Dear Jane

When the cameras were off, Lori Kehoe asked an assisted-suicide advocate a disturbing question, "Could society ever have an interest in the death of someone who doesn't want to die?"

According to Lori, his answer was immediate: of course.

It's a chilling exchange that raises a much larger question: when does the right to die become the duty to die?

In this episode of Dear Jane, Lori Kehoe of New York State Right to Life joins Dear Jane to examine New York's newly enacted assisted-suicide law and the troubling questions surrounding autonomy, coercion, and the value of human life.

The law includes a five-day waiting period, recorded patient requests, mental health evaluations, and restrictions on who can serve as a witness. But Lori questions whether these safeguards can adequately protect vulnerable patients and whether they will remain in place.

What happens when someone already feels like a burden? When the cost of care enters the conversation? Or when a patient's life is judged by someone else's definition of suffering?

Lori shares troubling accounts involving elderly and disabled patients, the financial pressures surrounding end-of-life care, and a dying woman whose husband reportedly told her she was draining the life out of him. The conversation also turns personal as Lori recalls her father's final days and Marcie introduces the idea of "toxic empathy,"when the desire to relieve suffering risks overshadowing the value of the person who suffers.

New York's assisted-suicide law took years to pass, and Lori explains why she believes people in other states should pay attention now, before similar legislation reaches their communities.

When compassion becomes permission to end a life, who decides whose life is worth protecting?

Watch the full conversation on Dear Jane.

Pro-life voters are frustrated. And with another election approaching, that frustration could have consequences.

Add gas prices, wars, and the cost of living, and it’s easy to see why some are tired. Scott and Marcie feel that frustration too. But the other side may be counting on it.

This November, abortion-related measures are on the ballot in Idaho, Missouri, Nevada, and Virginia, with campaign contributions heavily favoring the pro-abortion side in three of the four states. In Nevada and Virginia, the funding disparity is particularly pronounced, while Missouri has also seen significantly more money directed against the pro-life measure. Idaho stands apart, with contributions more evenly divided.

Then there’s the ballot itself. In Missouri, the pro-life vote is yes, while yard signs urge, “Protect women and families, vote no.” If Marcie, who has worked on multiple ballot initiatives, can still second-guess herself in the booth, how can voters be expected to navigate confusing ballot language without preparation?

Missouri offers another warning. In 2024, some national pro-life voices wrote off its abortion amendment because the polls looked lopsided. It passed by about three percentage points.

And the stakes don’t end with amendments. Attorneys general and judges can shape which laws are defended in court long after Election Day.

Know what’s on your ballot before November 3. Understand what yes and no actually mean. Bring a cheat sheet if you need one.

The point is simple: Don’t let frustration make the decision for you.

Watch the full conversation on Dear Jane.

What happens when a major constitutional amendment is approaching a vote, but even some of the people most engaged with the issue don't know it's happening?

Thomas Hill, co-founder of Virginia for Preborn Justice, joins Scott and Marcie to discuss Virginia's proposed abortion amendment and the challenges facing those organizing against it.

Thomas says he's encountered sidewalk counselors, pregnancy center volunteers, and college students who knew little or nothing about the amendment. Meanwhile, supporters of the measure have spent years developing their messaging and organizing efforts.

But what happens when voters begin asking questions? At Virginia Tech, Thomas recalls a 25-minute conversation with a pro-choice student who walked away reconsidering how she would vote. He explains why he believes focusing on the preborn child changes the conversation, including among people who disagree about abortion.

The discussion also explores disagreements over messaging within the pro-life movement, efforts to build coalitions across political and religious lines, and the importance of understanding what the proposed amendment would change.

And for those wondering how to get involved, Thomas offers a practical starting point: look for opportunities to serve people in your own community, even if you can only spare an hour a month.

Watch the full conversation on Dear Jane.

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0:06 — Is Virginia Ready for This Fight?

1:22 — Why Are People Just Hearing About It?

2:16 — Did Pro-Lifers Wait Too Long?

3:26 — How the Amendment Is Being Sold

4:57 — Abortion Is Already Legal. So What Changes?

6:05 — Do Virginians Know the Current Law?

7:03 — Why Should Pro-Life Voters Show Up?

9:44 — Do College Students Know This Is Happening?

11:52 — The 25-Minute Conversation That Changed the Tone

12:34 — What Changes When You Center the Victim?

13:49 — Can Graphic Images Still Break Through?

16:47 — The Woman or the Baby?

19:08 — What Can Unite Pro-Lifers?

22:14 — You Don’t Need the Same Message

23:26 — A Coalition Across Beliefs

24:27 — How Thomas Hill Became Pro-Life

25:19 — The Face He Couldn’t Forget

26:25 — When Abortion Stopped Being Abstract

28:30 — Start Small

30:20 — One Hour a Month

31:26 — It’s Not About Our Comfort

32:13 — Where to Learn More

Change your position on abortion if you want to win. That’s the pressure Kristen Day says pro-life candidates face inside the Democratic Party.

The Democrats for Life leader joins Scott and Marcie to discuss candidates advised to publicly support abortion, the difficulty of finding campaign support, and a local party chair removed from her position after others learned she was pro-life.

What happens to a party’s promise of inclusion when defending unborn children gets you pushed out?

Kristen also challenges lawmakers to see the work of pregnancy centers firsthand. She recounts roughly 18 rounds of emails with Congressman Josh Gottheimer’s staff, asking him to take “those ten steps inside” a center he had stood outside opposing.

She says he has refused so far.

Meanwhile, Democrats for Life is putting support for mothers and babies into action: delivering 60,000 diapers and wipes around Chicago during the Democratic Convention and another 40,000 diapers in Virginia.

As Kristen asks: If the party supports “choice,” why isn’t it doing more to help women choose life?

The conversation explores Planned Parenthood’s influence within the party, opportunities to support mothers and families through legislation, and state lawmakers continuing to defend unborn children despite opposition from their own party.

It also confronts the difficult question Scott raises at the ballot box: How do you vote when the candidate who shares your other priorities supports abortion?

Watch the full conversation on 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.