Legal Earthquake: Abortion Pill Ruling, FDA Failures & the Fight for Life

Can safeguarding women's health and holding the FDA accountable hinge on a controversial Supreme Court decision? Today, we dive into the profound implications of the Supreme Court's recent ruling on the abortion pill, joined by Dr. Ingrid Skop. We'll address the critical lawsuit where pro-life doctors challenged the FDA, arguing that the removal of essential safeguards around abortion drugs like Mifepristone and Misoprostol posed severe risks to women. Dr. Skop brings her medical expertise to the table, outlining the dangers these drugs present when used without medical supervision. We'll also explore how states like Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho are stepping up to represent affected women, pushing for greater FDA accountability.

Moving beyond the courtroom, our conversation takes a deep look at the ethical and cultural landscape of abortion in the United States. Dr. Skopp provides a compelling narrative on the need for a national discourse about the inherent value of human life. We scrutinize the cultural ramifications since Roe v. Wade, the demographic crisis tied to low fertility rates, and the ethical pitfalls in treating pregnancy as a medical condition. Engaging with the historical context of euthanasia in Europe, we draw parallels to the current U.S. scenario, emphasizing the broader societal consequences of failing to protect the unborn. Join us for a thought-provoking episode that challenges conventional healthcare narratives and underscores the importance of supporting both unborn children and their mothers.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to a special edition of the show. I've got a guest here with me that one of my contacts reached out and I had not thought to delve into this subject matter over the last couple of years, you know, after the decision by the Supreme Court on Roe v Wade, which was pretty shocking to me as a conservative, as a Christian, as somebody who's been pro-life as long as I've been politically active and aware that that happened. But there's some other periphery pro-life issues going on, maybe not making the headlines, and this is what makes this interview all that much more important. I've got Dr Ingrid Skopp is with me. She's going to fill us in on what's happening with a recent Supreme Court decision on the abortion pill, how that's affecting pro-life issues, and not only that but the legal precedents and the standing issues that are happening around that. So welcome to the show, dr Skopp.

Speaker 2: 1:04

Thank you, tony, it's great to be with you today.

Speaker 1: 1:07

Well, it's good to see you. Let's just start off. We'll talk about this recent ruling with the Supreme Court and just kind of can you give a broad overview of what was the decision, what came out of this decision and what does that mean for people that are in the pro-life camp?

Speaker 2: 1:28

Right. So there's. There's so much to unpack. You know you mentioned that things have really changed since the Dobbs decision and there have been a couple of tactics that the abortion industry has has promoted, and one of those has been abortion drugs that are essentially today almost totally medically unsupervised. And we can talk about how we got there. But just spoiler alert for where we are today.

Speaker 2: 1:57

Many pro-life doctors in the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine sued the FDA because the FDA has not followed the law. They've broken their own rules time after time. They've removed critical safeguards in order to promote this abortion ideology and to promote abortions in many cases in states that are trying to protect unborn life, and so we're the ones that are caring for these injured women. And the Supreme Court sadly did not rule on the merits of the case. In fact, I think we can all understand. They probably don't really want to come out and rule on another abortion case, because we saw what happened in the wake of Dobbs two years ago. They were threatened, they were bullied. It was really, really ugly the abuse that they were subjected to, really ugly the abuse that they were subjected to. But in this case they decided that the pro-life doctors, like myself, did not have standing to sue the FDA. And there's a couple of things to be said about this. One is for 50 years the abortion industry has always been granted standing and they have sued to block virtually every pro-life law that's ever been tried to be passed since Roe. So so they always had standing. But suddenly we don't have standing and, interestingly, the I was in the Supreme Court the day the oral arguments were heard. Justice Alito asked the government's attorney if these doctors don't have standing, who does have standing to sue the FDA? And her answer was no one has standing to sue the FDA. The FDA are the experts. Essentially she was saying they're unaccountable to the American public, which we should all be concerned about. The good news on this case is that there are three states Missouri, Kansas and Idaho that are ready to pick the case back up. They're going to sue on behalf of the injured women in their states. So we'll see. You know the Supreme Court will get this case again and we'll see if they feel like the states that have injured women perhaps have standing.

Speaker 2: 3:56

If I may back up a little bit just to explain these drugs, because I think a lot of people don't really understand what has happened. It's two drugs. Mifepristone blocks progesterone in the uterus, so it cuts off the critical hormonal support and causes the embryo or the fetus to die. It's followed in about 24 hours by mesoprostol. That essentially causes the woman to go into labor to extrude the tissue Right. So it's two different drugs. It's not the same as emergency contraception. Sometimes that's confusing, but these are drugs that are approved to end a human life. That is known to exist up until 10 weeks gestation.

Speaker 2: 4:34

The experience for women is terrible. They bleed heavily for a couple of weeks. Their bodies do go into labor and they do see their child in many cases. And they do see their child in many cases, and the FDA's own data tells us that that's not all. About one out of 25 women will have a complication that will cause them to go to the emergency room. About at least six to 8% will need surgery. Their body can't get rid of all the tissue. Many women will hemorrhage, Some will require transfusion. 30 deaths have been reported and the FDA maintains a black boxed warning on mifepristine, which is its strongest safety precaution, because it knows that sometimes women have died from an overwhelming, rapidly progressive sepsis.

Speaker 2: 5:17

So they're kind of talking out of both sides of their mouth. They maintain the safety precautions and at the same time, they've taken away all of the safeguards Currently. This happened during the covid pandemic. They said we're going to remove all the in-person prescribing requirements and they made that permanent. So there is no.

Speaker 2: 5:38

These can be ordered online or by telemedicine. There is no ultrasound required to determine gestational age, to rule out a potentially deadly ectopic pregnancy. There is no labs to perhaps discover that maybe some women you know shouldn't take these drugs, and there is really no verification that the person ordering the drugs is a woman who wants an abortion. So we can see that sex traffickers, coercive men, are going to have access to these drugs and provide perhaps many unwanted abortions. Women aren't being told the alternatives. They don't know that there's 3000 pregnancy centers that would love to come alongside them, give them support if they want to give birth to their child, and surveys tell us that the majority of women with a history of abortion would have preferred to give birth if they'd only had more support. So all of these things have been happening. We were very hopeful that the Supreme Court would, with our checks and balances system, provide oversight on the FDA, because apparently they were not willing to do so, but that has not been the case.

Speaker 1: 6:39

What is Planned Parenthood's role in this?

Speaker 2: 6:43

Oh, they're a major driver of this. Like I say, they're always the one generally to sue to overturn every even a minimal common sense safeguard, like a waiting period, so a woman has a chance to think about the abortion. Parental consent so we don't have minors having abortions without their parents' knowledge. And in fact there have been a lot of concerns. We think about the horrific situation of a young girl conceiving by incest. Well, without parental consent, her abuser can take her for an abortion, hide the evidence of his crime. No one is the wiser. So we can see that there's just so much bad behavior that this current situation of these totally medically unsupervised abortions is allowing to happen. And again the women are the ones that are injured. They're suffering in silence, they're self-managing their own abortions and remember, before Roe we were told that was a bad thing. But now Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates think it's just fine as long as they can provide abortions. The death of the unborn child is their goal. If the women are collateral damage, they don't really seem to care.

Speaker 1: 7:59

Yeah, this has been floated around for many years now. It's sold as like a just safe alternative. You know, and you're right, A lot of people do confuse it with like the emergency contraceptives. You know, and I forget exactly what those like the. Was it plan B? You know, this is after you've become pregnant.

Speaker 2: 8:23

Yeah, this is after that baby exists. Emergency contraception tries to prevent fertilization, so it doesn't work that well, but if it works the way it's supposed to, it'll delay ovulation. So there's no egg available, so it's worth trying. But again, you know, if women don't want to become pregnant, there are so many more reliable methods of birth control that they could be using. But this is different entirely, although, like you say, it's being marketed to women.

Speaker 2: 8:50

They say safer than Tylenol. The euphemisms abound. Currently they're marketing it as a missed period pill. So they're saying if you don't have a period, you don't need to take a pregnancy test, you can just take these pills. And, of course, what they're trying to do, they know they're providing an abortion. I mean, if the woman misses a period for another reason, there's much safer ways we can help her have her period. So this is providing abortions, but it's taking away, trying to take away at least the guilt that the women will feel when they know that they have ended the life of their own child. So that's where we are today.

Speaker 2: 9:26

Very misleading conversation, misleading for these young girls. And, by the way, when they say safer than Tylenol, they're comparing the dramatically undercounted deaths that occur after abortion, because our CDC does not have a system in place to pick up these deaths, especially those that are related to mental health issues. And we know that a woman has about six times the risk of committing suicide in the year following an abortion than if she'd given birth to her child. So we know there's a lot of mental health deaths that we don't detect. But they compare the undercounted abortion deaths to the Americans who die of Tylenol overdoses and anaphylactic shock from penicillin. So again, very misleading, very dishonest conversation. So again, very misleading, very dishonest conversation.

Speaker 1: 10:11

It's interesting that you mentioned earlier that the goal is the dead child, like the goal is the death, that the abortion is the goal.

Speaker 2: 10:28

And that's what they're pushing here, and so your organization, you know, trying to get standing to sue the FDA correct, to flag this Right. So yeah, so the Alliance for Herbicotic Medicine is sort of a group that oversees multiple organizations. As the name implies, we're pro-life doctors. We don't kill our patients. We think that medical care can be given without directly ending our patients' lives, and we do care for these complications.

Speaker 2: 10:49

I think the Supreme Court misunderstood they thought it was maybe us saying that it violates our conscience, which of course we don't like it, when we have to complete an abortion, when we want those children to live. But it's. It's deeper than that, because we are already caring for complications. I'm in Texas. We've had strong pro-life protections for three years. I'm caring for more injured women now than I did before the Dobbs decision because they're being mailed into my state from New York and from the Netherlands and when those women have complications there's no abortionist here to care for them, so their only recourse is to go to the emergency room for them, so their only recourse is to go to the emergency room.

Speaker 1: 11:36

What are the states you talk about? The states are stepping in because they do have standing for this issue right.

Speaker 2: 11:39

We'll find out what the Supreme Court says about that next year, but they should have. I mean, somebody has got to supervise the FDA if they will not supervise themselves and follow the science. But yeah, I think that what we're starting to see is a state versus state battle, because we have about 24 states that are implementing pro-life protections and we got about 27 states that are actually going the other direction. They're actively taking away any type of a protection, believe it or not. Any type of a protection, believe it or not. Again, in those states a woman could have an abortion for any reason, at any time in pregnancy if she could find an abortionist willing to do it.

Speaker 2: 12:18

And there are a handful of abortionists in our country that will end any unborn life at any time. We are one of only eight countries in the world that will allow an elective abortion that late. They're very dangerous for women. I think that's intuitive. So we've got some states protecting life. We've got other states going the other direction and in fact even allowing infanticide. If a child should survive an attempted abortion, they're not protecting that child and they've passed what are called shield laws protecting their law-breaking abortionists. So again, if that abortion doctor in New York mails pills to my state and kills my patient. We can't go after them. There's no extradition, there's no law enforcement cooperation. Wrongful death lawsuits, loss of malpractice there's nothing. They're totally protecting those abortionists. So this may again the Supreme Court may think that they can avoid the issue, but they're not going to be able to because at some point Texas is going to sue New York or Missouri is going to sue Colorado and say you're hurting our women, you've got to stop. And it'll come before the Supreme Court again when that happens.

Speaker 1: 13:30

What do you think the future of the pro-life movement looks like?

Speaker 2: 13:34

Well, I think we need to get away from all the confusion. So you know, as you alluded to earlier, after Dobbs, there's been a lot of lying by abortion advocates is we've all seen the articles of women who can't get quality care in pro-life states, and this this you know lie that maternal mortality is going to increase. That's not true. Every state with pro-life protections allows an abortion if it's needed to protect a mother's life. And yet what has happened is there's been so much, both from the medical organizations that are pro-abortion and the media that's pro-abortion. There's been so much from the medical organizations that are pro-abortion and the media that's pro-abortion. There's been so much, so much fear mongering that you've got doctors that are confused. They actually sometimes think I can't treat a miscarriage, I can't treat an ectopic pregnancy. They're not reading the law, because the law is very clear, but they're reading the newspapers and thinking that the newspapers are telling them the truth. And so so we we really need to as a country we need to discuss the issue, we need to talk about the nuances of it. I mean, obviously, not every woman is hurt by an abortion, but many, many, many are. But there is a human life that is lost in every successful abortion, and so we need to talk as a country about the fact that we are ending human life for social and financial reasons largely and is that who we are?

Speaker 2: 14:53

So I think, if we can have an honest conversation in this country, I think we're going to see a shift in the conversation on abortion. I hate that it's become considered a political issue. This should not be a political issue. This is a human rights issue and it's an issue of harm to so many women, so many children. And in the meantime, the United States total fertility rate is 1.6. 2.1 per couple is considered replacement, so we're not even replacing ourselves. We've got a demographic crisis in that we don't have enough babies and yet, on the other hand, we've got so many people saying we've got to end the life of more babies before birth.

Speaker 1: 15:34

Well, I get off into the realm of that's by design. You know, as far as you look at the timeline of Roe v Wade in 1973 and what's happened to the United States since then and this is a much bigger topic it's kind of what I do on a lot of my shows and podcasts is go past a little bit of the political veneer into the design of what's what is truly bringing this country down. What is the? You know, the from the inside and it has to do with culture. You know it's something the writer, will Durant, who wrote the story of civilization, you know he said when the faith dies, the culture dies and the people die. It's like the succession of what happens to any great civilization, any great country, and I think this is a when you stop putting emphasis on the value of human life.

Speaker 1: 16:25

There's something Pat Buchanan wrote in his book the Death of the West. I read, you know, 20 years ago, when I was coming home from from my service in the Middle East and Iraq, and I he wrote about, you know, europe really embraced, you know, euthanasia at a certain point, you know, like when the aging population will, you know, just, you know the doctors became less about. You know, taking the Hippocratic Oath and more you know into a Kevorkian role and he said you know, when you embrace death, it embraces you back, and so we can see that really happening in this country. Like the breakdown and this is what I, this is my personal experience the breakdown of not standing up for the most vulnerable among us, which is the unborn. When you fail to do that, everything else becomes, everything else is on the table and is unprotected.

Speaker 1: 17:19

So there is no safety If you, if you abandon the unborn and I've, that's why I've been pro-life, I always will be it doesn't make any logical sense not to be. I think you do everything in your power to create a culture and environment to where people can safely have children, the baby's safe and the mother's healthy. So I appreciate what you're doing. It's a lot of work, especially in our culture, and we're having to go back to the well and go to places like the Supreme Court and then you go there. It was a unanimous decision on the 13th, wasn't it?

Speaker 2: 17:52

It was, it was. Every single one of them didn't want to touch it.

Speaker 1: 17:57

It's bizarre.

Speaker 2: 17:57

What do you?

Speaker 1: 17:57

think just, you know, as a pro-lifer and you're on the front lines, what did you think about the dobbs decision? It really, it's almost like I don't trust it. It's like you. What are you? What are you trying to do? Are they trying to set it up for a? You know, and I've seen others say, well, we should have a vote on it. You know, and pass a law or something and make it nationalized. What is it? What is is? Has it been good for the movement in general.

Speaker 2: 18:23

Well, it was a major victory. It was, you know, because, again, for almost 50 years we've been trying, trying, trying to get Roe overturned. But when it happened, we're like the dog who caught the car. Suddenly we're like, oh no, now what do we do? And it turns out that the pro-abortion industry had been planning for this day. They knew this day was coming, because they hit the ground running with the misinformation, with the fear mongering, with the abortion drugs everywhere. They were totally prepared and they're continuing to, you know, again, so sadly, so many of the mainstream medical organizations are so pro-abortion they're publishing very misleading articles.

Speaker 2: 19:03

In fact, this past Monday, on the second anniversary of Dobbs, as if on cue, there were multiple peer-reviewed studies published demonizing Texas. They said, oh, texas has increased infant death rates, so that must be the fault of their pro-life laws. Again, there have been some children who have died, who've had very severe abnormalities, who died after birth, instead of being intentionally killed before birth. They would have died anyway, you know. But because we keep statistics on afterbirth deaths, we don't care to keep statistics on abortion. They, you know, they act like it didn't count as a death if it would have happened earlier. But at the same time it's very. When you look at the study you go oh no, there's much more here than meets the eye. For one thing, our rates are very similar to New Mexico. New Mexico has no restrictions on abortion. They have an abortionist in Albuquerque who's a very, very late term. So again, the two states are similar.

Speaker 2: 20:06

Abortion's not the issue, but many of the deaths of the children are related to prematurity, and there are many studies that don't get talked about documenting that a woman who has particularly a surgical abortion and particularly multiple surgical abortions or late surgical abortions, her risk of prematurity on the next child that she desires is much, much higher. No one's talking about that. So so we really you know, all of us who care about the fate of women and children should be willing to dive into the data with a clear mind. You know, instead of going well, my abortion ideology drives what I want to find we need to really look at it and say if children are dying in Texas, why is that happening?

Speaker 2: 20:53

And going back to what you were saying earlier, I think alluding to the breakdown of the family, which we've seen exacerbated by abortion right In 1970, one out of 10 children was born out of wedlock.

Speaker 2: 21:06

Today it is four out of 10 children.

Speaker 2: 21:08

In the Black population, sadly, it is seven out of 10 children.

Speaker 2: 21:12

So, rather than every child being a wanted child, what we were promised at the time of Roe, what we've seen actually is that the narrative of her body, her choice, has led so many men to say her problem, not mine, and to walk away, leading to so many more single moms and all of the social pathology that follows from that, these fatherless children, and you know, I mean obviously we could do a whole nother podcast on that, but those things are what Ro has led us to, and so we really are going to have to do some deep thinking, backtrack and discuss how do we impact women's crises, how do we care for women? Good news is that every state that now has pro-life protections has budgeted quite a bit of money In Texas, it is $140 million over two years to alternatives to abortion programs. So we're not just about force birth. We're about supporting that woman during her pregnancy, at the time of delivery and afterwards, so that she and her children can stay safe and hopefully bring the families back together as well.

Speaker 1: 22:23

Well, what's next for you, Dr Scott?

Speaker 2: 22:26

Well, there's a lot of work to be done. I mean, obviously there's still a lot of people who are confused, who don't understand. So that's kind of my goal is just to talk to anyone who wants to engage in the conversation, if your listeners are interested. Our website lozierinstituteorg. We've got quite a bit of information, big papers. L-o-z-i-e-r instituteorg. We've got quite a bit of information, big papers, well-referenced maternal mortality. I've got one with 180 peer-reviewed references. So we don't make stuff up, we're science. But we actually come to a different conclusion than so many of the pro-abortion medical organizations when we look at what the science and really starting with the fact that from the moment of fertilization, that is an individual, unique human life. He's not his mother, he's his own person and if his life ends, it will never be replicated. So we need to kind of start the conversation there.

Speaker 1: 23:19

Well, I really appreciate what you do. You know a lot of people. If you've ever been involved in politics, ladies and gents, like on the front lines, you know filing court cases, trying to get on the ballot, other things, talking to legislators. It is taxing and it can be very rewarding, but it is very taxing. It takes a lot of effort, it takes money, it takes support, it takes prayer. So go and support Dr Skopp and her organization One more time. Tell people where they can find you.

Speaker 2: 23:49

By the way, so we're the Charlotte Lozier Institute. Our website is lozierinstituteorg.

Speaker 1: 23:58

Awesome. Well, go and support this amazing cause. I mean the more that we continue to push back against this agenda and speak out and clarify our positions. That's really what I try to do with my show. I've been on radio for the last 11 years trying to clarify why are you pro-life, why are you standing up for the unborn?

Speaker 1: 24:17

It's not just a question of is it biblical or is it your faith, but just pragmatically, you know, even the, the atheist, christopher Hitchens, was pro-life. If you go actually read what he wrote about the unborn, he's like well, that's a potential citizen because he he believed in the supremacy of the, of of the law, and even though he didn't believe in like we do he's not a believer in God he believed in the supremacy of the law and he believed that people should you know that you have the right as a citizen to be protected. Even that is an argument in and of itself. So I think you know, moving forward, there's a lot to be hopeful for, because logic's on our side, the truth's on our side, but we have a. This is a battle. It's not only of ideas, it's a spiritual battle. It good versus evil.

Speaker 1: 25:03

I don't care what anybody says, if you, if you spend your time, like you said at the beginning of the interview, if your goal is a dead child, then you got. So that's, that's demonic, I don't. I mean you can whatever, you can put label on it, and I try to make it nice, but that's my opinion, uh, and so I'm happy to have you know anybody that's pushing back against that, even in the nuances, because you're in the trenches, this is how they sneak it by you. It's like it's a benign. Like you said earlier, they don't track the deaths. If it's an abortion, it's not labeled as a death. It's not post-birth, so it's not put as a statistic, but that is a death. If you look at the amount of abortions since Roe, I mean what is it like? 60 million, something like that. It's an entire generation of Americans that are gone.

Speaker 2: 25:51

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, just to end on the medical organization's promoted as evidence-based health care. We keep hearing this health care narrative right, and as an obstetrician I have two patients so I don't kill one of my patients. So you know, to me obviously it's not. But the question we have to ask when you, when you are proving that something is evidence based, you have a disease, you have an intervention and you have outcomes, what is the disease? Pregnancy is not a disease. Pregnancy is a sign that a woman's body is working exactly the way it's supposed to. So they even skip that step. So don't ever let them say it's healthcare, it's not treating a disease, it's a social engineering, eugenic population control, you name it, it's those type of ideologies, but it is not healthcare, it is not treating a disease, it is killing a human being, it is a human rights issue.

Speaker 1: 26:50

I couldn't agree more. It's very refreshing to know that you exist and I'm glad you're out there doing what you do. Dr Scott, thank you so much for joining us. Go and support her, ladies and gentlemen, if you can, and I'll put this interview out. It'll be dropping this week and again, thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 2: 27:03

Thank you, tony, it's been a pleasure Appreciate it.