We Cannot Call It Care If It Kills

You trust your doctor with your body, your family, and sometimes your life. So what happens when medicine starts treating “do no harm” as optional and replaces it with a customer-service mindset where the request matters more than the ethical guardrails?
 
 This week we talk with board-certified OB/GYN Dr. Christina Francis, CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, to unpack what the Hippocratic Oath was really trying to solve. The Hippocratic tradition drew a hard line between healing and intentionally harming patients, and that line still matters for trust in healthcare today.  We trace how abortion helped shift medical ethics toward an autonomy-first provider model. 
 
 We also discuss how major medical associations like ACOG(American College of Obstetrics/Gynecology) shape standards of care and influence court decisions, especially on politically charged issues such as abortion, abortion pill reversal, conscience rights in medicine, physician-assisted suicide, and transgender medicine. You will learn how to choose an OB you can trust, share clear questions to ask your doctor and what to look for in hospitals and professional affiliations to find physicians committed to do no harm.
 
 If this conversation challenges you, share it with a friend, subscribe for more Straight Talk on Life Issues, and leave a review. What questions would you ask your doctor after hearing this?

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Why The Hippocratic Oath Matters

Dr. Christina Francis 0:03

I would love to see us have a Hippocratic stamp of approval to say this physician or this hospital is Hippocratic medicine friendly or not friendly, so that patients could know that going into it.

Victor Nieves 0:17

The Hippocratic Oath is perhaps one of the most widely known Greek medical texts. It has a legacy that has guided physicians for centuries and challenges them to consider what it truly means to uphold the ethic responsibility to do no harm. However, are physicians actually following the Hippocratic Oath? What do medical ethics really look like today? Welcome to Straight Talk on Life Issues. I'm Victor Nieves, president of Life Issues Institute. Today we have the pleasure of being joined by Dr. Christina Francis, a board certified OBGYN. She's the CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, an associate scholar with the Charlotte Lozier Institute, and a board member of Indiana Right to Life, as well as a physician member of the Abortion Pill Reversal Network. Well, Dr. Francis, thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Christina Francis 1:08

Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be with you guys.

Victor Nieves 1:20 Dr. Christina Francis 1:23 Victor Nieves 1:26

Well, Dr. Francis, you're such a wealth of knowledge and information. And so I apologize, my question may seem a little bit elementary, but I think it's a good place to start today. Many people, when they think of abortion, in the back of their head, they have this idea of the Hippocratic Oath. And it seems to most people that there is a real issue there, that the two do not go together. And there may be some misunderstandings about the Hippocratic Oath and what that actually looks like as a doctor, a medical professional. What really is the Hippocratic Oath?

Dr. Christina Francis 1:55

So I think even if people haven't heard of or know what the Hippocratic Oath per se is, they probably have heard the phrase do no harm that should guide everything

Origins Of Do No Harm

Dr. Christina Francis 2:05

that we as doctors do. And that actual phrase doesn't appear in the oath, but it's a pretty good synopsis of what the oath says. So the Hippocratic Oath was put out about 2,000 years ago now by students of a man named Hippocrates that was, he was a physician. He actually started the first medical school and looked at things that were happening in their culture at the time, largely the fact that a traditional healer, as they were called at the time, could actually kill someone or save their life. And it kind of depended on who paid them the most, actually. So if someone wanted you dead, they could go to the local healer. And if they paid that person more, then you might pay them to heal whatever ailments you had, then that same healer could give you something that would end your life. And so that's a pretty dangerous place to be in. And I think the really cool thing is that even at that point, Hippocrates, even though medicine was really kind of in its infancy, it wasn't necessarily a full profession yet. He recognized that while that may happen in society and in culture, it really has no place in medicine. That if people are coming to a physician, they should be able to trust the fact that the physician has a very specific responsibility to that patient and that their actions toward the patient should be solely focused on promoting the health and the good of that patient and never focused on something that might harm that patient. And that we as physicians should have a very specific set of responsibilities, that this is a fiduciary responsibility that we have with our patient. And so that's where actually the prohibitions within the oath against abortion and other things, which we can go into a little bit more if you want to, that's where those came from was that he was saying that even if these things happen in society and happen in culture, they belong outside of medicine, that medicine should be set apart solely for the healing and the good of our patients.

Victor Nieves 4:02

Well, Dr. Christina, you know, as you're kind of sharing the history of the Hippocratic Oath, it's pretty obvious there's a parallel here. One of the reasons that this oath even came into existence in the first place, as you detailed, was you had these people who were supposed to be healers. They were supposed to be taking care of you. The symmetry is becoming pretty obvious here. Now we still have that today. We still have, in the form of abortion, you can still pay somebody, and they will unfortunately intentionally take the life of one of their patients. And so has the Hippocratic Oath, I know that originally there were actually some pagan parts of it. They were swearing to pagan gods and things like that. So we may not see an exact, you know, repeating of the Hippocratic Oath, but as you mentioned, those themes, kind of this idea that you're not going to harm your patient as a physician, as a healer, you're not going to go out of your way just because somebody paid you more to kill the very person that you're supposed to be protecting. Has the Hippocratic Oath, you know, because media and entertainment sometimes it can spin our perception of reality, has it actually been a big deal in the medical world? Is that something that's kind of core, the principles of it at least? Is it kind of core to the implementation of medical ethics?

Dr. Christina Francis 5:11

Absolutely. Well, yes. I mean, it really became the foundation of medical ethics as they exist, or at least as they existed until the last few decades where we've moved away from them. But yeah, it absolutely not only formed our basis of our medical ethics, but helped form us as a profession and recognizing, you know, like I said, our responsibilities. I want to touch too, because as you said, it's really the themes, not necessarily the exact words, because as you said, the original oath, you know, Hippocrates was Greek. And so there were a lot of, you know, the Greek gods and things like that that he appealed to at the beginning of the oath. But the theme that I think that that points out is that Hippocrates and his students recognized that there was a higher power that was governing what we needed to do as a profession and as physicians, and appealing to that higher power to say, we are going to need your guidance because what this is going to require of us actually is outside or or beyond what a mere human would be able to do on their own. For instance, resist the lure of money, of a lot of money to do something that you might know to be bad for your patient. That, you know, for those of us who are believers, we know that that kind of goes against our sinful human nature to be able to resist the draw of that temptation. And so we don't appeal to those same gods. I think, though, the idea that there is a transcendent God who actually is over this profession, who has to be over this profession, that we alone as human beings are not able to provide everything that our patients need. That is still very much a theme that that resonates through medicine. And, you know, the same thing for many of the other themes that run through the oath. The theme that we should recognize that every patient, there's one, and I wish I had the exact wording right in front of me, there's one just really beautiful interpretation of the oath. Um, there's a an anthropologist, Margaret Mead, who was by no means pro-life, um, but who's done a lot of work on the Hippocratic Oath that said that for the first time the oath recognized that a physician has the same responsibility to the a disabled patient or a poor patient that the physician has to a king. That, you know, a patient's social status doesn't come into play whatsoever for the physician, that our job remains the same, our duty remains the same to that person no matter their station in life.

Victor Nieves 7:36

So, Dr. Christine, I mean, we've established the Hippocratic Oath, the principles of it at the very least, were foundational to medical ethics. You mentioned earlier that it had prohibitions on things like abortion. So there's clearly a disconnect. At what point did this foundational medical ethic, when did it get lost?

When Ethics Shift Toward Autonomy

Victor Nieves 7:55

Because if we look around, we're seeing abortion pills stuck in the mail and shipped into states illegally. We're seeing really no medical oversight. We're seeing things that just make you sick to your stomach, really. And they're being done by people who are supposed to swear to have your best interest at heart. When did this start to break down?

Dr. Christina Francis 8:14

Well, that's a really good question. I mean, I think it dates back multiple decades now, really, and lots of cultural factors. But I think where we can point to it, the abortion issue certainly, I think, was sort of the gate opener to having medicine accept things that don't belong in medicine, accept harmful practices. And when we really started to shift, and about the same time that medicine started to kind of give a stamp of approval to abortion, which happened shortly before the Roe decision, actually. I think the Roe decision could not have happened were it not for medical groups like the American College of OBGYNs giving backing to the pro-abortion position. But also where we started to shift from a real focus of ethics being the non-maleficence, the beneficence not harming patients, to shifting more towards the patient autonomy piece, which that theme was in the original oath that we cannot, as physicians, exert our will over the patients, that patients should be active in this and their decisions should play a part in their medical care. But when we really started shifting more towards patient autonomy actually being the most important driving feature of medical ethics, which is where we find ourselves now. And with that shift towards really prioritizing patient autonomy, and we got to break that down too, right? When we're talking about patients in a pregnancy situation, we actually have two patients that we're taking care of, mom and baby. Of course, that baby has no bodily autonomy whatsoever. That baby is completely dependent on mom and those that are helping her make decisions as to what's going to happen to his or her body. But when patient autonomy really started to take over, we started shifting to what is now a provider model of care, which is very different than a medical profession or vocational model of care, where we say as physicians, we have this ultimate responsibility to you to withstand cultural pressures, to withstand, you know, outside forces and to only recommend to you what we know to be in the best interest of your health. Now we've moved to a provider model. And it's why we at APPLOG actually really resist ever using the word provider, because with the provider model of care, it essentially says that I am simply here to provide you with whatever it is that you ask of. And so if it is legal and within my capability of doing so, then I have to provide to you what you're asking from me. Now, I do think that there was one point in medicine where we were too paternalistic, where doctors were sort of saying, this is what you're gonna do, and patients had no input into that. And I'm not saying we should go back to that. But we, like so many other areas of culture, I think have now swung just so far the other way. Where we are trained in medical school, especially on the issue of abortion, that if a woman asks you or tells you that she wants an abortion, you should not do anything to try to dissuade her from that, that you simply either should do the abortion yourself or that you should give her the number to the local abortion provider. So we just have really just shifted to, especially again, on this issue of abortion. Now, I would say that there are other issues now in medicine that have come up where we're seeing the same thing, the transgender issue, we're seeing the exact same thing, end-of-life issues, you know, physician-assisted suicide. We're seeing the same thing. But abortion really kind of was the thing that opened the door for all of that. There is a physician who was part of ACOG, the American College of OBGYN's leadership at the time that they were making their switch from really not supporting elective abortion at all to now they've become one of the leading abortion advocates, I would say, in this country. And what he said was abortion is a medical attempt at fixing a social problem. And I love repeating that because I think it's so true. And he wasn't even necessarily saying that it was a fix, but he was saying this is something people use to try to correct a social issue. We know that socioeconomic reasons are the biggest drivers for abortion. And it has found its way into medicine to say we can do this quote unquote medical intervention to try to fix your social problem, when in fact we know that it doesn't. And so that's really kind of how it came into the medical field. And now we're under this provider model of care where physicians are just told, I mean, essentially it's like a vending machine, right? So a patient comes in, they put in their money, they tell you what they want, and you spit it out. That's how what medicine has become. And it's actually very harmful for patients. It's very harmful for our profession. I think it's really destroying trust in the medical profession.

Victor Nieves 12:37

Dr. Christina, it seems oftentimes things

Slippery Slope Across Modern Medicine

Victor Nieves 12:40

come in in the form of a Trojan horse. And of course, with abortion, that that one's pretty obvious. But some people may not understand the significance. They might think, well, what's the big deal? We're getting away from the medical ethic that kind of built the entire profession. But, you know, and maybe in the beginning they don't see it as such a big deal. Where do you see the medical profession, medical ethics in the future, if we draw this out to its logical conclusion, this dangerous, I would liken it to something of a cancer inside of the medical profession. Where could it go? Not necessarily where will it go for sure, but left to its devices, this kind of thinking, it'll touch every corner of medicine, won't it?

Dr. Christina Francis 13:18

Yeah, well, absolutely. And I think that's what we've seen. I mean, I I really don't think that we could have gotten to where we're at as a profession where we have physicians who are mutilating children after they're born in the name of gender ideology, where we have physicians who are administering lethal drugs to people who are depressed. You know, all we have to do is look at other countries that Canada has seen this horrible slippery slope after legalizing physician-assisted suicide. All of this was actually enabled by the acceptance of abortion. And I don't think it's difficult to see why. When a profession that is meant to be geared towards health, healing, and wholeness of our patients adopts a position where it is okay to intentionally end the life of the most vulnerable person that we could take care of, that unborn child, who, again, is completely dependent on everyone else for his or her protection, who is in an environment that was made and designed for protecting that little life, but also can be easily changed into an environment that is very hostile through an abortion procedure. I don't think it's any wonder that we now have seen these other changes in medicine. And, you know, APPLOG was one of the founding organizations of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which is our purpose as an alliance is to return medicine to its Hippocratic roots. And as we were talking about starting this alliance, what would the name of the alliance be? What would our, you know, sort of tagline be? All of that. I brought up, I said this is probably a little bit too crude, but I think we should just say Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. We don't kill our patients. And we didn't end up going with it, but I kind of wish that we would have because it says exactly what the Hippocratic Oath said is that we will never intentionally kill our patients. And I think, you know, the difference that that should make to patients is you should be able to trust when you go to see your doctor, one, that they are not just a provider, that they are going to provide you with their medical expertise. There's a reason that medical training is so long and so arduous because we need to have a level of expertise that our patients don't necessarily have. Now, I don't diminish in any way. Patients bring a lot of expertise into the exam room as well. And I would never want to diminish that. But my job as a physician is provide my medical expertise and to sometimes say, you know, I can see why that may seem like a good idea to you or like something that you need. But let me talk to you about what that actually means on down the road. Patients need to be able to trust that when they come to their physician, that medical expertise, that advice that I'm offering is free from any kind of outside influence, that it truly is coming from medical knowledge of what's best for them, that it's free from the influence of pharmaceutical companies, for instance. It's why a law was put into place several years ago that pharmaceutical companies can't pay for doctors to go on big, extravagant vacations anymore. Because of course, if you have this luxury vacation provided by this company, you're going to be more likely to prescribe their drug, even if it's not good for the patient. And that was a good thing. That was keeping that outside influence out of medicine. Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to get rid of the cultural ideological influence that has infiltrated medicine that is actually really, really dangerous for

How ACOG Shapes Courts And Care

Dr. Christina Francis 16:35

patient care.

Victor Nieves 16:36

Dr. Christina, what is something that people need to know about the modern many of the modern medical associations like ACOG? We might think, we might hear these names and they sound very authoritative. You think, oh, well, that's an association. That's a college. These are people who have my best interest at heart. Tell us what we need to know about that.

Dr. Christina Francis 16:55

Well, I think, you know, especially when it comes to the issue of abortion, ACOG, the American College of OBGYNs, is definitely the tip of the spear in legitimize or trying to legitimize abortion by putting a medical stamp of approval on it. APPLOG actually started within ACOG as a special interest group in 1973 and quickly became their largest special interest group because so many people within ACOG were pro-life. And then ACOG continued to go in a more pro-abortion direction. In 2013, they dissolved special interest groups, and that's when we became our own separate organization. And our membership has quadrupled since we left ACOG, which I think is very telling, actually, that there were a lot of people that recognized a need for a different professional association. But I think what people really need to understand is that these medical associations, and you can see it in multiple areas, they have been infiltrated by ideology. So when it comes, especially when it comes to politically charged issues, such as abortion, such as end-of-life issues, such as the transgender issue, they are ideologically driven. They are not driven by good science and good medicine. And, you know, I was just having a conversation with somebody about this exact thing a couple of days ago. And I said, you know, even if I don't know if we can expect ACOG to ever become pro-life, that cat may be out of the bag apart from miraculous intervention. But either, at least if they could come back to let's allow good, robust academic debate and acknowledge that there's a difference in opinions on this issue within the medical profession, I think that would actually be a huge win. It's dangerous for medicine, it's dangerous for medical care when we squash debate within medicine. That's how we advance technology, it's how we advance our care is by going against what has been considered the status quo, looking at new evidence and basing our decisions off of that. That's not being allowed right now within medicine on the issue of abortion, largely because of ACOG. So either they need to moderate and allow for, you know, this debate to happen, or they need to stop claiming to be an objective scientific and medical organization. And they need to call themselves what they are, which is a political advocacy committee for the abortion industry. And the problem with that, you know, someone who's listening may say, okay, Dr. Francis, I understand how that impacts you because you're an OB/GYN. I'm just a patient, I'm not a doctor, so why should I care about ACOG's position? The problem is that courts rely upon expert medical opinion. And right now, ACOG is claiming to be an objective medical expert opinion in the courts, you know, with these cases that are happening regarding abortion, regarding abortion pill reversal, which is an amazing life-saving treatment that's available. But the state of California is attacking pregnancy centers who are providing this. And a judge sided with the abortion industry, with the state of California and the abortion industry and based his decision solely off of ACOG's testimony in that case. So this is why it's important. It actually does have downstream effects on real patients when they are claiming to be objective medical experts, when really they are ideologues on this issue. And like I said, they're the tip of the spear. There was a article that appeared in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, several years ago about conscience rights in medicine and whether or not physicians should be allowed to opt out of certain things that they like abortion that they feel violate their conscience. It's actually a terrifying article. It was written by Ezekiel Emmanuel, who was one of the authors, who is a well-known advocate for physician-assisted suicide. It basically said that if a physician has any kind of conscientious objections to anything, they should get out of medicine, that they have chosen to enter medicine. And so if something is set as a medical standard, this is the other area where it's really important that these associations, because ACOG is seen as setting the medical standards for OBGYN. And they have said abortion as healthcare. So because that's now considered standard of care by ACOG, that if you can't go along with that, that you should just get out of medicine altogether. And when they point to what groups have done a good job at squashing conscience rights, they pointed to ACOG and said, AMA isn't doing as good a job, but look at ACOG. They have basically said, you cannot exercise your right of conscience within OBGYN, and that's what everybody else should be doing. It's really actually very terrifying and sets up, I think, a model of healthcare that nobody in this country wants.

Victor Nieves 21:21

Well, Dr. Francis, to your point, I mean, I'm thinking this whole time as a patient. Say you're a young family and you want to find an OB. Maybe you're expecting your first child. Oh my goodness, do you want somebody caring for you and your family who's subscribing to a medical ethic, which can hardly be considered ethical? This idea that it's fine to kill somebody. I maybe I'm the only one, maybe I'm crazy. I don't want to have a doctor overseeing me who would be okay killing somebody. That's actually pretty concerning to me. So my follow up here is to the concerned patient, to the concerned citizen who's hearing this maybe for the first time, they're learning, oh my goodness, ACOG and some of these other associations of professionals, they're not what I thought. I I I thought everybody was not going to harm me. I I thought everybody understood that you don't kill your patients. What what do you do if you're looking for a physician? If you're looking for somebody to care for

How To Vet Your Doctor

Victor Nieves 22:10

you, is there any kind of a filter they can use?

Dr. Christina Francis 22:12

Yeah. Well, it's a really good question. And I think there's a number of things that can be done right now. Eventually, I would really love to see the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine lead an effort to almost like when you go to a hospital, they might have their rating through Jaco or one of the national organizations. So you kind of know, okay, they've passed all these standards, you know, that sort of thing. I would love to see us have a Hippocratic stamp of approval to say this physician or this hospital is Hippocratic medicine friendly or not friendly, so that patients could know that going into it. But until that's able to happen, I think there's a few different things that patients can look for or ask their physician. One is if their physician is a member of one of the member organizations of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, I think there's a good chance that they're practicing Hippocratic Medicine. So, you know, they might be an APPLOG member or a member of the American College of Pediatricians or the Christian Medical and Dental Association or Catholic Medical Association, the Coptic Medical Association of North America also is a part of HM and many, many others. So that would be one way that, you know, if they are able to see that their physician's organizational affiliations. But then I also think it's actually a good question to ask your doctor when you're seeing them. So for a woman who's going to an OBGYN, you know, you could say, do you perform abortions or do you refer patients for abortions? Because I would really prefer to see a physician who doesn't do either of those things. And in fact, I would encourage patients to do that and not be scared to do that because I was talking with a colleague recently who did that with his own physician, his internal medicine physician, who he's seen for years. And he said he asked him that and he asked him some questions about the Hippocratic Oath. And his physician said, No one's ever asked me that before. And I don't know that I've ever really thought about it before. And so it actually helped his physician to think through it. And his physician thanked him for asking that. And he was able to, you know, find some things out about his physician. So I think that that's a really good thing. You know, if you're seeing an internal medicine doctor, maybe asking them what their view of physician-assisted suicide is and, you know, would you ever recommend that to a patient? I think their answer could be very telling. But also know going into that that physicians are trained to think that their automatic response to a patient should be very accepting of all of that. So just know that that's going to be a baseline for a lot of physicians, unfortunately, because of the way we're trained. So it may just be that your physician hasn't taken time to think through that. But if they're not doing those things themselves, I would say that's actually a really good sign that they're going to do whatever they can to support you. Lots of physicians that I know will refer for those kinds of things, even though they feel uncomfortable with it because they feel like that's something that they have to do. And that's some work that we are, you know, we need to do as a profession of helping people to understand that you're not abandoning a patient because you won't refer them to an abortionist. In fact, you're actually supporting them better. So, but I think it's a great thing to ask physicians, ask hospitals, you know, are they doing abortions at the hospital? Are they not? Because me personally, I would not go to a hospital that's doing them, you know, um, because you want to know that when you or your baby are having difficulties, that their knee-jerk reaction isn't going to be to do an abortion or to refer you for an abortion. You want to know that your doctor is going to fight as hard as they possibly can to do everything possible, both for you and for your baby.

Victor Nieves 25:39

And to that point, Dr. Francis, I mean, if imagine every pro-life American, when they went to any of their physicians asked that question, I would bet the landscape would begin to change because now all of these physicians who may have never thought of that before are suddenly thinking, man, am I losing patience over this? Are people holding my feet to the fire? Am I being watched as well? And so if we don't say anything, if we don't push back on this creep, we can't expect

Changing Training And Thanking Pro-Life Doctors

Victor Nieves 26:05

anything to change, which really is my next question. What needs to happen for doctors? Yes, but really kind of just for the lay people. For the average person, what is our first step in returning something that resembles an honorable medical ethic? How do we get back to where we're supposed to be?

Dr. Christina Francis 26:22

Yeah. Well, I think as you just said, even just patients asking their physicians or telling their physicians that they want a pro-life physician, even just that will, I think, help to change the landscape because so many doctors that I know are quiet about their pro-life position, or maybe they're kind of in what we call the mushy middle, meaning they they're not gonna do abortions and they really actually are uncomfortable with it. But they kind of feel like, well, if that's what the patients really want, then you know, then I'll refer them for that. So that's the assumption, is that that's what patients want, are physicians who are gonna do that. So if they start hearing more from patients that are like, no, actually, I want a pro-life doctor and here's why. Then I think it will encourage them to, as you said, rethink things, maybe rethink their own position, but also realize, hey, if I'm actually a little bit more vocal about this, I'm actually gonna attract patients to my practice because this is what, this is what they want. And we actually try to tell people that, you know, we've got a public directory on our website of members who choose to be publicly listed. It is the most visited part of our website by women who specifically are saying, I want a pro-life doctor. So how can I find one? And so we tell people all the time, I mean, I understand that so many physicians are in a practice environment where it might be risky for their career to publicly say that they're pro-life, you know, to publicly list themselves as an APPLOG member. But I think that is far outweighed by the number of patients who are really truly seeking a pro-life doctor. And so I think doctors hearing that from patients then will help them realize, oh, this is actually what my patients want, which I think is so important. The other thing that we need to do on the reverse, and but patients could get involved with this as well, is the training system right now is actively weeding out pro-life physicians. I would say argue from medicine in general, but in particular the field of OBGYN. And the reason for that is because our accrediting body requires abortion training for every residency program in order for them to be accredited. And so many pro-life students are not going into OBGYN because they are so afraid of being forced to violate their conscience and either participate in or refer for abortions because of that abortion training requirement. And so that is changing the landscape of this field. So we are getting more and more abortion advocates going into this field and fewer pro-life doctors, you know, students going into the field of OBGYN because they're afraid of being forced to do abortions. And so we really need to change that training requirement. And APPLOG is actively working on that. There's a bill in the House and the Senate. So that's a way that just an average patient could get involved too. You can contact your member of Congress and say, you know, hey, I don't support abortion training being required for OBGYNs because I want to be able to find a pro-life OBGYN. And so I think that's a good sort of advocacy way that patients can get involved. Um, but then the the final thing that I'll say too is we need more doctors who are pro-life to be vocal about it and to talk about it. And so if you are a patient and you have a doctor who you know is pro-life, please thank them for that. They are probably putting themselves at least at some sort of risk career-wise, you know, professional risk, um, especially if you know that they're pro-life and they've been vocal about that. So please thank them for that and encourage them to use their voice so that other doctors, that next generation of medicine that's coming up behind us, will understand that it's not only possible, but it's preferable to be pro-life in medicine and especially in the field of OBGYN.

Victor Nieves 29:56

Dr. Francis, thank you so much for joining us. You really are probably the world's foremost expert and source of knowledge on this topic. So it's been a pleasure to have you. Thank you for the work that you do.

Dr. Christina Francis 30:06

Thank you so much for having me.

Final Takeaways And Where To Go

Victor Nieves 30:19

Having Dr. Francis on really is a pleasure. Like I said there at the end, she is one of the foremost experts. The work that they do with APPLOG is so incredibly important. I want to echo what we spoke about at the end that we as the consumers, we as the patients, we have a tremendous amount of say that the concern of our medical ethics going in the wrong direction, we all can do something about that. If you speak with your physician, if you speak with your doctors, let them know that you're looking for somebody who values your life, the life of your baby, the life of your entire family. We don't want to have physicians overseeing our health who would be willing to kill somebody. And so I encourage everyone, visit our website, lifeissues.org. You can learn more, you can get involved, you can find a pro life doctor in your state. Again, that's available at lifeissues.org. Be sure to tune in next week for another straight talk on life issues.