Dear Jane

When Dr. William Lile has a pregnant patient, he says he doesn’t have one patient; he has two: the mother and her baby. And modern medicine is increasingly treating them that way.

Doctors can perform open-heart surgery before birth. Repair spina bifida. Correct dangerous heart rhythms. Perform blood transfusions. Even operate on babies inside the womb and allow them to continue developing until birth.

So Dr. Lile asks a much harder question: if we can diagnose, anesthetize, operate on, and heal a baby before birth, when do that baby’s rights begin?

That question drives a wide-ranging conversation about fetal medicine, abortion, and the changing meaning of viability. Dr. Lile explains how medical advances have pushed the boundaries of what doctors can do before birth and why he sees a profound contradiction between treating a baby as a patient in one room and ending that baby’s life in another.

He also discusses what physicians learn in complex family planning fellowships, including late-term abortion and selective reduction; the growing use of the abortion pill; cases in which women have been given abortion drugs without their knowledge; and his work with abortion pill reversal.

And for Dr. Lile, the conversation ultimately goes beyond medicine. He explains why he believes the church must be equipped to speak about abortion while also offering healing and forgiveness to women and men carrying abortion in their past.

If medicine already recognizes the baby as a patient, what should follow from that?

Watch the full conversation on Dear Jane.

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0:20 — Why He Fights for Life

1:19 — When One Patient Becomes Two

3:11 — Botox in the Womb

6:09 — Open Heart Surgery Before Birth

7:19 — When Twins Compete for a Placenta

10:30 — Correcting a Baby’s Heart Rhythm

12:35 — Stopping a Baby’s Heart to Save It

13:00 — Repairing Spina Bifida Before Birth

15:00 — Why Are We Still Debating Late-Term Abortion?

16:36 — Medical Assistance in Dying

20:05 — What Scripture Calls the Preborn

22:47 — Is Your Worldview Set by 13?

24:06 — Showing Ultrasounds to Third Graders

25:40 — Is Abortion a Sin?

26:30 — Three Pastors Out of 120

27:56 — What Happens When an OB-GYN Speaks Out?

29:14 — What Complex Family Planning Teaches

31:28 — Does Viability Mean Anything Anymore?

33:31 — 87 Days Between Identical Twins

35:16 — Abortion Pills: All They’ve Ever Known

36:28 — The Father Who Gave Her the Abortion Pill

37:38 — Nearly 1,000 Clinicians Trained in Reversal

39:59 — The $109 Reversal Prescription

42:35 — Judges 3 and the Cost of Sacrifice

43:59 — 64 Million Since 1973

44:34 — Who Is Sitting in the Pews

What if abortion grief does not surface until years later?

Matt Freeman of Rachel’s Vineyard joins Scott and Marcie to talk about abortion healing and the buried, unresolved emotions that can remain long after abortion.

Most people do not come to a retreat for four or five years. Some wait decades. The longest gap Matt has seen?

51 years.

What can stay hidden for that long? And what finally forces it into the open?

The conversation turns to raw grief, anger, self-medication, and long-carried pain that people may live with for years without ever connecting the dots.

Then there are the men.

The father who felt powerless. The partner who went along with it. The one who pressured her toward it.

What are they carrying when they finally walk into a retreat?

Matt also explains why some people may come too soon, how men grieving alongside women can change the room, and why the physical aftermath of the abortion pill can become part of the trauma itself.

And then comes one of the most intimate and profound parts of the weekend.

Each person is invited to give their child a name. For many, it is also the first time they have ever told their abortion story out loud.

Why name the baby? And what happens when years of silence finally break?

Watch the full conversation on Dear Jane.

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2:52 — Who Comes to Rachel's Vineyard?

3:49 — 51 Years Later

4:14 — When the Pain Finally Connects

5:58 — The Trauma Beneath the Abortion

7:46 — What About the Men?

10:56 — When Couples Don't Stay Together

12:08 — Did This Happen to Me, or Did I Do This?

13:28 — The Three Kinds of Men Who Come

15:06 — What Happens at a Retreat?

15:18 — The Stone

17:27 — Understanding the Context

19:17 — What Can We Handle Right Now?

20:18 — Is the Abortion Pill Trauma Different?

22:13 — When the Bleeding Becomes Part of the Memory

23:02 — What Does Bottoming Out Look Like?

25:06 — When You Never Connected the Dots

26:34 — How Do You Suggest Healing Without Pushing?

27:39 — When Help Feels Like Judgment

28:50 — Why They Name Their Children

31:50 — The Bond a Name Can Create

32:19 — Rachel's Vineyard Around the World

33:00 — How Rachel's Vineyard Began

34:49 — Why Some People Travel Far From Home

35:21 — Is This Retreat for Me?

37:35 — The First Time They Tell the Story

38:20 — Heard, Loved, and Not Judged

What happens when empathy starts protecting the person who caused the harm?

Marcie and Scott confront two stories where sympathy for the adult threatens to overshadow the child at the center.

While following the Lindsay Clancy case, Marcie realized something unsettling: she knew Clancy’s name. She could not name her three children. That absence matters.

The conversation explores toxic empathy, legal responsibility, and the idea of the “second victim.” At what point does understanding someone’s suffering begin to obscure accountability?

Then there is Baby Gabriel. Born through surrogacy with a serious heart condition, Gabriel survived after his surrogate resisted the biological parents’ reported request to end the pregnancy. He has since been returned to their custody by court order, raising difficult questions about surrogacy, disability, parental rights, and what happens when the child adults planned for is not the child they receive.

In both stories, attention gravitates toward the adults, their pain, their intentions, their rights, while the children live with the consequences.

How far can empathy bend before it starts excusing the inexcusable?

Watch the full conversation on Dear Jane.

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0:19 — 25 Years Since 9/11, 1 Since Charlie Kirk

2:12 — The Lindsay Clancy Case

3:02 — Why Are Women Rallying Around Her?

3:33 — Toxic Empathy

4:01 — Justice Wears a Blindfold

6:12 — Who Has to Say This Is Wrong?

6:58 — The Law Was Violated. Then What?

7:58 — “This Sets Us Back as Women”

8:56 — “This Could Be Me”

9:40 — The Second Victim Narrative

10:24 — What Precedent Does This Set?

11:11 — The Copycat Case

12:06 — When Empathy Lands on the Wrong Person

12:40 — Baby Gabriel

13:44 — Better for This Child to Be Dead?

14:35 — Nobody Is Talking About the Baby

15:09 — What the Survival Numbers Show

16:23 — Post-Birth Abortion

17:17 — When the Designer Baby Doesn’t Match

18:03 — Why So Few People Hear About This

18:45 — How Far Does the Slippery Slope Go?

20:08 — Voting With Your Eyes Open

22:35 — When Pro-Life Friends Struggle With This

23:00 — You Might Be the Only Pushback

23:42 — Carpet Cleaning and Riding Mowers

What if the freedom abortion promises does not feel like freedom afterward?

Shaun Freeborn of Tradies for Babies joins Scott and Marcie to talk about what he calls one of the biggest lies young couples are told: that abortion will let them keep living the life they want.

For Shaun, that belief is personal. He and his wife had an abortion when they were 17. Years later, they still carry lasting regret and have turned that pain into a mission to help other men understand the role they can play when a woman is facing an abortion decision.

Shaun also shares how Tradies for Babies grew from tradesmen and blue-collar workers speaking up online into a grassroots movement with videos coming in from around the world. For many of them, it is the first time they have had a public place to talk about abortion, responsibility, and even their own grief.

The conversation also moves into abortion laws in Australia, the backlash men can face for speaking publicly, and why Shaun believes changing someone’s mind may require something more than the right argument. If abortion was supposed to help them move on with their lives, why is it the one decision they regret every day?

Why would anyone oppose giving a woman a second chance? George Delgado, M.D., one of the pioneers behind abortion pill reversal and author of Abortion Pill Reversal: A Second Chance at Choice, joins Marcie to tell how APR began with a woman in El Paso who had taken the first abortion drug and changed her mind.

Today, more than 8,000 babies are estimated to be alive following abortion pill reversal, and APR is now offered through networks in countries around the world.

Delgado explains how the protocol works, what the research shows, and why he believes some of the evidence used to challenge APR may actually support it He also discusses ACOG’s opposition, the criticism he has faced, and why the debate over APR has persisted for more than a decade.

At the center of it all is one question: If a woman changes her mind after taking the first abortion drug, why should she not be given the chance to try to continue her pregnancy?

An abortion pill can be ordered online and mailed across state lines. But what happens when the person ordering it isn’t the woman who takes it?

Andrea Trudden, Vice President of Communications and Marketing at Heartbeat International, joins Scott and Marcie to discuss what the organization calls abortion pill poisoning: documented cases in which women have allegedly been given abortion drugs through force, coercion, or deception.

Pills crushed into drinks. Orders placed using a woman’s identity. A doctor accused of poisoning his girlfriend. And a father charged with giving abortion drugs to his 17-year-old daughter at 23 weeks pregnant.

Andrea also shares the story of Catherine Herring, whose now-ex-husband was convicted after secretly giving her abortion drugs and attempting to do so six more times.

Heartbeat International now maintains a public tracker of these cases, documenting each through court records or local news reports.

The abortion pill debate usually centers on access. But when these drugs are this easy to obtain, who is really getting them?

Watch the full conversation on Dear Jane.

Gen Z has grown up surrounded by abortion messaging.

So why are more young people beginning to question it? And why now?

Lydia Taylor Davis, a spokesperson and Social Media Coordinator for Students for Life of America who once identified as pro-choice herself, joins Scott and Marcie to talk about what she is seeing firsthand on college campuses: young men becoming more engaged, young women proving harder to reach, and students reconsidering abortion after encountering arguments they had never heard before.

But those conversations come at a cost.

Lydia says she wears a bulletproof vest when she speaks on campuses and received threats after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Students for Life considered canceling its speaking tours.

They didn’t.

She also discusses what the pro-life movement gets wrong when speaking to women, why graphic abortion imagery can backfire, and why social media may be one of the most important battlegrounds left.

All of these facts paint a picture and also raise an important question: what actually changes a person's mind about abortion?

Watch the full conversation on Dear Jane.

Chapters:

0:44 — Campus Trends on Abortion

2:25 — What’s Changing Gen Z’s Mind?

3:40 — The Gender Divide on Abortion

6:06 — What’s Bringing Men Into the Conversation?

7:11 — “Charlie Was First. We’re Coming for You Next.”

8:44 — Why They Refused to Back Down

10:22 — Who Is Actually Changing Their Mind?

11:53 — How Do You Prepare for the Threats?

13:32 — Is the Pro-Life Argument Really Religious?

15:28 — When Becoming Pro-Life Changes Your Identity

17:59 — What Isn’t Working With Gen Z?

20:11 — Does Victim Imagery Work?

22:06 — How Social Media Shapes Gen Z on Abortion

23:42 — Why We Have to Be Online

24:42 — The Social Media Post That Helped Save a Baby

25:00 — Who Is Gen Z Listening To?

A waiting period. An ultrasound. A requirement that a physician perform the abortion.

A new study grouped measures like these under one category: abortion restrictions and linked states with more restrictions to higher maternal mortality.

That sounds alarming. But Dr. Christina Francis, a board-certified OB-GYN and CEO of AAPLOG, raises a basic question: how do these policies actually cause maternal deaths?

She joins Scott and Marcie to examine what the headline leaves out. How does requiring an ultrasound increase maternal mortality? Why is giving a woman more time before a major decision treated as a health risk? And why is physician involvement being framed as a restriction?

The conversation also turns to abortion-pill complications, including research finding that 83.5% of post-abortion-pill emergency room visits were miscoded as miscarriages and 76% of emergency room visits following the abortion pill were coded as severe.

Dr. Francis explains why those findings matter, what could happen as physician-only requirements are removed, and the challenges doctors face when they question the dominant abortion narrative within medicine.

Watch the full episode of Dear Jane to get the full conversation.

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1:15 — When Maternal-Fetal Medicine Chooses a Side

3:27 — Do Abortion Restrictions Cause Maternal Deaths?

5:08 — Is a Waiting Period Really a Health Risk?

6:12 — How Does an Ultrasound Cause Maternal Death?

9:15 — What Actually Causes Maternal Death?

10:19 — 80% of Maternal Deaths Are Preventable

12:49 — When Pregnancy Isn’t the Cause

14:23 — Should Non-Physicians Provide Abortions?

16:20 — The Reality of a D&E Abortion

19:22 — How Safe Is the Abortion Pill?

22:00 — When an Abortion Is Coded as a Miscarriage

23:05 — The Trauma No One Warns Women About

23:50 — What Pro-Life Doctors Risk by Speaking Up

24:45 — 93% of OB-GYNs Don’t Perform Abortions

25:58 — Who Stands With Pro-Life Doctors?

What begins with the abortion pill does not necessarily end when the abortion is over.

Once taken, the abortion drug and biological remnants from the abortion enter a toilet, a sewer system, and eventually a wastewater treatment facility that was never designed to remove every pharmaceutical compound.

The chemical is only part of what enters the system. Liberty Counsel Action estimates that 30 to 40 tons of hazardous medical waste, including human remains, are being flushed into American waterways.

That makes mifepristone different from the other pharmaceuticals already raising concerns in the water supply. It was developed and FDA-approved to end a life in the womb by blocking progesterone, the hormone needed to sustain a pregnancy.

But does that anti-progesterone activity disappear once the drug enters the water system?

Issues in Law & Medicine,a study reported anti-progesterone activity in environmental water samples from Austin, Texas; Blacksburg, Virginia; and Carbondale, Illinois. The study does not establish that exposure through drinking water causes infertility, nor does it determine where the anti-progesterone activity originated. But it raises a question that has received remarkably little investigation: what happens after mifepristone enters the water system?

They also found that downstream levels were not appreciably lower than upstream levels in any of the three cities. In two, they were higher. The authors concluded that conventional water treatment was not consistently effective at removing the activity they detected.cking progesterone, what happens after it enters the water system?Could environmental exposure be one factor worth investigating when approximately 1 in 6 people of reproductive age worldwide experience infertility during their lifetime?Abigail Forman is a researcher and policy analyst with Liberty Counsel Action and the author of a comprehensive analysis on abortion drugs in America's water supply. She joins Dear Jane to walk through what the abortion industry and federal regulators have largely left unaddressed.

Abigail Forman is a researcher and policy analyst with Liberty Counsel Action and the author of a comprehensive analysis on abortion drugs in America's water supply. She joins Dear Jane to walk through the research, explain what she believes the abortion industry and federal regulators have largely left unaddressed, and discuss why these questions deserve closer attention.

She also raises a question that stops the conversation cold: if women were required to decide whether to cremate or bury what the abortion pill produces, would more of them think twice?

Her argument reaches beyond the pro-life movement. You do not have to be pro-life to care about abortion drugs entering the water supply. And because chemical abortions account for roughly two-thirds of abortions in the United States, Abigail argues that water-contamination regulations could change the abortion landscape almost overnight.

the abortion pill now accounts for roughly two0-thirds of abortions in the Uni

Visit abortioninourwater.org to learn more about the research and current efforts calling on the EPA to investigate. The comment period closes August 31, 2026.

Watch the full episode of Dear Jane.

The pro-life movement is not having one conversation right now. It has several, and they do not always agree with each other.

Scott and Marcie discuss the Massachusetts bill that would allow abortion up to birth and the question it raises about messaging: As the movement has shifted its focus toward the mother, has it made a strategic mistake by stepping back from talking about the baby? They discuss fetal pain—what it is, how it shapes the conversation, and why some in the movement have moved away from talking about it.

They also examine the California lawsuit in which the state's attorney general is seeking more than $20 million and a permanent gag order against Heartbeat International and Real Options for telling women about Abortion Pill Reversal. Under oath, the state's own expert witness could not say APR is unsafe, could not say it does not work, and could not support the state's claim that the abortion pill is safer than Tylenol.

These conversations are shaping the future of the pro-life movement and raising questions it can no longer avoid.

Watch the full episode of Dear Jane.

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0:23 — Abortion Up to Birth

1:49 — Have We Abandoned the Baby?

3:30 — The Fetal Pain Argument

4:16 — The Baby Recoils

5:40 — The Problem With Subjectivism

6:50 — Reorienting Around the Baby

7:54 — What's Your Favorite Type of Abortion?

9:34 — Equal Protection Explained

11:00 — Inside the Movement's Divide

13:14 — Unapologetic About the Goal

14:12 — Is the Movement Making It Worse?

15:00 — Abortion Is Illegal. It's Still Happening.

17:10 — History Doesn't Answer 2026

19:30 — Showing What Abortion Actually Is

20:00 — The California Lawsuit

21:00 — Coercion and the Feminist Silence

21:50 — The Baby Who Almost Wasn't

22:40 — The Witness Who Couldn't Back It Up

23:50 — Population Control on the Stand

24:40 — What If We Just Called It Progesterone?

26:00 — APR Is a Choice

27:00 — Taking Away the Right to Change Your Mind