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Testimony of David Brewer, MD, former Abortion Provider
David Brewer, MD
Illinois, United States

This testimony was originally given at a "Meet the Abortion Providers" workshop sponsored by the Pro-life Action League of Chicago, directed by Joe Scheidler. For more information see http://prolifeaction.org/providers. Priests for Life offers their video, "Inside the Abortion Industry," containing excerpts of the testimonies of many former providers. Order the DVD, "Meet the Abortion Providers" at http://prolifeaction.org/store.

You know, when Mr. Scheidler came to our room last evening to give us the program for the day, when he walked in I had forgotten how tall he is. It's really neat to be able to look pretty much right-on into somebody's eyes instead of looking down. I guess my dear mother and father did real good with the prenatal vitamins and also all those vitamins that were in vogue back in the 1940s when I was growing up.

You know, we all wear different hats and I have a lot of different hats, too. I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a doctor (OB/GYN), and I'm a concerned citizen about political issues and other issues of our day--and I was an abortionist, and am now known as what we call a cross-over; one who's made the change. That's due to my Lord, Jesus Christ, because Christ made a change in my life, and I want to share what that part of my life was like before and then after.

People are not naturally against life. Kids love other kids. Teenage girls (and we have several) like children. Mothers of children like children. There are trying moments, but we love our children. Fathers and mothers love their children. So, you have to be trained to hate children. We have to be trained against life. When we go to church, we don't hear the pro-abortion story. When we read in the Bible, we don't hear the pro-abortion story. When we talk with our mother and father about how they feel about us, etc., we don't hear the pro-abortion story. When I talk with my mother about her and my dad having me, I don't hear that they considered abortion. So the point is that we have to be trained to hate. We have to be trained to be against life.

Dr. Hill shared a little bit about his experience, and he took some of my lines. But it's interesting, isn't it, that two doctors who had done abortions before and went to different medical schools and trained in different areas of the country, and now are living and practicing in different areas of the country, would have a type of common beginning.

It happened after medical school as I began my residency in OB/GYN. You know, we learn on-the-job. A lot of medicine is on the-job training. A lot of medicine, including surgery, has a lot of skill that's a mechanical, technician-type skill. Working on a car to fix it, putting in wiring in a home, doing plumbing, doing a Caesarean Section, doing a hysterectomy, taking a mole or a lump off, doing a D&C. A D&C is a common procedure that we use often in OB/GYN to get a sample of the lining of the uterus. For example, an older woman who is having trouble with bleeding, or a younger woman who had a problem with hormone balance or is/was having problems with her periods.

And so, as we learn that in residency, there came a time when we went to the clinic to learn about abortion. After all, abortion was just applying the technique of a D&C to a woman who was in a little different state--she was pregnant.

In 1973, when abortion was legalized, Dr. Hill mentioned New York (where I was trained, born and brought up) was one of the first states to go along with that. So I can remember in my training when they used to fly women from Ohio to New York to several of the doctors who worked at the hospital where I was training to have their abortions. Now there wasn't a big local outcry in the community that I knew of, but I do know that as this doctor built a new house, funded partly by monies from these abortions, that his new home became known around town as "Abortion Manor." So I began to understand that there was something about abortion that many people did not agree with.

We went to church as a family. We were taken to church, but we weren't a Christian family. My parents weren't Christians at that time; none of us were either. So as I went into residency, I didn't have the type of moral and ethical background or preparation from the home that many people have. I didn't have strong standards for myself.

I can remember that day watching the first abortion with the resident doctor sitting down and putting the tube in and removing the contents, and I saw the bloody material coming down the plastic tube and it went into a big jar. The first one. I'd never seen one before. I didn't know what to expect. Well, it was my job afterwards to go undo the jar and see what was inside. It was kind of neat, learning about a new experience. I wasn't a Christian; I didn't have any views on abortion; I was in a training program; this was a brand-new experience. I was going to get to see a new procedure and learn, and that was exciting.

And it got more exciting as I opened the jar and took the little piece of stockinette and opened that little bag, and the resident doctor said, now put it on that blue towel and check it out. We want to make sure that we got it all. I thought, oh, that will be exciting hands-on experience, looking at tissue. And I opened the sock up and I put it on the towel and there were parts in there of a person. I'd taken anatomy; I was a medical student; I knew what I was looking at. There was a little scapula and an arm and I saw some ribs and a chest, and I saw a little tiny head, and I saw a piece of a leg, and I saw a tiny hand, and I saw an arm. You know, it was like somebody put a hot poker into me. I believe that God gives us all a conscience and I wasn't a Christian, but I had a conscience and that hurt.

I checked it out and there were two arms and two legs and one head, etc., and I turned and said, I guess you got it all. That was a very hard experience for me to go through, emotionally. If I'd been a Christian against abortion it would have been simple--I wouldn't have been there. And if I'd been excited and wanted to do them and excited about the money that I'd make later in practice, I would have been on the opposite end. But here I was with no real convictions, caught in the middle.

So I did what a lot of us do throughout our life, we don't do anything. I didn't talk with anybody about it. I didn't talk with my folks about it. I didn't think about it. I didn't look in the Bible because I wasn't a Christian, and so I did nothing, and do you know what happened? I got to see another abortion.

You know what? That one hurt, too. But I didn't do anything again and kept seeing abortions, and do you know what? It hurt a little bit less every time I saw one. Do you know what happened next? I got to sit down and do one, because you see one, you do one, and you teach one, as Dr. Hill mentioned.

The first one that I did was kind of hard. It was like hurting again like a hot poker. But after a while it got to where it didn't hurt.

I'm reminded of a summer when I was a 15-year-old boy, and, you know, when you're 15 it's tough, because you have to be 16 in New York State to get working papers, and so I wasn't 16 yet and I wanted to earn some money and I couldn't get working papers. I couldn't work at a McDonald's (I don't even know if we had McDonald's then!). But I couldn't get a job and work in a place, so I decided to start my own little business. My dad had a lawn mower and I got a sickle and I had some trimmers, and went out and took care of people's yards and had a little lawn and garden service. I did pretty well financially that summer. But, you know, the first couple of weeks, my hands hurt and I got big blisters. I was using tools that my hands were used to, all day, every day. That was like my heart when I saw and did abortions. But then you know, after a few weeks, I got calluses on my hands and pretty soon they didn't look real good, but, boy, my hands could work all day and no blisters and no pain.

That's what happened to my heart as I saw the abortions and then began doing them. My heart got callused. My heart was callused against the fact that I was a murderer.
That happens to us sometimes in life and it's a hard thing. But I got so callused that when I was on duty at night some of the doctors who were in partnership with the doctor who lived in Abortion Manor would come in to do their saline abortions. These were women who were farther along, and they would do five in a night...line the women up all in one big room and put the needles in and put the salt solution in, and then there would be five therapeutic miscarriages, right? Five times 500 is 2,500. That's not bad fifteen years ago for one night's extra work. You do that a couple of nights a week and that's a lot of money. But I really had no concept, having been through medical school even, of what was inside because when we got on the OB service we delivered normal, healthy babies most of the time. There weren't very many miscarriages at four and five months. Once in a while we would see one.

But once they began doing abortions and doing the saline abortions, and I would take my turn with the other residents being on duty, guess who came in at night to take care of the women when they had trouble delivering the babies or had trouble delivering the afterbirths? The doctor who did it and made the money? No. It was me and the other residents. So I would go to a room and a lady would be screaming and crying and walk in, and here was like the "candy apple babies" that you've seen all scarred and burned from the salt solution, and the placenta would be stuck and we'd have to work with them, and once in a while we'd have to take them to surgery and do a D&C. Boy, that was grim! That was a lot worse than a little sock, because somebody else had to look through the sock now that I was a big resident and doing abortions and they had to check for me, so I didn't have to look in the sock anymore.

But one night, a lady delivered and I was called to come and see her because she was uncontrollable. I went in the room and she was going to pieces. She was having a nervous breakdown, screaming and thrashing. The nurses were upset because they couldn't get any work done and all the other patients were upset because this lady was screaming and I walked in, and here was her little saline abortion baby. It had been born and it was kicking and moving for a little while before it finally died of those terrible burns. Because the salt solution gets into the lungs and burns the lungs too.

Like Dr. Hill, I began thinking and you just think that if you club somebody on the head enough with a big club, they'd wake up, but like him, I had a very thick head, I guess, too. But I saw that more and more. Every time it would begin to eat away, I would thicken that callous a little bit more. I wasn't making any money because I wasn't in private practice yet. So it's not that I was in it for the money. I was just simply uncommitted, and that's the way a lot of people today are. We're uncommitted; we're afraid to stand up; we're afraid to speak out. Maybe we aren't afraid; we just don't have our own convictions settled yet.

I remember another experience as a resident when I had an opportunity to help one of Abortion Manor's partners on a hysterotomy. This lady was too far along for a suction D&C; we did not have prostaglandins in those days; we did not do D&Es very often in those days. So since she was in the second trimester and far enough along (four to five months), why she was going to have a hysterotomy. Well, that was kind of exciting to me, to see a Caesarian on a baby that young, so I helped on that surgery. I remember as we made the incision and got in and made the incision in the uterus, to see the baby move underneath the sack of membranes as the Caesarian incision was made before the doctor broke the water. The thought came to me, my God, that's a person! Then he broke the water, and when he broke the water it was like I had a pain in my heart just like when I saw that first suction abortion. Then he delivered the baby and I couldn't touch the baby. I wasn't much of an assistant; I just stood there and the reality of what was going on was finally beginning to seep in to my calloused brain and heart. They simply took that little baby that was making little sounds and moving and kicking over and set it on the table in a cold stainless steel bowl. Every time I would look over while we were repairing the incision in the uterus and finishing the Caesarean, I would see that little person kicking and moving in that bowl. It kicked and moved less and less, of course, as time went on. I can remember going over and looking at that baby when we were done with surgery and the baby was still alive. You could see the chest moving as the heart beat and the baby would try and take a little breath, and it really hurt inside and it began to educate me as to what abortion really was.

What do we do when something gets so close to us that it hurts? We either fight it or we put it away. Either we fight it or we run. If somebody jumps out at me, I'm either going to run or I'm going to fight. I wasn't equipped to fight, and so I ran. The way we run is by putting up barriers. My barrier was, well, boy, that really hurt; that was a living baby; now this abortion thing, I've got to deal with that somehow; I'm going to just have to decide something for myself here. This is not good. So I made a startling decision. I decided that, for me, life began when a baby could survive outside the uterus, and if I was involved in something like that, that would be an abortion. That was a nice smokescreen, wasn't it? That meant that when I did the suction abortions I wasn't killing anything. That meant that when I helped out on a saline abortion, and they said, do you want to do one? Sure, I'd like to try and see how the needle works and see how it goes. I wasn't doing an abortion. That meant that the hysterectomy that I helped on was not an abortion because the baby couldn't have survived outside. After all, it sat in the dish and died. So, for me, life began after 28 weeks and I continued doing abortions.

Then I saw more babies being born earlier and, you know, with our neonatal intensive care units and all of our modern technology. Back in 1973, we couldn't do a whole lot other than on an anecdotal basis with babies that were even 28 weeks. But as technology increased, suddenly they were having luck with babies that were 28 weeks old, and then 27 weeks, and then 26 weeks. So I began to drop my smokescreen and I said, well, abortion then is after 27 weeks. Well, no, it's after 26 weeks. Well, maybe it's 24 weeks. Then I got to thinking maybe it's 20 weeks. All I was doing was avoiding the problem.

The next smokescreen was, well, it's really a baby when it's all formed, so after 12 weeks it's a baby so the first trimester abortions aren't really abortions, and I can handle that. So I lived like that for a while.

I have big feet; I wear a size 14 shoe. All these different shoes I was trying on seemed big enough in the beginning, you know, but they were getting small real fast and they weren't fitting. The next thing I knew I kept dropping my smokescreen back to where life occurred earlier and earlier.

When I became a Christian I realized that life occurs at conception. And once that startling discovery had been made, it was very simple to stop doing abortions. That decision and Christianity didn't come during residency, however. After residency I went into the military for two years, and it's hard for me to say these things because it took ten years for God to work in my life to where I was able to deal with the guilt that I felt for all the abortions that I had done. But when I went into the military, I used to take pride in the fact that if a woman came to me and she was pregnant and wanted the baby, I could take care of her. I had a fine training in OB/GYN. And, if a woman came to me and she did not want the baby, I took pride in the fact that I could take care of her as well by doing an abortion.

So, I was doing abortions in the military and we'd line them up. It was sort of like private practice, and we did a good number of abortions. At that time, my shoes had shrunk down to where now I had to wear the size that included just the first trimester.

What happened next in my life was that a very precious woman, who is now my wife, invited me to go to church. She wasn't even a Christian at the time. But I went to church and guess what happened to me? What was I going to do with this girl who was coming in for an abortion, and I'll tell you, that was a tough time for me. Because I had the feeling that if I did just the one more, then I wouldn't have to do any again. I could just fulfill this commitment and do this last one, and that could be my last one.

But, you know, God reminded me of that calloused heart that I had developed, and that if I did one more, after making the commitment as a Christian, that I would get back into that same old problem again. So, by God's grace, I told that girl that I couldn't do it. I wish I had known what happened to her; I never did find out. But that was a turning point in my life and a very special time.

The question really is: What can we do to stop abortion? We've heard the stories. We know that abortion is wrong. We know that it's murder. But what can we do to stop abortion? In this book that Joe Scheidler wrote entitled, Closed: 99 Ways to Stop Abortion, has really blessed me. I've read through it and it has so many wonderful ideas in it. Things that we can do to become involved.

Prayer is one of the biggest things, of course, because sometimes prayer by other people interceding for us makes the big difference. I was pretty strong-headed in those days when I was doing abortions. I fell into a lot of traps and problems and immorality, and it was a terrible time of my life. Now, as a Christian, I begin to see that the abortion experience that I had was simply a reflection of other things going on in my life, and that must be happening in the lives of people who do abortions today.

The fact that we get out and we work and we save babies is wonderful. But medical schools are turning out abortionists all the time, people like me. People who weren't bad people; they were just people with no commitments. People with no will to stand up. People who were not educated on the issues. People who didn't understand.

So as long as we're saving babies and our population is growing, but we're turning out abortionists, we're really still fighting ourselves. Of course, you know the statistics: That because of the number of abortions we're doing in our country, our population is not growing at a rate to replace itself. It takes 2.1 babies per family for a population to replace itself. The United States has 1.8 or 1.7 and people say, well, our country's growing. Well, that's right. We're the land of opportunity and people immigrate here from all over the world. So it's the immigrants that are increasing our society, not our own children. If the communists want to win, all they have to do is sit back and wait, because with AIDS and abortion we're going to take care of ourselves, and that's sad.

Mr. Scheidler mentions that there are other chapters to be written; that the 99 is just a beginning, and he challenges us and invites us to come against the hypocrisy and the wickedness that we find in our own country. I'm suggesting to you that it may not be wickedness necessarily in a person's heart, like mine when I was doing abortions, but just the fact that nobody came and really took me aside and said, Dave, do you understand what you're doing? What is your concept of what you're doing? What do you feel you're doing when you do those D&Cs?

Okay, well let me share with you what I see. I just needed somebody to love me. Somebody to come and share and talk with me, because we know that old cliché that no man is an island. And we all know that money is not where it's at...that those things go away. It doesn't matter how much money a man has; it's our feeling of comfortableness in our heart. We can't be comfortable with ourselves and have a real inner peace and happiness if we're doing things that we know are wrong; if we're unsettled and troubled. So we need to share with those people. We need to get them, not once they're doing abortions necessarily, but before. We need to get back at the medical school time.

But now, like the shoes that kept changing size on me as I kept moving back the viability of a child, I think we should focus on the fact that it's not going to the abortionist. If we move back farther, it's not going to the medical students. If we move back father, it's not necessarily going to the parents, but it's going back to the children where we need to start.

How do we teach others to hate abortion? In Proverbs 21, the Bible tells us that the King's heart is in God's hands, and he turns it withersoever He wills. So the reason that the Supreme Court judges are still voting for abortion is because God hasn't changed their hearts. Why wouldn't God change their hearts because God hates abortion? We know that, the Bible tells us that God loves children and God loves life. In Psalms 75, we're told that God is the judge; that He puts one down and sets another up. So he set those judges up. Romans 13 tells us that there's no power but of God, and that God ordains those powers. So God ordained the powers that ruled that abortion was legal in our land. The point is that the government and the rules that God has given us are reflections of our own hearts.

Well, what's in our hearts? I would submit to you that in our hearts is the same attitude that the abortionists have. To abortionists, babies are a bother. To the mother who goes for an abortion, the baby is a bother. To the mother who can't wait until September 1st comes when school starts because the kids will then be back in school and it's been a really tough summer, children are a bother. And kids pick up our attitudes, believe me. To the mother who puts the kids in nursery school and is not working and just wants time for herself, children are a bother. For the parents that do good and go to lots of clubs and aren't home when the kids come home and go out in the evening and go to lots of clubs and do a lot of church work and do a lot of Pro-Life work, kids are a bother. Why do we have drugs and drug problems? Because kids are a bother. Because parents aren't in the home with their kids.

I'm not saying don't do Pro-Life work. But you understand it's the attitude in our hearts. Psalm 127:3-5 tell us that God loves children, and it says that children are a heritage of the Lord. And it says that children are the fruit of the womb and that they are a reward that God gives us. So that is our reward on earth. It's not the money and the cars and the boats and the planes, but it's our children that are the reward. God also tells us there that children are arrows, they're our arrows. If we want to change the world it's great to work Pro-Life, but by raising Godly children and sending them out as arrows, we may be able to do more than we could have done by ourselves.

Consider Matthew 18:5 where it says: And who shall receive one such little child in My name, receiveth Me. That was Jesus talking. Do you know what the word "receive" means? The word receive in Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon means to take into one's family, and to raise and educate. That's what the Greek meaning of that word that the people at the time of King James English translated receive. And Jesus is telling us to take children and raise them. He's not saying to have them be aborted. So it is our selfish attitude.

In Malachi 4:6, the last Scripture I'll mention and, as a matter of fact, it's the last scripture in the Old Testament. It says: And He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children. It doesn't say to their children; it says to the children, for the children of our land, and the heart of the children will be turned to their fathers. Not to the fathers, to their fathers. Lest I come and smite the earth with a curse. And our land is cursed today. It's cursed with abortion. But the abortion arises because of the attitude in our hearts.

How can we train others not to hate children? We can do that by loving children ourselves. We can take care of our children and spend time with them. What can I do as a physician? One thing I have done is make a personal commitment to not put in IUDs any more because I believe that they cause abortion. I've made a commitment not to give out birth control pills to women for contraception because there are approximately four cycles in a hundred where there will breakthrough ovulation and fertilization can occur, but the baby can then not form because the pills have changed the lining of the uterus, and I realized, finally, that that is just like an IUD. There is conception, and my new definition of life is when conception occurs. So that, for me, is an abortion, for me to give a prescription out to a girl and allow her to take the pill.

However, there is one other reason--talking about the attitude about pills. When I give someone the pill, I'm telling them, go and be selfish, have your own attitude about God's timing for your family, plan your children for later, and be busy and get into clubs and take a second job, and neglect your children now so that you can get ahead and get things. And that's the wrong attitude.

I've stopped doing tubal ligations and we're committed to doing tubal reversals. We left our home in Mississippi; we had a swimming pool, a private airplane, a nice practice with a large retirement. We've come up here on faith to start a solo practice dedicated to treating the whole person and to doing tubal reversals for those people who want to have a tubal reversal.

In essence, change the attitude in our hearts by loving God, by loving our families, by loving our children, and by loving our neighbor as ourselves. It's very simple.
Thank you.


Remarks by Joe Scheidler

Dr. Brewer is going to answer questions. It's amazing to me how I pick up a lot of good ideas for my next talks. I'm going to be good from now on, plagiarizing from Dr. McArthur Hill and Dr. Brewer and all the other speakers we have.
One thing that has really impressed me with these talks today is the references to Scripture, and the references to the children in Scripture. How many times when Jesus was telling about the kingdom, He referred to a child? As we've seen pointed out today, when the Apostles were arguing with themselves about who was going to be the greatest and sit closest to the King, Jesus took a little child and stood him in the midst and put His arm around him. He didn't put his arm around the Apostles, He put His arm around this little kid. He said whoever receives a little child this in My name, receives Me. And whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me--that's the kingdom. And He said whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to Me-that's the test we're going to have. What you don't do for them, you don't do it for Me. If you reject them, you reject Me.

At another time when Jesus was ready to go into Jerusalem triumphantly, he was resting. And the Apostles were protecting His rest, and the women came with their little sticky dirty kids and they wanted to climb all over Jesus, and the Apostles said, get out of here, He doesn't want to play with these kids now. And Jesus heard the commotion, and He said those beautiful words about the kingdom. The kingdom is like a little child. Suffer the little children to come to Me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

Those of us who receive a little child in His name, receive Him and Him who sent Him, and prepare the world for the kingdom.

QUESTIONS TO DR. DAVID BREWER
Q. Dr. Hill mentioned a recurring nightmare. I was wondering if you had any experiences like that.
A. No, I really didn't. I never dreamed about it or had any nightmares at all.


Q. What about a tubal ligation for a married woman who is not on the pill, has already had one more baby than the doctors said was safe to have?
That's a very good question, and I'd like to answer that with a two minute story rather than answering it directly. I have permission from this lady to use her story. Her name is Kim and she came to me about two weeks ago as a brand-new patient, and said, Dr. Brewer, my husband and I are interested in having a reversal of my tubal ligation. I said, well, that's fine. She said, I want to share with you why I want to have a reversal of the tubal ligation. She told me her story which was that she had had an abortion at an early age, had a lot of guilt, had a lot of trouble being able to tell her husband about it when they were married, but she finally was able to do that and God healed her of the guilt. As a result of having had an abortion herself, like, I'm sure, a number of the women in here who have been through an experience like that, she felt a real burden to go and help. So she went and she took training to become a counselor in a crisis pregnancy center. She invested some of her own money and her time. She was really excited and Kim was just so excited the day that she finished her training course and could begin counseling patients. She said, you know, Dr. Brewer, after I had the abortion and then we were married and we had our family, I had my tubes tied because we didn't want any more children. She said when I went to counsel women in the crisis pregnancy center, I couldn't understand it. All the other counselors were busy but me. She said all the other counselors were having people coming to them but me. I don't know why they avoided me because they weren't assigned. I couldn't explain it. But she prayed about it and God showed her (she said this, I didn't say it) because of the attitude in her heart of cutting off further children and grandchildren He was not blessing her ministry. She and her husband have one child. Then she had her tubes tied for selfish reasons. And apparently God looked and perhaps He saw, how could a woman who had one child and then had the rest of her children cut off, how could she be different in the eyes of a girl seeking an abortion to cut off that particular child? This woman is convinced that her ministry through the crisis pregnancy center and counseling is going to be blessed after she follows in faith what she believes God would have her to do. To me, that's a powerful testimony.
 
Q. What year did you do your first abortion?
A. I need to think back. It would have been 1973 because that's when it was legalized. They began flying women in; I was in my second year of residency then, and that was the time that we were learning those techniques.
 
Q. What about forms of birth control other than IUDs and pills? Is there a unified policy among Pro-Life groups regarding this?
A. I know of no unified policy. I believe that's a matter of personal interpretation and according to a person's religious background.
 
Q. What about Natural Family Planning?
A. Personally, Natural Family Planning is the point that I'm at now and that's where my interest lies. I really feel that I'm here on earth for a short time and I want to get everything that God has for me. To avoid and keep off children by practicing birth control myself would be wrong because that's where I am in my walk with the Lord. I just don't want to be accused of taking my own life back. I don't want my life any more because I didn't do any good with it. So I really want Him to have it and just show me the way.
 
Q. Are there any complications from having a tubal reversal?
A. It is true that ectopic pregnancy incidence is greater after having a tubal reversal because the point where the two tubes are put back together is seldom a point where the tubes were the same diameter. So it is possible for a new little baby to get held up in the tube and implant there. Actually, the occurrence of ectopic pregnancy after tubal reversal is probably somewhere between 5 and 15 percent. Now if somebody asked me to play the Illinois Lottery for however many million dollars there were, and buy one ticket and I'd have an 85 to 95 percent chance of winning, I'd almost be foolish to pass that up. So that is a real possibility and we recommend that people have an ultrasound early-on to find out whether there is an ectopic. It might interest you to know, though, that as a result of tubal ligation, there are symptoms and a syndrome called the Post Tubal Ligation Syndrome that come to many women who have had their tubes tied, and it includes bloating, pain, scar tissue, irregular periods and symptoms like Pre-Menstrual Tension Syndrome. We're not sure whether having a tubal ligation by certain methods may interrupt the normal blood flow between the ovary and the uterus and cause some of that to happen. We've had a number of women who have had reversals and have had clearing up of the pain and some of the problems that they've had. It's not true in every case but it's interesting, isn't it, that when we interfere with God's plan for our body, then we take the consequences.
 
Q. What percentage of doctors attending medical conventions speak out against abortion and try to convince the AMA to reverse their position on abortion?
A. I have no idea what that percent might be. At most of the meetings I've been to, few, if any, doctors speak up.
 
Q. What role do doctors and parents have in teaching their children about life in grammar school?
A. We were fortunate enough in Mississippi to be asked by one of our schools to come and share with teenage girls, the juniors and seniors. There is an excellent slide program put out by a Catholic group which has to do with birth control and contraception, and addresses AIDS, IUDs, pills, venereal disease. The excellent thing is that they present, not only the types of contraception and the drawbacks and the complications, including abortion, but they maintain and firmly announce during that slide show (with tapes) that their answer is chastity. We should save ourselves for our intended one. And I really believe that chastity is the answer for our children, and I believe that that's the way that we should be teaching them.


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