or more away. So I found a doctor in El Paso, Dr. John Bellakura,
7:12
who had progesterone in the office, had had similar training as as I did in naprochnology and knew how to use
7:18
progesterone and she was willing to use the protocol that I had devised right there that day. So Dr. Bellura treated
7:25
the patient and about two weeks later, I got a a favorable call from her. The baby was still alive. Then I would get
7:32
updates along the way until finally I got the great news that the baby was born at term with no birth defects.
7:38
Everything went very well. So at that point I really wasn't sure of
7:43
course if what I had done had helped the uh the woman save her baby or if it was
7:49
a coincidence because it was just one case. But then people started hearing about this one case and they started
7:55
asking for advice and so I was giving them advice and before we knew it we had a handful of cases around the country.
8:00
That's when I discovered Dr. Harrison's case, which was a year and a half to two years before mine, unbeknownst to me. At
8:08
that point in 2012, I wrote the first article in the peer-reviewed medical literature
8:14
um describing these six cases. Then more people started to hear about it. I knew that we probably ought to get um a
8:21
little better organized because some women weren't finding out about this in time. So, that's when I started the abortion pill reversal network, the
8:27
website abortionpillreversal.com. and started the hotline 1-800 number.
8:34
From there we we grew organically with some with some promotion and by 2018 we
8:40
had published our third article in the medical literature and that one followed over 500 women who had attempted um
8:46
abortion pill reversal showed very good um favorable success rates with our very
8:52
best protocols. We're seeing 64 to 68% success reversals
8:58
and very safe. At that point, we grew so big that we decided in 2018 that we would hand off
9:04
the network to Heartbeat International because they had much more institutional depth. And since then, they they took
9:10
over and have grown it very very well. So that now we know that over 7,000
9:16
babies have been saved by abortion pill reversal. We've helped women in all 50 states and in more than 100 foreign
9:22
countries. I'm one of the medical adviserss for the abortion pill reversal network, not the medical director.
9:28
That's another doctor with with Harpy, Dr. Brent BS. But I am medical director of culture of life family services here
9:33
in San Diego, our local nonprofit um uh community uh clinic as well as the
9:40
president of Steno Institute. Well, some people often ask me what about stories um of women who've who've
9:47
gone through this and and the second part of my book talks about the stories
9:52
and some several women have written in their in the first person have written their own stories and what I want to
9:57
share with you is a story of Cynthia and Jael and and Cynthia and Ja actually each wrote it a separate chapter for the
10:03
book. So we get the story from different perspectives and they were both college students um in their early 20s who
10:10
weren't getting much traction in their lives and then one day Cynthia found out that she was pregnant. She went to her
10:16
family although her and her family and Gael's family were Christian they had
10:21
kind of drifted from their religious roots and their relationship with God had weakened and so all of her family
10:27
including her mother recommended that she have an abortion. her mother even gave her the money to go get the
10:33
abortion. So Cynthia went with Gael, her boyfriend, and the father of the baby.
10:39
She went to the abortion center and there she had a regret even before she
10:45
took the abortion pill. And in fact, she ran out of the room and bolted out to the parking lot, was sobbing and crying
10:51
uncontrollably. And it was there that Gael said that, "Honey, we can do this. We can raise this baby." But for some
10:58
reason she decided she had to follow her initial plan which was to have the abortion. So she marched back into the
11:04
abortion center. She took the meipristone and swallowed it there in the abortion center. She took the
11:09
misproto pills that they put in the little bag and took that home. When she got home she found out that her
11:15
mother had repented of helping her and of giving her the money. And her mother then went to actually went to
11:21
confession. And after completing her confession with her priest, the priest
11:26
said to her, "You know, there's a doctor in town, Dr. Delgado, who can reverse your daughter's abortion if she wants
11:33
to." And so the mother went to the daughter and told her this. And the daughter at
11:39
first was quite reluctant, but eventually she agreed later that day to talk to the priest on the phone. The
11:44
priest gave her my information. She agreed to talk to me. So we started essentially was a series of phone conversations that day on a Saturday.
11:52
where she would ask a lot of questions and then really didn't seem like she was too interested. At one point she even
11:58
hung up the phone on me. Fortunately, she called right back and I said, "Oh,
12:03
hi Cynthia. We must have gotten disconnected, but she said, "No, I hung up on you and she apologized for hanging
12:08
up and eventually she agreed to come into the clinic." By now it was nighttime. So I went with my wife who's a nurse to the
12:16
clinic and her countenance was kind of downcast. She wasn't making good eye
12:21
contact. She had her arms crossed. She didn't really seem like she wanted to engage, but nonetheless, she decided to
12:26
come in. I had her on the table. I put the ultrasound probe on her and as soon as
12:33
she could see the baby and see the heartbeating, she and Jelle started crying immediately. And she decided
12:39
right then that she was going to try to save her baby. It was like a light switch. So, we started progesterone that night and treated her through through
12:47
the first part of the pregnancy. She delivered a healthy baby at term with no
12:52
birth defects, no complications. They named him Christian and Cynthia and Gael then rededicated
13:01
themselves to the Lord and really dove deeply into their Christian faith. I am and had eventually
13:08
Please turn off your microphones. Then eventually they got married and now have
13:13
a couple of other children and have a very beautiful faithful family. So Christian now is about high school
13:20
age and when she was writing the chapter for the book, she left her computer open and
13:25
left it on the table when she went to go do something in the kitchen and Christian happened to wander by and was
13:31
reading what she had written on the computer screen and he said, "Mom, is this about me?" And before she could
13:37
answer, he had a big smile on his face and he said, "I'm a miracle baby." And I
13:43
think that really describes the transformation that that happened in their lives and the
13:48
transformation that I've seen in the lives of so many women and families who've gone through APR. And I write a
13:56
there's a book in the a chapter in the book called would you ban CPR?
14:02
What? And it describes a lot of the opposition we've had to APR. But I make an analogy of APR with CPR.
14:11
CPR of course is cardopulmonary resuscitation and I make the comparison that they both
14:17
are emergency life-saving procedures APR and CPR. CPR however has a much lower likelihood
14:25
of success. We're happy if 10% of the people survive CPR. While APR it's 55%
14:32
or higher. CPR often leaves the patient neurologically compromised. APR, we
14:39
found that the babies have no birth defects and no problems at all with with
14:45
the APR process. And that's because the meta mephristone attacks the placenta,
14:50
not the baby. So the methopristone doesn't cause birth defects. And we know that progesterone has been used safely in pregnancy for over 50 years.
15:00
And CPR only saves one life. However, APR saves the physical life of the pre-born baby and the spiritual life of
15:07
the mother. And we've seen that APR is truly transformative like it was in the lives of Cynthia and Gael. We've seen so
15:13
many cases where women not only dedicate themselves to that saving that baby, but
15:19
they totally changed their lives and they leave much holier, godly, wholesome lives from then on as a result of this
15:27
transformative decision to start APR. So we're really really happy with that part
15:32
of it too that not only are we saving physical lives, we're also saving spiritual lives.
15:40
In the book I also detail in a chapter called David and Goliath how we've been
15:46
persecuted essentially by what I call the medical abortion complex. Medical abortion complex includes American
15:52
College of Obstaricians and Gynecologists, Planned Parenthood, American Medical Association, ACLU,
15:59
a big famous abortionist, all these components who are organized to promote
16:04
abortion and they've in turn have been attacking APR. And I was curious as to why are they so
16:12
so set on attacking APR? If if they really are pro-choice, why are they against a second chance at choice? And
16:19
the answer was really revealed to me when I read an article in an online platform called Slate. And Slate
16:26
interviewed Dr. Daniel Gman who's a big abortion researcher at University of California, San Francisco. And in that
16:32
he said that um if women in these this situation are given progesterone with medical supervision, he doesn't think
16:39
that it's unsafe. And so that's of course what we're doing. we're giving women progesterone
16:44
and we're providing a lot of medical medical supervision, much more than the medical supervision provided by the the
16:51
abortionists. But then he went on to say that he was concerned that if people found out about
16:57
women choosing APR that he would be concerned that they would overestimate the amount of abortion regret that
17:03
occurs. And so I thought, bingo, that answers our question. They know that if you know that some women change their
17:09
minds after starting the chemical abortion process that that blows a huge hole in their narrative that abortion is
17:14
a great good for all women because if it were such a great good why would some women change their minds and want to
17:20
stop their chemical abortions. So I think that that's the real reason they are attacking us that um this this this
17:26
really is is destroying their narrative and their narrative of course is so important for them from an ideological
17:31
standpoint also from a financial standpoint. And we know now we we have a new study
17:38
that uh has been already been approved for publication. It'll be published in the next issue of link quarterly where
17:44
we followed over 750 women who attempted abortion pill reversal there. We found
17:49
very good um um effectiveness of overall 55% uh
17:56
reversal success. And these are women that some of them got doses as low as 200 milligrams. So this is kind of all
18:01
comers along varying different dosage range. And we found the safety was very
18:07
very high that the um complications were very low. Um there were no maternal
18:14
deaths, hospitalizations were less than 1% and bleeding was very low also. Um
18:21
and the the complications were higher in the failed reversals than in the successful reversal. But even in the failed reversals, they were still um
18:28
very very low. So we're very very happy about that. That'll be that'll be coming out very soon. Oh boy.
18:35
So, if you could all please uh mute your microphone. Somebody has a microphone on. That would be great.
18:41
Okay. So, in um So, in summary, um this is where we're
18:47
heading with abortion pill reversal. I've um I've been very happy that the the book has uh so far been very very
18:54
widely acclaimed. Here's the uh the book cover right here. Abortion pill reversal, second chance at choice. I was
19:00
in um Washington for the March for Life and I was part of a press conference with Live Action there. Afterwards, I
19:06
met a reporter who uh does uh who's a White House correspondent. He was very
19:12
interested in it and he asked me for a copy of the book and I inscribed it for him to the White House because he uh
19:18
took that book to the White House. Apparently, there's a room in the White House where reporters can leave books and he left that book in the White
19:24
House. So hopefully someone there will pick it up. We also had a meeting with uh people from um department of HHS and
19:33
they were also interested. I gave uh was able to get a book to the reporter um
19:38
Rachel Campo Stuffy on on Fox News and um and I also traveled to Rome with uh
19:45
my wife and my grandson uh at the end of December and there I was uh very honored
19:51
to be able to meet Pope Leo and to present him a book. So, um, the book is there in Rome, too. It's at the White
19:57
House. Hopefully, a lot of people will will hear more about it. Hopefully, you'll read it and and tell, um, all of
20:04
your contacts about it. And hopefully that if you're involved with the pregnancy health center that if you're
20:09
not medical, you'll become medical and you'll offer APR. If you are medical, you'll be offering APR because APR is
20:16
safe, it's effective, and women given that second chance of choice are extremely grateful.
20:22
All right. So, we'll now um go to the question and answer
20:29
and we'll look in the chat first.
20:34
And looks like no questions there yet. And you can also raise your hand if you
20:41
want to ask the question out loud and then ask you after you ask the
20:46
question, I'd ask you to mute your microphone. So, Dr. Delgado, I have a question. What
20:54
do you think the biggest uh what is the biggest holdback on pregnancy centers um
20:59
their concern about offering it and how best can they overcome that?
21:06
Yes, that's a great question. I think the biggest hurdle for them is if the
21:12
it's usually the medical director is not yet comfortable with the idea of offering APR. And that can be for many
21:18
reasons but one of the biggest I found is that you know many of these medical directors listen a lot to ACOG and
21:25
ACOG's proclamations American college of obstitricians and gynecologists they of course have come out very strongly
21:32
against us and they say that abortion pill reversal they'll either say it's ineffective or not safe both of those
21:38
have been uh proven untrue by us and in fact a study by Dr. Mitchell Krennan a
21:44
few years ago which was designed to disprove abortion pill reversal was discontinued early because three women
21:51
had to go to the emergency department. Well, they use that study as a reason to say it's unsafe. But actually, if you
21:56
look at that study and I describe this very in a detailed fashion in my book, in my book, by the way, it's written for
22:02
the general public. So although I go into a lot of details, those are details are explained very carefully. But in
22:07
that book uh in the book I explained that um of those three patient only one
22:12
of them was really in the APR group. She had received progesterone after mephristone. The other two women had
22:18
received mephrristone but then placebo afterwards. Those two women had bleeding
22:24
and uh called 911 as did the one who got progesterone. But the one who got progesterone when she got to the
22:30
emergency department the doctor's report said that she needed no further treatment. That means she really didn't
22:36
need to be in the emergency department. She just panicked, which is okay, but that's no reason to stop a study or to
22:41
say that APR is unsafe. She had a failed reversal, which happens, of course. The
22:46
other two, they required emergency surgical abortions and one required a
22:52
blood transfusion. Both of those women were in the placebo group. They had not gotten progesterone. So, these really were not comparable to APR patients. And
23:00
so if if you look at that study, that study was stopped because of safety concerns, not around giving
23:06
progesterone, but around giving placebo, which we don't do of course. And the numbers in that study, although it was
23:12
it was stopped early and was not statistically significant, the numbers do very much support that giving the
23:18
progesterone um saved those babies for the time being, they had continuing pregnancies much
23:26
higher than the women who got placebo. So that study actually supports that what we're doing is safe and effective.
23:31
But unfortunately AOG AON puts a different spin on it. So these medical directors I hope they'll read my book
23:37
abortion pill reversal a second chance of choice or go to our website stenoinstitute.org and see all of our
23:42
studies and see that we are demonstrating that it's safe and effective. And of course I'm also always
23:50
happy to communicate personally with any medical director who might be um you
23:55
know still hesitant. The other group I see is sometimes board of directors are that are very riskaverse and liability
24:03
averse and sometimes they're kind of u digging their heels in a little bit. But um I'm very happy to report that I have
24:11
not heard of any malpractice claims filed excuse me against anyone who's offered abortion pill reversal. The only
24:17
lawsuits have really that I've heard of are have been brought on by states attorney generals both in California and
24:23
New York that are that have sued Harpin International and sued local clinics for offering abortion pill reversal. But
24:29
this is really part of the big abortion persecution and I'm I'm sure that um um
24:35
we are going to prevail in those two states. Okay, it looks like there's a bunch of
24:40
chat um ones we've got. Um within what time frame should progesterone be
24:47
administrated administered and what is the most effective method of delivery?
24:54
So the progesterone we've had success if we've administered up to 72 hours after
25:00
ingestion of the mephristone but we try to get it started as soon as possible and in our recent study
25:07
almost all the women were started less than 48 hours and a large percentage of
25:12
them less than 24 hours. So we're very happy about that. We're we're getting many women women started at 24 or less.
25:19
As far as the most effective route from the data we have um right now at this
25:24
point the answer is oral seems to be most effective. But I will temper that
25:30
pronouncement with the um the fact that we have not had large groups yet of
25:37
vaginal uh progesterone insertion and we think the vaginal might be better than oral because of other uses of it where
25:44
it seems to work better. Um, so, so we're we're hoping to do a study where we're going to compare oral and vaginal
25:51
progesterone. Now, injection is also very effective, probably equal or maybe
25:56
even better than oral. We have a a study that's in the works right now, a clinic
26:02
called Sanctafamilia Clinic in Omaha, Nebraska, um, started treating women by first
26:07
giving an injection as soon as possible and then putting them on highdose vaginal. And so we have some data for
26:14
that and we're helping them to um put together a paper that we hopefully will be able to publish sometime this year.
26:20
So the jury is still out on that. Um but I I certainly um I certainly feel that
26:26
we can we have very good data for oral but we have strong suspicions that um the vaginal might be good too.
26:36
The next question is if a pregnancy center offers the APR treatment should the facility have a medical license? So
26:42
if the center itself is offering APR, yes, that center should have a medical license. But if the center is not yet
26:48
medical, but what you can do is the medical director can offer the APR
26:53
through his or her own office and then the the vital counseling and support can
26:59
take place in the pregnancy health center. So that's one way to do it if there's no medical license.
27:05
The next is I have heard Planned Parenthood is instructing women to take both pills at the same time to prevent this reversal. So yes, I have heard
27:12
this. There actually was a study that they did where the women took both pills
27:18
together, the mis methristone and the misoprosttol and that showed that it was not quite as
27:24
effective for abortion as if they separate them out. So because of that, I have not seen a large spread um giving
27:32
both both pills together fortunately, but you still see it every once in a
27:37
while. So if that happened um I would still see the woman. I would still treat with progesterone. I would counsel her
27:43
that the misoprosttol does increase the risk of birth defects by two to fourfold. So there is a significant
27:51
increase in birth defects from you know the average in the US is about 3% and so
27:56
that increases to anywhere to about 6 to 12% risk of birth defects. So leather
28:01
has to be counseledled very carefully. She has to give informed consent and if so then um you can uh try administering
28:08
uh progesterone also what is the most effective dose and
28:14
some clinics stock the progesterone we have no 24 hoursarmacies limit access on weekends in our area so right now the
28:21
dose I'm using is I'm I'm giving 600 milligrams orally or some people give it
28:26
vaginally twice a day for two days and then 400 milligrams twice a day for two days and then 400 at night until the end
28:33
of the first trimester or for two weeks, whichever is longer. If there are no
28:38
24-houries in your area, then I think it would be good to stock progesterone in the office. And you should have some on
28:46
call availability so that um if there's no pharmacy open on the weekend, you can get in there and get the progesterone
28:52
started because I think waiting till Monday would be too long to wait. As far as waiting overnight, that's probably
29:00
acceptable as long as you can get the progesterone started first thing in the morning. But the sooner the better if you have a way to meet a woman there at
29:06
night, that would be would be even better. Next one. How many babies have been
29:12
saved so far? A uh Harpy International, the APR uh rescue network um estimates
29:19
over 7,000. and to use worldwide numbers
29:25
in the US. So those numbers are probably more US and worldwide is a little harder
29:33
to track. Success rate for APR. Um so again we
29:39
have different studies and in different studies you get different numbers. So in our latest study that's going to be published very soon that's already peer
29:46
reviewed and approved the success rate was 55%. But they were not all using highdosese
29:52
protocols. When in our 2018 study, the success rate for all comers was 48% but in the
30:00
highdosese oral protocol it was 68% and in the injection protocol it was 64%.
30:06
So that study we able to separate out those groups. So and then the next study we have planned um that will uh our
30:14
randomized control trial will try to u will have women on higher doses. So
30:19
we'll see how that works. So that's why there's different range and that's very common for different treatments that
30:24
different studies you have different dosing that the numbers aren't always going to be exactly the same.
30:31
So the biggest takeaway from the book for pregnancy centers, what gap do you feel existed and prompted your new book?
30:36
I think the gap was really just an awareness gap um both at pregnancy health centers and throughout the um in
30:44
the general population. So that was the reason to write the book abortion pill reversal a second chance at choice. is
30:49
to increase awareness. And I'm I'm hoping this is a book that can be passed around pregnancy health centers amongst
30:54
the um the board of directors. I'm still amazed at how many times I go speak at
31:00
um pregnancy health center um fundraisers and I'll meet a board of director member at at the event who will
31:06
say, you know, until we booked you to speak, I didn't know it even existed. So, there's still a big knowledge gap.
31:12
So, that's the reason why um uh I wrote the book as chemical
31:17
abortion. The next question is chemical abortion becomes more common. What should pregnancy centers understand about the changing landscape and the
31:23
urgency of rapid response? Well, one thing that's very very important and I haven't touched on
31:30
specifically yet is the other thing that's going on is the increase of of um
31:36
teleaalth and mailorder abortions. This has become the wild wild west. At the end of 24 2024, there was a a um
31:45
a survey by the Society of Family Planning, which is a um a proabortion group, and they um found that 25% of all
31:55
documented abortions in the US of all both surgical and chemical abortion, 25% of all of them were teleaalth. So that's
32:03
that is more now a year later. But what they didn't document and it's difficult to document all the mail order chemical
32:09
abortions These drugs are coming across state lines which are violating the Comstack
32:14
Act. They're coming from different countries. Sometimes the women are getting drugs that that are not even correctly labeled. So this is a really
32:21
big problem and and these women then are are having self-managed abortions.
32:27
They're either having very minimal or no medical supervision at all. And there
32:32
there are many great risks. So, um, let me go into the risk and I'll talk about
32:38
how it it comes back to the pregnancy health center. So, there are medical risks. One is they're not having ultrasounds. So, the woman might be
32:44
further along in her pregnancy than she thinks she is, and she might then take
32:49
the chemical abortion drugs and not have the abortion, but instead have prolonged bleeding, which could cause problems for
32:55
her. Number two, she may misinterpret her pregnancy test and so she may not even
33:00
be pregnant, be taking these drugs unnecessarily and that could cause harm to her health if she's taking them over and over again. Number three, without
33:08
the ultrasound, she may have an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy. And we know that ectopic pregnancies occur 2 to
33:14
3% of the time of pregnancies in the US. And that in the package inserted, it says that myopristone is contraindicated
33:21
in ectopic pregnancies. So most ectopic pregnancies occur in the tube.
33:26
And if the woman has a pregnancy in the tube, doesn't realize it, takes the abortion pill, starts to bleed, she
33:31
thinks this is part for the course because she read somewhere that she would bleed a fair amount with with the chemical abortion drugs. Well, then when
33:40
she bleeds more and more, her tube ruptures, she has heavy bleeding, she passes out on her bathroom
33:47
floor, no one there to call 911. She could die on her bathroom floor at the altar of choice because she didn't know
33:53
she had an ectopic pregnancy. This has happened at least 20 times. This has been documented and I know that it's
33:58
going to happen more and more. It's probably happened more times already. Next, the women are not being tested for
34:04
their blood type. So, a woman who has Rh- negative blood, if she's exposed to Rh positive blood, she'll mount an
34:10
immune response which could be important in future pregnancies. And we know that during an abortion, blood can mix from
34:16
the pre-born baby to the mother and back. Well, if a mother is Rh- negative and a pre-born baby is Rh positive,
34:23
there's mixing of the blood. She sets an immune response. It's not going to matter for that pregnancy. But immune
34:29
responses, immune system is like an elephant. It has a memory that lasts forever. So in future wanted pregnancies
34:36
with Rh- positive babies, the mother will mount an immune response and can lead to congestive heart failure during
34:42
the pregnancy of the baby as well as still birth after still birth after still birth. It's a curse that cannot be
34:48
eliminated that will really curse her for the for the rest of her life or rest of her reproductive life.
34:55
Next we know that the uh chemical abortion drugs procured by mail order
35:00
have become the tools of sex traffickers, rapists and child molesters. So um there have been um several cases
35:08
of women who were given the um abortion pills surreptitiously either in their
35:15
drinks or a couple of cases documented where the men while having intercourse with their girlfriends put the pills in
35:22
the vagina. And so we know of three that have been brought to justice. One uh Everson Evans in Illinois back in August
35:29
was arrested and he actually admitted that he was going to take things into his own hands. There was a paramedic in
35:35
Scotland who actually had been a decorated paramedic and head of his unit. He was convicted of giving his
35:40
girlfriend uh mythopristone and and causing her to abort. And there was um one more man in um in
35:50
the United States who likewise was arrested um and text messages implicated
35:56
him. So this I'm sure is happening more and more. How many hundreds or thousands of men are not getting caught after
36:02
giving women or forcing women to take these abortion causing pills. So this is
36:08
a huge problem. So you at the pregnancy health centers you need to be aware of this. I think that women are since
36:15
they're doing this many times without much communication with either an abortion center or a doctor or anybody
36:20
else, they may be making hastier decisions than they would have normally when choosing an abortion. So, they may
36:27
change their mind more quickly too and be ready for for APR. So, how do they how do these women find
36:34
us? It's through their magic phones, of course. So I think it's important for pregnancy health centers to be engaged
36:40
on social media to be running digital ads so that when women do a search, how
36:46
do I stop my abortion? How do I reverse my abortion? How do I end my chemical abortion? Your name will come up and
36:52
they'll be able to contact you very quickly and it's good for you. You should have chat functions because they like to chat. Chat meaning with their
36:59
fingers, not with their mouths more than they like to talk on the phone. So you have to be very well equipped for that.
37:06
You also have to be um alert to the fact that some of these may have been coerced into taking the chemical abortion pills
37:11
or that it may have been given to them surreptitiously. Be aware of that so that you can be of support to them and
37:17
so that you can um call authorities and let them know that you're going to be supportive of them and that the authorities will not be prosecuting
37:23
them, but they'll be going after these men who try to take advantage of them and that these women are victims and
37:29
that the the men's men are the predators. So, I think you have to be aware of all that, too.
37:36
Okay, the next question, what is the appropriate protocol for follow-up ultrasound?
37:42
What we do and what we recommend is to um repeat the ultrasound a week later later to make sure that the pre-born
37:48
baby's still alive because you don't want to be giving progesterone if the baby's no longer alive. If the baby's doing great at the one week, then repeat
37:54
it again in another week or in two weeks. This also helps with continued bonding because some women still have a
37:59
little bit of ambivalence after um going through the reversal. So I think that's that's very important.
38:06
Okay, another question. There was a nurse in our area in Western Washington State who was convicted in prison last year for giving his miss. Yes, I
38:12
remember that case too. How would you suggest pregnancy medical clinics advertise or communicate to the
38:18
community that we have APR available? Well, I would say that you know through your um your social media network and
38:25
any of your community partners, you let them know you have flyers made up both uh on paper and ones that can be sent
38:32
digitally so that everybody who relies on you knows that u you have um
38:39
um APR available. Okay, I think we're caught up with the
38:44
chat questions. Oh no, here's a new one. Does your book cover the suggestion you touched on for
38:50
the centers to reach women? That's a good question. I think I do,
38:56
but I'm not positive now about that point if about reaching out through through social media and all that.
39:06
Any other questions? What Here's another question. What
39:11
advice would you give directors who want to strengthen relationship with local medical professionals and build greater
39:17
trust in their communities? I think the important thing there is to
39:22
always have the highest standards. That is very important so that if any doctor
39:28
does recommend a woman go to you, he or she will be very confident that you'll take the very best care of her. So
39:34
that's extremely important and that means being very diligent having very good protocols following your protocols
39:40
making sure that you're you have all the certifications that if you are um uh
39:46
have a medical license that you keep that license up to date and that you um do all the the reertifications that you
39:52
need that you have someone who's very very detail oriented that keeps your um handbook up to date that you review that
39:59
yearly that's approved by your board of directors and your medical directors and that follow all of your protocols. You don't cut corners. And then when you if
40:06
you do get a referral from a a physician or medical practitioner out in the area that you follow up and say we, you know,
40:13
thank you for the referral. We saw her. This is what we've done for her. So th those are really important to to build
40:18
that stellar reputation. That's extremely important on the customer
40:23
service and the medical quality side. We want to far out compete these abortion centers and they their standards are
40:29
very very low. I'm sure you know that. But we have to be far far above that.
40:34
Next is to your medical director should be someone who can be a good liaison with the medical community. And so your
40:42
medical director um hopefully is willing to reach out to to different people in the medical community, have lunch with
40:49
them, have discussions, have talks, let the let them give them updates about what you're doing and and and what new
40:55
services you're offering and also how you can be of help. So, you can reach
41:00
out, let's say, to a pro-life medical office that's not um formally uh
41:07
associated with you, but you can tell them, you know, look, if you ever have a woman who's abortion intent or abortion
41:13
minded, you can refer them to us and then have your cars, have your flyers there so so it's ready and that it's top
41:20
of their mind so they know where a trusted referral source is. Those kinds of things really build build a lot of
41:26
trust. you know, if if that they're willing, take lunch over to them and just meet them. Because sometimes when they meet the people, it's much
41:32
different than just an anonymous name on a card or something. But once they meet the people and then they see that you're
41:38
that you're good people, that you're that you're real people, that you're happy, that you're joyful, and that you're serious about high quality care,
41:45
that that's going to really convince them that they'll want to use you when when the time arises. So, I think all
41:50
that kind of outreach and building a a great reputation is what it takes.
41:57
Next question. Looking ahead, what gives you the most hope for the future of the pregnancy health movement and where do you believe leaders should be focusing
42:03
their energy right now? The thing that gives me the most hope about the pregnancy health movement
42:10
is that almost uniformly I I wouldn't say I
42:16
can't say 100% of course but I would say anyone that I've met is motivated by
42:21
their sincere belief in the gospel message and they're driven by Matthew
42:28
25:40. Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers that you do unto me. and they're really motivated by serving
42:34
Christ and seeing Christ in those that they meet. And so that gives me the
42:40
greatest hope because that's the only mo motivator being a good and holy
42:46
Christian that is sustainable is sustainable for years and years,
42:51
sustainable through persecutions, sustainable through any hardship. anybody else who just has a humanistic
42:58
love of people, which I'm not I'm not um doubting their sincerity, nor am I
43:03
knocking it, but that eventually will reach a word block that will stop them. And and that just because it doesn't
43:10
have that infinite transcendental meaning.
43:16
That transcendental meaning can only come from God. If it's just to help my fellow human, that's it. It ends there.
43:23
it doesn't have the transcendence. So that's what gives me the most hope is that the local the the pregnancy health
43:30
movement is so motivated by by Christian service and Christian duty. And where
43:36
should the world be heading? Well, I think we have to head and be a step ahead of where
43:43
the action is. And that's why abortion pill reversal is the tip of the spear. So I think you have to be up on abortion
43:49
pill reversal. You have to be ready to offer it and offer it well. You have to be able to meet these women where they
43:54
are. Like I said before, meet them online, on social media, be heavily
44:00
advertising through social media and digital means, Google ads and all of that, that is is really extremely
44:07
important. And then on the advocacy side, those of you who are in pro-life
44:12
states and are having these abortion pills shipped across state lines, you have to really work with your states to
44:20
create laws so you can sue and bring to justice these predators.
44:25
The state of Texas right now is suing um
44:30
abortion aid access I think it's called a website as well as a doctor in New York who runs that for sending abortion
44:38
pills across state lines to Texas. So we have to have more of that. We also have to talk to our federal leaders and have
44:44
them enforce the Comstack Act. And you should read up about that if you don't know comtock c.
44:51
It's a law that was passed in the 1870s, I believe, and a law that had three
44:58
parts. One was it prohibited the shipping of abortive patients across
45:03
state lines, um the not uh uh regulated or banned shipment of pornography across
45:11
state lines and birth control. Now, those two last parts have kind of been
45:16
taken out of act. So, it no longer deals with pornography, although I wish it would, nor birth control. However, um
45:24
the part about um making it illegal for abortive patients to be shipped across
45:30
state lines, that part of the law is still active. It's just not enforced. So, we have to get our federal
45:35
government to enforce that law. That would be a way to crack down all this because they are shipping, they're using
45:40
the US mail to ship across state lines, and that is illegal. And so we have to
45:46
hold them to justice. So I would say that you should be aware of that for advocacy there. And and then those of
45:53
you who are in proabortion states, you know, like I'm in California, it's very difficult here. But you have to consider
45:58
it mission territory. So you have to see how you can try to convince the people to have a change of heart and hopefully
46:04
then those people will elect better leaders in the future and we can have a swing from being proabortion to
46:11
pro-life. But those are the areas I think where we really need to focus um and and then look ahead and always stay
46:17
one step ahead. I think we also um we need to um more on the medical side we
46:24
need to develop uh reversal drugs for um misoprosttol because we do have some
46:30
women who are getting misoprostyl only through the male. We know in places like Mexico most of the abortions are
46:36
actually misoprostyl abortions because mephrist is much more expensive. So in our research side, we're we're looking
46:42
ahead to that too. Um so there's a lot to look forward to, a lot of good work
46:47
to be done. Uh the next question looking ahead, what research or development you see next? So
46:54
I I guess I kind of answered that already. Um one is uh research to comp we want to figure out what's better oral
47:00
or vaginal and how if injections are better how much better because injections are painful and they're more
47:07
difficult to to have of course in the office but if that's going to make a really big difference then we'll sort of
47:13
have parallel protocols. So, we want to, you know, really figure that out. And we um we have one study that we're um
47:20
trying to get approved through the um ethics board right now that'll be a prospective observational study. And
47:26
then I told you about the the randomized control study which actually has been on a clinical hold for four years by the
47:32
FDA and we're trying to fight that and we have some inroads in the FDA now that we're hopeful. Um so that moprosttoal
47:38
reversal as well as maybe other um supplements or or medicines that we
47:44
could give with a progesterone to help it work better or maybe look at something called alpha lipoic acid which
47:50
there are some um studies in the literature showing that it can um help women who have threatened miscarriage
47:56
who have what uh who have bleeding called subcorionic hemorrhage bleeding behind the placenta can help that
48:02
resolve. So, we're probably going to study that and seeing if it increases our success rates um and maybe some some
48:08
other medicines um that we might um look at. Uh unfortunately, the U this another
48:15
question, the US Department of Justice Office of Labor Council has issued formal opinion saying the Comstack Act
48:20
does not prohibit mailing abortion drugs like me for zone so long as there is no intent to use them unlawfully.
48:28
Yeah, that's true. The rules, the comment is rules apply to some, not others. That is true. Um, but when they are
48:35
shipping to states like Texas, they are intending to use them unlawfully. So, it still could be applied there.
48:46
Any other questions?
48:57
All right. While we're waiting to shift other questions, I'll just give you a reminder. There's the book abortion pill reversal, a second chance at choice. You
49:05
can go to ignatius.com, stenoinstitute.org, which by the way, senoitute.org um has a
49:12
lot of resources you might be interested. You go to the resources tab for videos, a lot of um um articles in
49:18
the lay literature and and in the medical literature. Um and then you can also buy the book at Amazon,
49:24
ignatius.com, stenoinstitute.org or Amazon. Here's a question. Can APR be used if
49:30
the patient has taken Ella? That's a very good question. Ella, also known as
49:35
Uliptol, is a progesterone receptor blocker very similar to methopristone.
49:42
So the answer is yes. Progesterone should theoretically block the effects of ulipristtola.
49:49
I don't have any data to support that, but I know that it works the same way as meristone. So I assume it would. I also
49:56
don't have any data on whether or not Ella causes birth defects. I would assume it does not, but then again, I
50:02
don't know. We don't have any proof like we have with meristrystal. With meristto now with our two combined studies, uh we
50:08
have several hundred now. Um where we've had births with no birth no
50:15
increased risk of birth defects. I don't know if that's the case of Ella, but I would say I would give the the the woman informed consent, tell her we don't know
50:21
a lot about this, but that this is definitely worth a chance of trying the progesterone to reverse the Ella if she's happened to take the Ella um as an
50:29
abortacant.
50:35
Is it possible to get example of a policy and procedure for APR? Yes. So, if your center can reach out to
50:41
Heartbeat International, they have um um some model policies and procedures and
50:48
they can help you get started there. So, you can go to um uh or you can go to abortion pillreversal.com and there'll
50:54
be a link there to uh it's called APR Worldwide. I think I think the email
51:04
let me I think I have the email right here if you want to hold on one second.
51:13
Well, I thought I had it, but I guess not.
51:19
Yeah, but you can find that on abortion pill reversal.com and and think a link there and they'll connect you. Okay. How
51:28
do you determine how many women are looking for APR in a given area?
51:33
Well, I don't know how you determine that unless you do some sort of a survey.
51:39
But I can tell you that we know that abortion pill uh the abortion pill counts for 70% or more of the abortions
51:46
these days. I think women are going to have more regrets because they're not
51:51
reflecting on as much. And we know that there are about
51:57
uh 700,000 chemical abortions in the US every year. So that's a lot of women probably a lot of women in your area. So
52:04
that mean there's probably a great need in your area. Any
52:10
last minute questions before we wrap up?
52:15
Oh, and I I found that website for you looking for the u policies and procedures and how to get connected um
52:22
and and how to join the network. It's aworldwide.com.
52:29
aprn worldwide.com.
52:34
Maybe you could put that in the chat, Sam. It is in the chat. Great. Yeah. So, that'd be the place to
52:40
go. Oh, great. Yeah, you did. You're fast. So, go there instead of abortion pillreversal.com. That'll be your direct
52:46
uh avenue to learning more about the network and about joining the network.
52:55
Okay, any other questions?
53:02
Wow, this has been awesome. Um, so much information and it's it's been great.
53:07
Thank you so much, Dr. Delgado. Um, would love to end this time in
53:14
prayer. Um, would you like to close things up for us in prayer? Dr. Delgato?
53:20
Sure, I'd be happy to. Good and loving God, thank you for the opportunity
53:26
to serve you, to serve our community, to serve our churches, and serve women who
53:32
are being victimized by the medical abortion complex. We ask, Lord, that you bless women who are in these situations.
53:38
Let them choose life, Lord. And if they've taken me personal, let them choose abortion pill reversal. Please
53:43
bless all of us here, all of our pregnancy help centers. Let us be filled
53:50
with your spirit of charity, of fortitude, and of willingness to serve
53:57
all those we meet. We ask that you bless us on our way. Help us to be your faithful witnesses to all those we meet.
54:04
Bless our families. Bless all of our organizations, our boards, our benefactors, that together we may truly
54:12
be your hands, your loving heart to all those we meet. in the abortion pill
54:18
reversal movement and in our pro-life activities. We ask all this in Jesus name. Amen.
54:26
Amen. Thank you so much. We really appreciate the work that you do and all that you've done and I'm excited about
54:31
the new book. Um I'm going to order mine, that's for sure.
54:38
Thanks everybody. Thank you guys for coming. Um, don't forget next next month um we'll see you
54:45
back here um and you'll be receiving a link for the um for the transcript of
54:53
this um the video and um and then the you can always look on our website too
54:58
on our um webinar Wednesday link and it will have all of our past ones as well.
55:04
So, thank you guys so much. Um, I will I did put the chat the link in the chat,
55:11
but let me do that again for you. Um, let's see here.
55:20
It's on the Steno Institute. Here is the
55:25
direct link.
55:31
There's the direct link um to Ignatius Press. And then um
55:39
here is the link to his website. And on Dr. Delgato's website again, he
55:46
has um just a large amount of resources um
55:52
peer-reviewed articles, other articles, videos, and his books. So um you can
55:58
definitely go to his website and get all of that information. Um there is also a
56:03
speakers bureau if you ever need to or want to um invite any of the speakers
56:08
there. Um that information is there on his website as well. So just lots of
56:13
information on his website um to be able to to access. Other than that, thank you
56:20
again all for coming. I really appreciate it. And you guys have a great
56:25
afternoon and um hopefully we'll see you next month. Okay. Hi.
56:43
Heat.
Okay, I want to start over, guys. Hello everyone. Welcome to webinar Wednesday. Here at I Rapture, we are passionate
0:23
about serving lives and pouring our passion into supporting your incredible teams in every way possible.
0:30
And one of our favorite ways to do that is through these monthly gatherings with um inspiring pro-life voices that truly
0:36
make a difference. We are absolutely thrilled today to um and honored to have Dr. George Delgado
0:43
with us and as the trailblazing pioneer behind abortion pill reversal.
0:49
He serves as a medical director of the APR network and president of Steno
0:54
Institute. Um, plus he's just released his powerful powerful new book, Abortion
1:00
Pill Reversal: A Second Chance at Choice, which is sure to spark meaningful conversations. Um, to all of
1:07
you tuning in, whether you're familiar face or joining us for the first time, we're so grateful to have you here and
1:13
can't wait to share this time together. Um, if a question pops up during our discussion, if you could either raise
1:19
your hand or put it in the chat, that would be so helpful. And then just keep
1:24
those mics muted until your moment to share. That way we don't have a lot of background noise going on. Um don't
1:31
worry if you miss anything. Um a full replay will be landing in your mailbox
1:38
um by Friday or Monday. Um so anyway, welcome you guys. I'm so glad to see you all here. There's um a
1:45
large group today, so that's really awesome. Um, and we're just gonna pray
1:51
and then we're going to open this up to Dr. Delgado. So, um, let's just go ahead
1:57
and open this time up in prayer. Dear Jesus, we thank you so much for, um,
2:02
your love for each one of us, your, um, the support you give us and the hope
2:08
that we have in you for eternal life. And we pray for these babies that we're
2:14
out there to save. We ask, God, that we can touch the hearts of women. Um, and we thank you for people that stand in
2:22
that gap and find ways to minister to them, to save those babies and those
2:28
lives. And we pray that you would just continue helping us in this work. We thank you, Lord Jesus, and we give this
2:34
time to you that we may be blessed and to learn and um to grow. Thank you in
2:40
Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, Dr. Delgato, we are ready.
2:51
Well, great. Well, thanks so much for having me everybody and thanks for joining us. And today we're going to talk about abortion pill reversal.
2:57
And as you probably are aware, please mute your microphones if you haven't already. If you're probably
3:04
aware, you're probably aware that um these days in the United States, my estimates are that 70% of all abortions
3:12
are chemical abortions. So because of the increased numbers of those abortion
3:17
pill reversal in my mind has become the tip of the spear of the pro-life movement. So, I guess it's very important for those of us who are
3:25
dedicated to saving the lives of the pre-born and also helping save the spiritual lives of their mothers that we
3:32
be very up to date on abortion pill reversal and that we do whatever we can to support abortion pill reversal and to
3:39
make it available to any woman who wants that second chance at choice.
3:45
Now in um in doing so um I decided to write the book abortion pill reversal a
3:50
second chance of choice which is available from ignatious.com you can also find it on our website
3:57
stenoinstitute.org or or um on Amazon in order I wrote it in order to increase
4:03
awareness about abortion pill reversal to spread the message that all of our studies have shown that it's effective,
4:10
it's safe, and that women who are given the opportunity are extremely grateful.
4:16
So, I'd like to do is first go in um a little bit of how I got in involved with
4:22
abortion pill reversal because people often ask me that and it wasn't necessarily a big idea that I had. It
4:28
really abortion pill reversal which is it's really a movement. It's a movement that started when two women in different
4:35
places at different times thousands of miles apart asked two different doctors, Dr. Matthew Harrison and myself if we
4:41
would help them reverse their chemical abortions. And so that's really why it started. It was a cry from help for
4:47
these from these women. My particular first case, I was uh I got a phone call
4:52
one day from Terry Palmquist, a sidewalk counselor in Bakersfield, California.
4:57
And Terry had gotten a phone call from a woman in El Paso, Texas, who was at who had taken methoprista on the first drug
5:04
in the cocktail and wanted to stop her abortion. So Terry called me to see if I
5:10
knew how to help her. I said, ' Terry, I've never heard of anyone stopping a chemical abortion, but let me give this
5:16
some thought. And it was there that the Holy Spirit put two and two together in my mind because I had two related but
5:23
separate knowledge uh banks, you can say. One was that I was very experienced at using progesterone in pregnancy and
5:31
women who have low progesterone levels and are what we call threatening miscarriage or cramping or spotting. And
5:37
those women, you can give progesterone, save the baby and save the pregnancy. And I also knew how mephristone works
5:43
because for some reason God had placed in me a a a robust curiosity about
5:49
meristone even before it was uh released in the US in the year 2000. So I knew exactly how it worked. I know that
5:56
meristone works by blocking the effects of progesterone. And for those of you
6:01
who don't know progesterone the name itself is an acronym progesterational steroid kone proestation. So it's a
6:08
hormone that is absolutely essential for the maintenance of a normal pregnancy. So mephipristone by blocking the effects
6:15
of progesterone causes separation of the wall of the placenta the placenta from
6:21
the wall of the uterus and causing the death of a pre-born baby. So I knew exactly how it worked and I thought to
6:27
myself, well although these women may have normal progesterone levels, their progesterone levels are being made ineffective by this chemical
6:34
mythopristone that is blocking the effects of the progesterone. So I thought maybe if we give them
6:40
supplemental progesterone, raise the progesterone levels, then when the methopristone comes off a receptor,
6:46
there'll be a progesterone molecule ready to take its place and we can out compete the methopressone at the
6:53
receptor site. That was my theory. I came up with a protocol right there on the fly. But then I had another problem
7:00
that was that this patient Aaron was in El Paso, Texas. I was in San Diego a
7:06
thousand miles or more away. So I found a doctor in El Paso, Dr. John Bellakura,
7:12
who had progesterone in the office, had had similar training as as I did in naprochnology and knew how to use
7:18
progesterone and she was willing to use the protocol that I had devised right there that day. So Dr. Bellura treated
7:25
the patient and about two weeks later, I got a a favorable call from her. The baby was still alive. Then I would get
7:32
updates along the way until finally I got the great news that the baby was born at term with no birth defects.
7:38
Everything went very well. So at that point I really wasn't sure of
7:43
course if what I had done had helped the uh the woman save her baby or if it was
7:49
a coincidence because it was just one case. But then people started hearing about this one case and they started
7:55
asking for advice and so I was giving them advice and before we knew it we had a handful of cases around the country.
8:00
That's when I discovered Dr. Harrison's case, which was a year and a half to two years before mine, unbeknownst to me. At
8:08
that point in 2012, I wrote the first article in the peer-reviewed medical literature
8:14
um describing these six cases. Then more people started to hear about it. I knew that we probably ought to get um a
8:21
little better organized because some women weren't finding out about this in time. So, that's when I started the abortion pill reversal network, the
8:27
website abortionpillreversal.com. and started the hotline 1-800 number.
8:34
From there we we grew organically with some with some promotion and by 2018 we
8:40
had published our third article in the medical literature and that one followed over 500 women who had attempted um
8:46
abortion pill reversal showed very good um favorable success rates with our very
8:52
best protocols. We're seeing 64 to 68% success reversals
8:58
and very safe. At that point, we grew so big that we decided in 2018 that we would hand off
9:04
the network to Heartbeat International because they had much more institutional depth. And since then, they they took
9:10
over and have grown it very very well. So that now we know that over 7,000
9:16
babies have been saved by abortion pill reversal. We've helped women in all 50 states and in more than 100 foreign
9:22
countries. I'm one of the medical adviserss for the abortion pill reversal network, not the medical director.
9:28
That's another doctor with with Harpy, Dr. Brent BS. But I am medical director of culture of life family services here
9:33
in San Diego, our local nonprofit um uh community uh clinic as well as the
9:40
president of Steno Institute. Well, some people often ask me what about stories um of women who've who've
9:47
gone through this and and the second part of my book talks about the stories
9:52
and some several women have written in their in the first person have written their own stories and what I want to
9:57
share with you is a story of Cynthia and Jael and and Cynthia and Ja actually each wrote it a separate chapter for the
10:03
book. So we get the story from different perspectives and they were both college students um in their early 20s who
10:10
weren't getting much traction in their lives and then one day Cynthia found out that she was pregnant. She went to her
10:16
family although her and her family and Gael's family were Christian they had
10:21
kind of drifted from their religious roots and their relationship with God had weakened and so all of her family
10:27
including her mother recommended that she have an abortion. her mother even gave her the money to go get the
10:33
abortion. So Cynthia went with Gael, her boyfriend, and the father of the baby.
10:39
She went to the abortion center and there she had a regret even before she
10:45
took the abortion pill. And in fact, she ran out of the room and bolted out to the parking lot, was sobbing and crying
10:51
uncontrollably. And it was there that Gael said that, "Honey, we can do this. We can raise this baby." But for some
10:58
reason she decided she had to follow her initial plan which was to have the abortion. So she marched back into the
11:04
abortion center. She took the meipristone and swallowed it there in the abortion center. She took the
11:09
misproto pills that they put in the little bag and took that home. When she got home she found out that her
11:15
mother had repented of helping her and of giving her the money. And her mother then went to actually went to
11:21
confession. And after completing her confession with her priest, the priest
11:26
said to her, "You know, there's a doctor in town, Dr. Delgado, who can reverse your daughter's abortion if she wants
11:33
to." And so the mother went to the daughter and told her this. And the daughter at
11:39
first was quite reluctant, but eventually she agreed later that day to talk to the priest on the phone. The
11:44
priest gave her my information. She agreed to talk to me. So we started essentially was a series of phone conversations that day on a Saturday.
11:52
where she would ask a lot of questions and then really didn't seem like she was too interested. At one point she even
11:58
hung up the phone on me. Fortunately, she called right back and I said, "Oh,
12:03
hi Cynthia. We must have gotten disconnected, but she said, "No, I hung up on you and she apologized for hanging
12:08
up and eventually she agreed to come into the clinic." By now it was nighttime. So I went with my wife who's a nurse to the
12:16
clinic and her countenance was kind of downcast. She wasn't making good eye
12:21
contact. She had her arms crossed. She didn't really seem like she wanted to engage, but nonetheless, she decided to
12:26
come in. I had her on the table. I put the ultrasound probe on her and as soon as
12:33
she could see the baby and see the heartbeating, she and Jelle started crying immediately. And she decided
12:39
right then that she was going to try to save her baby. It was like a light switch. So, we started progesterone that night and treated her through through
12:47
the first part of the pregnancy. She delivered a healthy baby at term with no
12:52
birth defects, no complications. They named him Christian and Cynthia and Gael then rededicated
13:01
themselves to the Lord and really dove deeply into their Christian faith. I am and had eventually
13:08
Please turn off your microphones. Then eventually they got married and now have
13:13
a couple of other children and have a very beautiful faithful family. So Christian now is about high school
13:20
age and when she was writing the chapter for the book, she left her computer open and
13:25
left it on the table when she went to go do something in the kitchen and Christian happened to wander by and was
13:31
reading what she had written on the computer screen and he said, "Mom, is this about me?" And before she could
13:37
answer, he had a big smile on his face and he said, "I'm a miracle baby." And I
13:43
think that really describes the transformation that that happened in their lives and the
13:48
transformation that I've seen in the lives of so many women and families who've gone through APR. And I write a
13:56
there's a book in the a chapter in the book called would you ban CPR?
14:02
What? And it describes a lot of the opposition we've had to APR. But I make an analogy of APR with CPR.
14:11
CPR of course is cardopulmonary resuscitation and I make the comparison that they both
14:17
are emergency life-saving procedures APR and CPR. CPR however has a much lower likelihood
14:25
of success. We're happy if 10% of the people survive CPR. While APR it's 55%
14:32
or higher. CPR often leaves the patient neurologically compromised. APR, we
14:39
found that the babies have no birth defects and no problems at all with with
14:45
the APR process. And that's because the meta mephristone attacks the placenta,
14:50
not the baby. So the methopristone doesn't cause birth defects. And we know that progesterone has been used safely in pregnancy for over 50 years.
15:00
And CPR only saves one life. However, APR saves the physical life of the pre-born baby and the spiritual life of
15:07
the mother. And we've seen that APR is truly transformative like it was in the lives of Cynthia and Gael. We've seen so
15:13
many cases where women not only dedicate themselves to that saving that baby, but
15:19
they totally changed their lives and they leave much holier, godly, wholesome lives from then on as a result of this
15:27
transformative decision to start APR. So we're really really happy with that part
15:32
of it too that not only are we saving physical lives, we're also saving spiritual lives.
15:40
In the book I also detail in a chapter called David and Goliath how we've been
15:46
persecuted essentially by what I call the medical abortion complex. Medical abortion complex includes American
15:52
College of Obstaricians and Gynecologists, Planned Parenthood, American Medical Association, ACLU,
15:59
a big famous abortionist, all these components who are organized to promote
16:04
abortion and they've in turn have been attacking APR. And I was curious as to why are they so
16:12
so set on attacking APR? If if they really are pro-choice, why are they against a second chance at choice? And
16:19
the answer was really revealed to me when I read an article in an online platform called Slate. And Slate
16:26
interviewed Dr. Daniel Gman who's a big abortion researcher at University of California, San Francisco. And in that
16:32
he said that um if women in these this situation are given progesterone with medical supervision, he doesn't think
16:39
that it's unsafe. And so that's of course what we're doing. we're giving women progesterone
16:44
and we're providing a lot of medical medical supervision, much more than the medical supervision provided by the the
16:51
abortionists. But then he went on to say that he was concerned that if people found out about
16:57
women choosing APR that he would be concerned that they would overestimate the amount of abortion regret that
17:03
occurs. And so I thought, bingo, that answers our question. They know that if you know that some women change their
17:09
minds after starting the chemical abortion process that that blows a huge hole in their narrative that abortion is
17:14
a great good for all women because if it were such a great good why would some women change their minds and want to
17:20
stop their chemical abortions. So I think that that's the real reason they are attacking us that um this this this
17:26
really is is destroying their narrative and their narrative of course is so important for them from an ideological
17:31
standpoint also from a financial standpoint. And we know now we we have a new study
17:38
that uh has been already been approved for publication. It'll be published in the next issue of link quarterly where
17:44
we followed over 750 women who attempted abortion pill reversal there. We found
17:49
very good um um effectiveness of overall 55% uh
17:56
reversal success. And these are women that some of them got doses as low as 200 milligrams. So this is kind of all
18:01
comers along varying different dosage range. And we found the safety was very
18:07
very high that the um complications were very low. Um there were no maternal
18:14
deaths, hospitalizations were less than 1% and bleeding was very low also. Um
18:21
and the the complications were higher in the failed reversals than in the successful reversal. But even in the failed reversals, they were still um
18:28
very very low. So we're very very happy about that. That'll be that'll be coming out very soon. Oh boy.
18:35
So, if you could all please uh mute your microphone. Somebody has a microphone on. That would be great.
18:41
Okay. So, in um So, in summary, um this is where we're
18:47
heading with abortion pill reversal. I've um I've been very happy that the the book has uh so far been very very
18:54
widely acclaimed. Here's the uh the book cover right here. Abortion pill reversal, second chance at choice. I was
19:00
in um Washington for the March for Life and I was part of a press conference with Live Action there. Afterwards, I
19:06
met a reporter who uh does uh who's a White House correspondent. He was very
19:12
interested in it and he asked me for a copy of the book and I inscribed it for him to the White House because he uh
19:18
took that book to the White House. Apparently, there's a room in the White House where reporters can leave books and he left that book in the White
19:24
House. So hopefully someone there will pick it up. We also had a meeting with uh people from um department of HHS and
19:33
they were also interested. I gave uh was able to get a book to the reporter um
19:38
Rachel Campo Stuffy on on Fox News and um and I also traveled to Rome with uh
19:45
my wife and my grandson uh at the end of December and there I was uh very honored
19:51
to be able to meet Pope Leo and to present him a book. So, um, the book is there in Rome, too. It's at the White
19:57
House. Hopefully, a lot of people will will hear more about it. Hopefully, you'll read it and and tell, um, all of
20:04
your contacts about it. And hopefully that if you're involved with the pregnancy health center that if you're
20:09
not medical, you'll become medical and you'll offer APR. If you are medical, you'll be offering APR because APR is
20:16
safe, it's effective, and women given that second chance of choice are extremely grateful.
20:22
All right. So, we'll now um go to the question and answer
20:29
and we'll look in the chat first.
20:34
And looks like no questions there yet. And you can also raise your hand if you
20:41
want to ask the question out loud and then ask you after you ask the
20:46
question, I'd ask you to mute your microphone. So, Dr. Delgado, I have a question. What
20:54
do you think the biggest uh what is the biggest holdback on pregnancy centers um
20:59
their concern about offering it and how best can they overcome that?
21:06
Yes, that's a great question. I think the biggest hurdle for them is if the
21:12
it's usually the medical director is not yet comfortable with the idea of offering APR. And that can be for many
21:18
reasons but one of the biggest I found is that you know many of these medical directors listen a lot to ACOG and
21:25
ACOG's proclamations American college of obstitricians and gynecologists they of course have come out very strongly
21:32
against us and they say that abortion pill reversal they'll either say it's ineffective or not safe both of those
21:38
have been uh proven untrue by us and in fact a study by Dr. Mitchell Krennan a
21:44
few years ago which was designed to disprove abortion pill reversal was discontinued early because three women
21:51
had to go to the emergency department. Well, they use that study as a reason to say it's unsafe. But actually, if you
21:56
look at that study and I describe this very in a detailed fashion in my book, in my book, by the way, it's written for
22:02
the general public. So although I go into a lot of details, those are details are explained very carefully. But in
22:07
that book uh in the book I explained that um of those three patient only one
22:12
of them was really in the APR group. She had received progesterone after mephristone. The other two women had
22:18
received mephrristone but then placebo afterwards. Those two women had bleeding
22:24
and uh called 911 as did the one who got progesterone. But the one who got progesterone when she got to the
22:30
emergency department the doctor's report said that she needed no further treatment. That means she really didn't
22:36
need to be in the emergency department. She just panicked, which is okay, but that's no reason to stop a study or to
22:41
say that APR is unsafe. She had a failed reversal, which happens, of course. The
22:46
other two, they required emergency surgical abortions and one required a
22:52
blood transfusion. Both of those women were in the placebo group. They had not gotten progesterone. So, these really were not comparable to APR patients. And
23:00
so if if you look at that study, that study was stopped because of safety concerns, not around giving
23:06
progesterone, but around giving placebo, which we don't do of course. And the numbers in that study, although it was
23:12
it was stopped early and was not statistically significant, the numbers do very much support that giving the
23:18
progesterone um saved those babies for the time being, they had continuing pregnancies much
23:26
higher than the women who got placebo. So that study actually supports that what we're doing is safe and effective.
23:31
But unfortunately AOG AON puts a different spin on it. So these medical directors I hope they'll read my book
23:37
abortion pill reversal a second chance of choice or go to our website stenoinstitute.org and see all of our
23:42
studies and see that we are demonstrating that it's safe and effective. And of course I'm also always
23:50
happy to communicate personally with any medical director who might be um you
23:55
know still hesitant. The other group I see is sometimes board of directors are that are very riskaverse and liability
24:03
averse and sometimes they're kind of u digging their heels in a little bit. But um I'm very happy to report that I have
24:11
not heard of any malpractice claims filed excuse me against anyone who's offered abortion pill reversal. The only
24:17
lawsuits have really that I've heard of are have been brought on by states attorney generals both in California and
24:23
New York that are that have sued Harpin International and sued local clinics for offering abortion pill reversal. But
24:29
this is really part of the big abortion persecution and I'm I'm sure that um um
24:35
we are going to prevail in those two states. Okay, it looks like there's a bunch of
24:40
chat um ones we've got. Um within what time frame should progesterone be
24:47
administrated administered and what is the most effective method of delivery?
24:54
So the progesterone we've had success if we've administered up to 72 hours after
25:00
ingestion of the mephristone but we try to get it started as soon as possible and in our recent study
25:07
almost all the women were started less than 48 hours and a large percentage of
25:12
them less than 24 hours. So we're very happy about that. We're we're getting many women women started at 24 or less.
25:19
As far as the most effective route from the data we have um right now at this
25:24
point the answer is oral seems to be most effective. But I will temper that
25:30
pronouncement with the um the fact that we have not had large groups yet of
25:37
vaginal uh progesterone insertion and we think the vaginal might be better than oral because of other uses of it where
25:44
it seems to work better. Um, so, so we're we're hoping to do a study where we're going to compare oral and vaginal
25:51
progesterone. Now, injection is also very effective, probably equal or maybe
25:56
even better than oral. We have a a study that's in the works right now, a clinic
26:02
called Sanctafamilia Clinic in Omaha, Nebraska, um, started treating women by first
26:07
giving an injection as soon as possible and then putting them on highdose vaginal. And so we have some data for
26:14
that and we're helping them to um put together a paper that we hopefully will be able to publish sometime this year.
26:20
So the jury is still out on that. Um but I I certainly um I certainly feel that
26:26
we can we have very good data for oral but we have strong suspicions that um the vaginal might be good too.
26:36
The next question is if a pregnancy center offers the APR treatment should the facility have a medical license? So
26:42
if the center itself is offering APR, yes, that center should have a medical license. But if the center is not yet
26:48
medical, but what you can do is the medical director can offer the APR
26:53
through his or her own office and then the the vital counseling and support can
26:59
take place in the pregnancy health center. So that's one way to do it if there's no medical license.
27:05
The next is I have heard Planned Parenthood is instructing women to take both pills at the same time to prevent this reversal. So yes, I have heard
27:12
this. There actually was a study that they did where the women took both pills
27:18
together, the mis methristone and the misoprosttol and that showed that it was not quite as
27:24
effective for abortion as if they separate them out. So because of that, I have not seen a large spread um giving
27:32
both both pills together fortunately, but you still see it every once in a
27:37
while. So if that happened um I would still see the woman. I would still treat with progesterone. I would counsel her
27:43
that the misoprosttol does increase the risk of birth defects by two to fourfold. So there is a significant
27:51
increase in birth defects from you know the average in the US is about 3% and so
27:56
that increases to anywhere to about 6 to 12% risk of birth defects. So leather
28:01
has to be counseledled very carefully. She has to give informed consent and if so then um you can uh try administering
28:08
uh progesterone also what is the most effective dose and
28:14
some clinics stock the progesterone we have no 24 hoursarmacies limit access on weekends in our area so right now the
28:21
dose I'm using is I'm I'm giving 600 milligrams orally or some people give it
28:26
vaginally twice a day for two days and then 400 milligrams twice a day for two days and then 400 at night until the end
28:33
of the first trimester or for two weeks, whichever is longer. If there are no
28:38
24-houries in your area, then I think it would be good to stock progesterone in the office. And you should have some on
28:46
call availability so that um if there's no pharmacy open on the weekend, you can get in there and get the progesterone
28:52
started because I think waiting till Monday would be too long to wait. As far as waiting overnight, that's probably
29:00
acceptable as long as you can get the progesterone started first thing in the morning. But the sooner the better if you have a way to meet a woman there at
29:06
night, that would be would be even better. Next one. How many babies have been
29:12
saved so far? A uh Harpy International, the APR uh rescue network um estimates
29:19
over 7,000. and to use worldwide numbers
29:25
in the US. So those numbers are probably more US and worldwide is a little harder
29:33
to track. Success rate for APR. Um so again we
29:39
have different studies and in different studies you get different numbers. So in our latest study that's going to be published very soon that's already peer
29:46
reviewed and approved the success rate was 55%. But they were not all using highdosese
29:52
protocols. When in our 2018 study, the success rate for all comers was 48% but in the
30:00
highdosese oral protocol it was 68% and in the injection protocol it was 64%.
30:06
So that study we able to separate out those groups. So and then the next study we have planned um that will uh our
30:14
randomized control trial will try to u will have women on higher doses. So
30:19
we'll see how that works. So that's why there's different range and that's very common for different treatments that
30:24
different studies you have different dosing that the numbers aren't always going to be exactly the same.
30:31
So the biggest takeaway from the book for pregnancy centers, what gap do you feel existed and prompted your new book?
30:36
I think the gap was really just an awareness gap um both at pregnancy health centers and throughout the um in
30:44
the general population. So that was the reason to write the book abortion pill reversal a second chance at choice. is
30:49
to increase awareness. And I'm I'm hoping this is a book that can be passed around pregnancy health centers amongst
30:54
the um the board of directors. I'm still amazed at how many times I go speak at
31:00
um pregnancy health center um fundraisers and I'll meet a board of director member at at the event who will
31:06
say, you know, until we booked you to speak, I didn't know it even existed. So, there's still a big knowledge gap.
31:12
So, that's the reason why um uh I wrote the book as chemical
31:17
abortion. The next question is chemical abortion becomes more common. What should pregnancy centers understand about the changing landscape and the
31:23
urgency of rapid response? Well, one thing that's very very important and I haven't touched on
31:30
specifically yet is the other thing that's going on is the increase of of um
31:36
teleaalth and mailorder abortions. This has become the wild wild west. At the end of 24 2024, there was a a um
31:45
a survey by the Society of Family Planning, which is a um a proabortion group, and they um found that 25% of all
31:55
documented abortions in the US of all both surgical and chemical abortion, 25% of all of them were teleaalth. So that's
32:03
that is more now a year later. But what they didn't document and it's difficult to document all the mail order chemical
32:09
abortions These drugs are coming across state lines which are violating the Comstack
32:14
Act. They're coming from different countries. Sometimes the women are getting drugs that that are not even correctly labeled. So this is a really
32:21
big problem and and these women then are are having self-managed abortions.
32:27
They're either having very minimal or no medical supervision at all. And there
32:32
there are many great risks. So, um, let me go into the risk and I'll talk about
32:38
how it it comes back to the pregnancy health center. So, there are medical risks. One is they're not having ultrasounds. So, the woman might be
32:44
further along in her pregnancy than she thinks she is, and she might then take
32:49
the chemical abortion drugs and not have the abortion, but instead have prolonged bleeding, which could cause problems for
32:55
her. Number two, she may misinterpret her pregnancy test and so she may not even
33:00
be pregnant, be taking these drugs unnecessarily and that could cause harm to her health if she's taking them over and over again. Number three, without
33:08
the ultrasound, she may have an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy. And we know that ectopic pregnancies occur 2 to
33:14
3% of the time of pregnancies in the US. And that in the package inserted, it says that myopristone is contraindicated
33:21
in ectopic pregnancies. So most ectopic pregnancies occur in the tube.
33:26
And if the woman has a pregnancy in the tube, doesn't realize it, takes the abortion pill, starts to bleed, she
33:31
thinks this is part for the course because she read somewhere that she would bleed a fair amount with with the chemical abortion drugs. Well, then when
33:40
she bleeds more and more, her tube ruptures, she has heavy bleeding, she passes out on her bathroom
33:47
floor, no one there to call 911. She could die on her bathroom floor at the altar of choice because she didn't know
33:53
she had an ectopic pregnancy. This has happened at least 20 times. This has been documented and I know that it's
33:58
going to happen more and more. It's probably happened more times already. Next, the women are not being tested for
34:04
their blood type. So, a woman who has Rh- negative blood, if she's exposed to Rh positive blood, she'll mount an
34:10
immune response which could be important in future pregnancies. And we know that during an abortion, blood can mix from
34:16
the pre-born baby to the mother and back. Well, if a mother is Rh- negative and a pre-born baby is Rh positive,
34:23
there's mixing of the blood. She sets an immune response. It's not going to matter for that pregnancy. But immune
34:29
responses, immune system is like an elephant. It has a memory that lasts forever. So in future wanted pregnancies
34:36
with Rh- positive babies, the mother will mount an immune response and can lead to congestive heart failure during
34:42
the pregnancy of the baby as well as still birth after still birth after still birth. It's a curse that cannot be
34:48
eliminated that will really curse her for the for the rest of her life or rest of her reproductive life.
34:55
Next we know that the uh chemical abortion drugs procured by mail order
35:00
have become the tools of sex traffickers, rapists and child molesters. So um there have been um several cases
35:08
of women who were given the um abortion pills surreptitiously either in their
35:15
drinks or a couple of cases documented where the men while having intercourse with their girlfriends put the pills in
35:22
the vagina. And so we know of three that have been brought to justice. One uh Everson Evans in Illinois back in August
35:29
was arrested and he actually admitted that he was going to take things into his own hands. There was a paramedic in
35:35
Scotland who actually had been a decorated paramedic and head of his unit. He was convicted of giving his
35:40
girlfriend uh mythopristone and and causing her to abort. And there was um one more man in um in
35:50
the United States who likewise was arrested um and text messages implicated
35:56
him. So this I'm sure is happening more and more. How many hundreds or thousands of men are not getting caught after
36:02
giving women or forcing women to take these abortion causing pills. So this is
36:08
a huge problem. So you at the pregnancy health centers you need to be aware of this. I think that women are since
36:15
they're doing this many times without much communication with either an abortion center or a doctor or anybody
36:20
else, they may be making hastier decisions than they would have normally when choosing an abortion. So, they may
36:27
change their mind more quickly too and be ready for for APR. So, how do they how do these women find
36:34
us? It's through their magic phones, of course. So I think it's important for pregnancy health centers to be engaged
36:40
on social media to be running digital ads so that when women do a search, how
36:46
do I stop my abortion? How do I reverse my abortion? How do I end my chemical abortion? Your name will come up and
36:52
they'll be able to contact you very quickly and it's good for you. You should have chat functions because they like to chat. Chat meaning with their
36:59
fingers, not with their mouths more than they like to talk on the phone. So you have to be very well equipped for that.
37:06
You also have to be um alert to the fact that some of these may have been coerced into taking the chemical abortion pills
37:11
or that it may have been given to them surreptitiously. Be aware of that so that you can be of support to them and
37:17
so that you can um call authorities and let them know that you're going to be supportive of them and that the authorities will not be prosecuting
37:23
them, but they'll be going after these men who try to take advantage of them and that these women are victims and
37:29
that the the men's men are the predators. So, I think you have to be aware of all that, too.
37:36
Okay, the next question, what is the appropriate protocol for follow-up ultrasound?
37:42
What we do and what we recommend is to um repeat the ultrasound a week later later to make sure that the pre-born
37:48
baby's still alive because you don't want to be giving progesterone if the baby's no longer alive. If the baby's doing great at the one week, then repeat
37:54
it again in another week or in two weeks. This also helps with continued bonding because some women still have a
37:59
little bit of ambivalence after um going through the reversal. So I think that's that's very important.
38:06
Okay, another question. There was a nurse in our area in Western Washington State who was convicted in prison last year for giving his miss. Yes, I
38:12
remember that case too. How would you suggest pregnancy medical clinics advertise or communicate to the
38:18
community that we have APR available? Well, I would say that you know through your um your social media network and
38:25
any of your community partners, you let them know you have flyers made up both uh on paper and ones that can be sent
38:32
digitally so that everybody who relies on you knows that u you have um
38:39
um APR available. Okay, I think we're caught up with the
38:44
chat questions. Oh no, here's a new one. Does your book cover the suggestion you touched on for
38:50
the centers to reach women? That's a good question. I think I do,
38:56
but I'm not positive now about that point if about reaching out through through social media and all that.
39:06
Any other questions? What Here's another question. What
39:11
advice would you give directors who want to strengthen relationship with local medical professionals and build greater
39:17
trust in their communities? I think the important thing there is to
39:22
always have the highest standards. That is very important so that if any doctor
39:28
does recommend a woman go to you, he or she will be very confident that you'll take the very best care of her. So
39:34
that's extremely important and that means being very diligent having very good protocols following your protocols
39:40
making sure that you're you have all the certifications that if you are um uh
39:46
have a medical license that you keep that license up to date and that you um do all the the reertifications that you
39:52
need that you have someone who's very very detail oriented that keeps your um handbook up to date that you review that
39:59
yearly that's approved by your board of directors and your medical directors and that follow all of your protocols. You don't cut corners. And then when you if
40:06
you do get a referral from a a physician or medical practitioner out in the area that you follow up and say we, you know,
40:13
thank you for the referral. We saw her. This is what we've done for her. So th those are really important to to build
40:18
that stellar reputation. That's extremely important on the customer
40:23
service and the medical quality side. We want to far out compete these abortion centers and they their standards are
40:29
very very low. I'm sure you know that. But we have to be far far above that.
40:34
Next is to your medical director should be someone who can be a good liaison with the medical community. And so your
40:42
medical director um hopefully is willing to reach out to to different people in the medical community, have lunch with
40:49
them, have discussions, have talks, let the let them give them updates about what you're doing and and and what new
40:55
services you're offering and also how you can be of help. So, you can reach
41:00
out, let's say, to a pro-life medical office that's not um formally uh
41:07
associated with you, but you can tell them, you know, look, if you ever have a woman who's abortion intent or abortion
41:13
minded, you can refer them to us and then have your cars, have your flyers there so so it's ready and that it's top
41:20
of their mind so they know where a trusted referral source is. Those kinds of things really build build a lot of
41:26
trust. you know, if if that they're willing, take lunch over to them and just meet them. Because sometimes when they meet the people, it's much
41:32
different than just an anonymous name on a card or something. But once they meet the people and then they see that you're
41:38
that you're good people, that you're that you're real people, that you're happy, that you're joyful, and that you're serious about high quality care,
41:45
that that's going to really convince them that they'll want to use you when when the time arises. So, I think all
41:50
that kind of outreach and building a a great reputation is what it takes.
41:57
Next question. Looking ahead, what gives you the most hope for the future of the pregnancy health movement and where do you believe leaders should be focusing
42:03
their energy right now? The thing that gives me the most hope about the pregnancy health movement
42:10
is that almost uniformly I I wouldn't say I
42:16
can't say 100% of course but I would say anyone that I've met is motivated by
42:21
their sincere belief in the gospel message and they're driven by Matthew
42:28
25:40. Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers that you do unto me. and they're really motivated by serving
42:34
Christ and seeing Christ in those that they meet. And so that gives me the
42:40
greatest hope because that's the only mo motivator being a good and holy
42:46
Christian that is sustainable is sustainable for years and years,
42:51
sustainable through persecutions, sustainable through any hardship. anybody else who just has a humanistic
42:58
love of people, which I'm not I'm not um doubting their sincerity, nor am I
43:03
knocking it, but that eventually will reach a word block that will stop them. And and that just because it doesn't
43:10
have that infinite transcendental meaning.
43:16
That transcendental meaning can only come from God. If it's just to help my fellow human, that's it. It ends there.
43:23
it doesn't have the transcendence. So that's what gives me the most hope is that the local the the pregnancy health
43:30
movement is so motivated by by Christian service and Christian duty. And where
43:36
should the world be heading? Well, I think we have to head and be a step ahead of where
43:43
the action is. And that's why abortion pill reversal is the tip of the spear. So I think you have to be up on abortion
43:49
pill reversal. You have to be ready to offer it and offer it well. You have to be able to meet these women where they
43:54
are. Like I said before, meet them online, on social media, be heavily
44:00
advertising through social media and digital means, Google ads and all of that, that is is really extremely
44:07
important. And then on the advocacy side, those of you who are in pro-life
44:12
states and are having these abortion pills shipped across state lines, you have to really work with your states to
44:20
create laws so you can sue and bring to justice these predators.
44:25
The state of Texas right now is suing um
44:30
abortion aid access I think it's called a website as well as a doctor in New York who runs that for sending abortion
44:38
pills across state lines to Texas. So we have to have more of that. We also have to talk to our federal leaders and have
44:44
them enforce the Comstack Act. And you should read up about that if you don't know comtock c.
44:51
It's a law that was passed in the 1870s, I believe, and a law that had three
44:58
parts. One was it prohibited the shipping of abortive patients across
45:03
state lines, um the not uh uh regulated or banned shipment of pornography across
45:11
state lines and birth control. Now, those two last parts have kind of been
45:16
taken out of act. So, it no longer deals with pornography, although I wish it would, nor birth control. However, um
45:24
the part about um making it illegal for abortive patients to be shipped across
45:30
state lines, that part of the law is still active. It's just not enforced. So, we have to get our federal
45:35
government to enforce that law. That would be a way to crack down all this because they are shipping, they're using
45:40
the US mail to ship across state lines, and that is illegal. And so we have to
45:46
hold them to justice. So I would say that you should be aware of that for advocacy there. And and then those of
45:53
you who are in proabortion states, you know, like I'm in California, it's very difficult here. But you have to consider
45:58
it mission territory. So you have to see how you can try to convince the people to have a change of heart and hopefully
46:04
then those people will elect better leaders in the future and we can have a swing from being proabortion to
46:11
pro-life. But those are the areas I think where we really need to focus um and and then look ahead and always stay
46:17
one step ahead. I think we also um we need to um more on the medical side we
46:24
need to develop uh reversal drugs for um misoprosttol because we do have some
46:30
women who are getting misoprostyl only through the male. We know in places like Mexico most of the abortions are
46:36
actually misoprostyl abortions because mephrist is much more expensive. So in our research side, we're we're looking
46:42
ahead to that too. Um so there's a lot to look forward to, a lot of good work
46:47
to be done. Uh the next question looking ahead, what research or development you see next? So
46:54
I I guess I kind of answered that already. Um one is uh research to comp we want to figure out what's better oral
47:00
or vaginal and how if injections are better how much better because injections are painful and they're more
47:07
difficult to to have of course in the office but if that's going to make a really big difference then we'll sort of
47:13
have parallel protocols. So, we want to, you know, really figure that out. And we um we have one study that we're um
47:20
trying to get approved through the um ethics board right now that'll be a prospective observational study. And
47:26
then I told you about the the randomized control study which actually has been on a clinical hold for four years by the
47:32
FDA and we're trying to fight that and we have some inroads in the FDA now that we're hopeful. Um so that moprosttoal
47:38
reversal as well as maybe other um supplements or or medicines that we
47:44
could give with a progesterone to help it work better or maybe look at something called alpha lipoic acid which
47:50
there are some um studies in the literature showing that it can um help women who have threatened miscarriage
47:56
who have what uh who have bleeding called subcorionic hemorrhage bleeding behind the placenta can help that
48:02
resolve. So, we're probably going to study that and seeing if it increases our success rates um and maybe some some
48:08
other medicines um that we might um look at. Uh unfortunately, the U this another
48:15
question, the US Department of Justice Office of Labor Council has issued formal opinion saying the Comstack Act
48:20
does not prohibit mailing abortion drugs like me for zone so long as there is no intent to use them unlawfully.
48:28
Yeah, that's true. The rules, the comment is rules apply to some, not others. That is true. Um, but when they are
48:35
shipping to states like Texas, they are intending to use them unlawfully. So, it still could be applied there.
48:46
Any other questions?
48:57
All right. While we're waiting to shift other questions, I'll just give you a reminder. There's the book abortion pill reversal, a second chance at choice. You
49:05
can go to ignatius.com, stenoinstitute.org, which by the way, senoitute.org um has a
49:12
lot of resources you might be interested. You go to the resources tab for videos, a lot of um um articles in
49:18
the lay literature and and in the medical literature. Um and then you can also buy the book at Amazon,
49:24
ignatius.com, stenoinstitute.org or Amazon. Here's a question. Can APR be used if
49:30
the patient has taken Ella? That's a very good question. Ella, also known as
49:35
Uliptol, is a progesterone receptor blocker very similar to methopristone.
49:42
So the answer is yes. Progesterone should theoretically block the effects of ulipristtola.
49:49
I don't have any data to support that, but I know that it works the same way as meristone. So I assume it would. I also
49:56
don't have any data on whether or not Ella causes birth defects. I would assume it does not, but then again, I
50:02
don't know. We don't have any proof like we have with meristrystal. With meristto now with our two combined studies, uh we
50:08
have several hundred now. Um where we've had births with no birth no
50:15
increased risk of birth defects. I don't know if that's the case of Ella, but I would say I would give the the the woman informed consent, tell her we don't know
50:21
a lot about this, but that this is definitely worth a chance of trying the progesterone to reverse the Ella if she's happened to take the Ella um as an
50:29
abortacant.
50:35
Is it possible to get example of a policy and procedure for APR? Yes. So, if your center can reach out to
50:41
Heartbeat International, they have um um some model policies and procedures and
50:48
they can help you get started there. So, you can go to um uh or you can go to abortion pillreversal.com and there'll
50:54
be a link there to uh it's called APR Worldwide. I think I think the email
51:04
let me I think I have the email right here if you want to hold on one second.
51:13
Well, I thought I had it, but I guess not.
51:19
Yeah, but you can find that on abortion pill reversal.com and and think a link there and they'll connect you. Okay. How
51:28
do you determine how many women are looking for APR in a given area?
51:33
Well, I don't know how you determine that unless you do some sort of a survey.
51:39
But I can tell you that we know that abortion pill uh the abortion pill counts for 70% or more of the abortions
51:46
these days. I think women are going to have more regrets because they're not
51:51
reflecting on as much. And we know that there are about
51:57
uh 700,000 chemical abortions in the US every year. So that's a lot of women probably a lot of women in your area. So
52:04
that mean there's probably a great need in your area. Any
52:10
last minute questions before we wrap up?
52:15
Oh, and I I found that website for you looking for the u policies and procedures and how to get connected um
52:22
and and how to join the network. It's aworldwide.com.
52:29
aprn worldwide.com.
52:34
Maybe you could put that in the chat, Sam. It is in the chat. Great. Yeah. So, that'd be the place to
52:40
go. Oh, great. Yeah, you did. You're fast. So, go there instead of abortion pillreversal.com. That'll be your direct
52:46
uh avenue to learning more about the network and about joining the network.
52:55
Okay, any other questions?
53:02
Wow, this has been awesome. Um, so much information and it's it's been great.
53:07
Thank you so much, Dr. Delgado. Um, would love to end this time in
53:14
prayer. Um, would you like to close things up for us in prayer? Dr. Delgato?
53:20
Sure, I'd be happy to. Good and loving God, thank you for the opportunity
53:26
to serve you, to serve our community, to serve our churches, and serve women who
53:32
are being victimized by the medical abortion complex. We ask, Lord, that you bless women who are in these situations.
53:38
Let them choose life, Lord. And if they've taken me personal, let them choose abortion pill reversal. Please
53:43
bless all of us here, all of our pregnancy help centers. Let us be filled
53:50
with your spirit of charity, of fortitude, and of willingness to serve
53:57
all those we meet. We ask that you bless us on our way. Help us to be your faithful witnesses to all those we meet.
54:04
Bless our families. Bless all of our organizations, our boards, our benefactors, that together we may truly
54:12
be your hands, your loving heart to all those we meet. in the abortion pill
54:18
reversal movement and in our pro-life activities. We ask all this in Jesus name. Amen.
54:26
Amen. Thank you so much. We really appreciate the work that you do and all that you've done and I'm excited about
54:31
the new book. Um I'm going to order mine, that's for sure.
54:38
Thanks everybody. Thank you guys for coming. Um, don't forget next next month um we'll see you
54:45
back here um and you'll be receiving a link for the um for the transcript of
54:53
this um the video and um and then the you can always look on our website too
54:58
on our um webinar Wednesday link and it will have all of our past ones as well.
55:04
So, thank you guys so much. Um, I will I did put the chat the link in the chat,
55:11
but let me do that again for you. Um, let's see here.
55:20
It's on the Steno Institute. Here is the
55:25
direct link.
55:31
There's the direct link um to Ignatius Press. And then um
55:39
here is the link to his website. And on Dr. Delgato's website again, he
55:46
has um just a large amount of resources um
55:52
peer-reviewed articles, other articles, videos, and his books. So um you can
55:58
definitely go to his website and get all of that information. Um there is also a
56:03
speakers bureau if you ever need to or want to um invite any of the speakers
56:08
there. Um that information is there on his website as well. So just lots of
56:13
information on his website um to be able to to access. Other than that, thank you
56:20
again all for coming. I really appreciate it. And you guys have a great
56:25
afternoon and um hopefully we'll see you next month. Okay. Hi.
56:43
Heat.