Women- Are We Being Lied To? -Episode 27

In this episode Gigi goes where most don’t dare- exploring the topic of abortion and debunking one of the top messages promoted by the media, government, and politicians.  Regardless of where you stand on this issue (i.e. pro-life vs. pro-choice) this is a message worth considering.  

 Resources Mentioned:

 References:

 Article- “Are Women Really Dying from Prolife Laws” https://washingtonstand.com/news/are-women-really-dying-from-prolife-laws

 Harris Remarks as published on the White House website: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/09/20/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-at-a-campaign-event-atlanta-ga-2/

 Article- “The Racist History of Abortion and Midwifery Bans” https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/the-racist-history-of-abortion-and-midwifery-bans

 ABC News Article- “A state-by-state breakdown of abortion laws 2 years after Roe was overturned.”  https://abcnews.go.com/US/state-state-breakdown-abortion-laws-2-years-after/story?id=111312220

 Scripture(s): 

Genesis 9:6

Exodus 23:7

Proverbs 6:16-19

Deuteronomy 12:31

Ezekiel 16:20-21

1 John 3:15

 Suggested Worship Songs- “Mother and Child” by Dan Young;  “Untold” by Matthew West; “Heaven Someday” by Shelley E. Johnson

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Transcript

 Aloha Ladies. Welcome Back. 

 This week's podcast is yet another complicated subject.   One that seems to be at the forefront and one that divides like none other, even in the Christian community. So, I guess we shouldn't be surprised that it's rarely preached upon, yet it's so fundamental to our society because it's the heart of our future.    The future of our nation lies with our children and this touchy topic-  well, it's abortion.   And yes, I'm going to go there, and I hope you'll go with me and not get lost along the way! 

 If you tuned in last week, you know that I shared my political views. I also discussed the importance of not only voting but also discerning wisdom and truth as we enter this election season. So, let's consider this Part Two, and you will see how they are tied together.   

 First, last week, I forgot to mention a good resource -The Washington Stand, which the Family Research Council publishes. They tackle crucial topics like the border crisis, Israel, politics, and abortion.    

 So today, I want to start by discussing one of their articles. This article, written by Ben Johnson and published on September 23, 2024, is titled "Are Women Really Dying from Pro-Life Laws?"

 The article discusses remarks Vice President Kamala Harris made during a recent campaign speech in Atlanta, accusing former President Donald Trump and the pro-life movement of killing two women in Georgia. 

 Harris' remarks are published in full on the White House webpage.  

 For the sake of time, I’ll just read her remarks related to 28-year-old Amber Thurman and then discuss this Washington Stand article: 

 Harris, addressing the crowd, stated and I quote: 

 “And now we know that at least two women — and those are only the stories we know — here in the state of Georgia died — died because of a Trump abortion ban. 

 One — and we heard about her story last night — a vibrant, 28-year-old young woman. She was ambitious. You know, we — I talked with her mother and her sisters about her, and they described such an extraordinary life of a person. She was excited. She was working hard. She was a medical assistant. She was going to nursing school, raising her six-year-old son. 

She was really proud that she had finally worked so hard that she gained the independence. Her family was telling me that she was able to get an apartment in a gated community with a pool for her son to play in. She was so proud, and she was headed to nursing school. 

And her name — and we will speak her name — Amber Nicole Thurman. 

 And she had her future all planned out, and it was her plan. You know, let's understand — just take pause on that for a moment. She had her plan, what she wanted to do for her son, for herself, for their future. And so, when she discovered that she was pregnant, she decided she wanted to have an abortion, but because of the Trump abortion ban here in Georgia, she was forced to travel out of state to receive the health care that she needed. 

But when she returned to Georgia, she needed additional care, so she went to a hospital. But, you see, under the Trump abortion ban, her doctors could have faced up to a decade in prison for providing Amber the care she needed. 

Understand what a law like this means. Doctors have to wait until the patient is at death’s door before they take action. 

And so, Amber waited 20 hours — 20 hours, excruciating hours — until finally she was in enough physical distress that her doctors thought they would be okay to treat her. But it was too late. She died of sepsis. And her last words to her mother — which her mother, as you know, tears up and cries every time she speaks it — last words to her mother, "Promise me you'll take care of my son." 

 So, I met last night and I spent time with Amber's mother and her sisters, and they spoke about Amber — a daughter, a sister, a mother — with the deep love that you can imagine and how terribly they miss her. And their pain is heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking. 

 Amber’s mother, Shanette, told me that the word “preventable” is over and over again in her head when she learned about how her child died — the word "preventable."  She cannot — she can't stop thinking about the word that they spoke to her. It was "preventable." 

Words spoken by VP Harris.   

Now, Please hear my heart-  this story is tragic, and my heart goes out to Amber and her family.    And I, too, agree it may have been preventable, but it has nothing to do with Trump or the pro-life movement. Instead, as I hope you will see,  it has everything to do with looking at the full picture of what really happened and how the government isn’t telling the whole story in more ways than one.   

According to the Washington Stand article, they report--

“Amber Nicole Thurman died, not from pro-life laws, but from the negligence of the abortion industry and disinformation from pro-abortion media and political figures.”

Amber traveled to neighboring North Carolina to have an aspiration abortion, technically known as a D&C abortion, when she was nine weeks pregnant. However, she arrived late for her appointment, so the abortionist’s office gave her the abortion pill and sent her home. She took the abortion pill, which is known for a panoply of harmful side effects, including incomplete abortion.   Amber waited at her home in Georgia and eventually had an incomplete abortion, with fetal tissue remaining inside her body, creating an infection.

Amber suffered extreme pain, with no follow-up care from the abortion industry.  After four days she then went to a hospital in Georgia to have the remaining parts of her unborn child’s body removed. 

“Now Amber Thurman did not need an abortion when she got to the hospital in Georgia. She needed a D & C procedure to clear whatever tissue was left in her uterus. At that point, her unborn child would have already been dead.”  According to Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council-  “At nine weeks gestation, where Amber Thurman was, about 7% of women have an incomplete abortion, which, of course, can lead to sepsis.”

Amber developed sepsis. Yet Georgia physicians did not administer the appropriate standard of care, which still remains legal under Georgia’s pro-life protections. 

No state prevents a D & C to remove the tissue of a child who has already died from a miscarriage or abortion. “There was nothing in those pro-life laws that prevented Amber Thurmond from receiving care when she got to that hospital in Georgia. She should have received a D & C. … It is only illegal in Georgia if it is used to intentionally kill an unborn child, and this obviously would not have been the case for her.”  

"There is no state in this Country where it is illegal for a procedure to be performed that saves the life of a mother, but unintentionally results in the death of an unborn child. 

Nor does anything in the bill require doctors to wait until a patient is “at death’s door,” she said.

The fault lies with a 2016 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruling that expanded the use of the abortion pill well beyond its initial parameters. The FDA approved the abortion pill mifepristone, (mifa·pris tone) for use up to seven weeks gestation in 2000, but the abortion industry ignored the law and dispensed the pill well past that date with legal impunity. In 2016, the Obama administration’s FDA formally changed the protocol to allow abortionists to dispense the abortion drug up to 10 weeks, making the abortion industry’s practice legal.

Harris said, “Medical experts have now determined that Amber’s death was preventable.”

“We agree their deaths were preventable,” said SBA Pro-Life America’s State Policy Director Katie Daniel in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. “But let’s be absolutely clear: Georgia’s law and every pro-life state law calls on doctors to act in circumstances just like theirs. If abortion advocates weren’t spreading misinformation and confusion to score political points, it’s possible the outcome would have been different.”

Harris also claimed that “20 states have Trump abortion bans.”

Donald Trump had nothing to do with instituting pro-life laws in any state. 

“The common factors in these tragic deaths are dangerous abortion drugs and inappropriate care for their complications.”  The pro-life community has spent years raising the alarm about abortion drugs that send one in 25 women to the emergency room. 

The FDA documented 4,207 adverse events from mifepristone (mifa·pris tone) use — including 26 deaths — between 2000 and 2021. That does not include 1,045 hospitalizations, 603 events requiring a blood transfusion, and 413 infections. Independent abortionists (not including those affiliated with Planned Parenthood) have killed 38 women in New York state alone — including girls as young as 13.

Harris not only supports the widespread availability of mifepristone (mifa·pris tone) — the drug that contributed to these women’s deaths — but encouraged abortionists to mail abortion pills illegally to women in pro-life states and incentivized drug stores to sell the abortion pill directly to women.”

Bottom line:   Harris wasn't telling the whole truth. Instead, she painted a tragic picture that left out many important details.   This young woman sought help from the abortion industry, was given a drug that wasn't safe past 7 weeks, she had an incomplete abortion, and died from sepsis.    Whether this care took place in Georgia or North Carolina isn't relevant.   She died from complications stemming from an abortion that she obtained legally!    

The other critical information that Harris conveniently left out is that Georgia bans abortions at six weeks or later. They allow exceptions in cases of rape or incest up to 20 weeks of pregnancy if a police report was filed regarding the incident.

They also have exceptions, including if the fetus has a condition that would likely result in death or if the pregnant woman would face harm or potential death.

So in Amber's case- she could have legally had an abortion in her state of Georgia if her life was in danger, if she had been the victim of rape or incest, or if she had decided earlier to abort her child- before the 6-week mark.   Amber had choices, and unfortunately, she believed the lies that the abortion pill was safe.  

Folks, there is a great deception going on right now related to abortion. If you do an internet search for the origins of abortion in the United States, you will get all kinds of articles that simply aren't true.   The ACLU will tell you that anti-abortion is rooted in white supremacy. They will also tell you that a person is 14 times more likely to die by carrying a pregnancy to term than by having an abortion and that medical evidence has shown for decades that abortion is as safe as taking a penicillin shot.  

Yet, if you know anything about the origins of Planned Parenthood, the founder, Margaret Sanger, was all about sterilization and population reduction of "undesirables" or those she deemed "less worthy of life."   Which included the African American population.  

You can't have it both ways-   white supremacy to keep black women from having access to abortions to the truth behind the origins of Planned Parenthood, which promotes abortions to control the black population.  

And this idea that abortions are safe, like a penicillin shot or popping a pill with no consequences to the health and life of the mother, is just foolishness!  

Misinformation was also spoken during the debate between Harris and Trump.    The moderator, Lindsey Davis (a sorority sister of Harris), stated, "There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born."    This is simply not true.   Right now, there are ten (10) states in our Country that have no restrictions-  NONE… Alaska, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Michigan, DC, Maryland, New Jersey, and Vermont.    And in Virginia, abortions are legal all the way up to the third trimester.   There are only fourteen (14) states in our Country that have a near-total ban on abortion, but all of them have exceptions to include saving the life of the mother! 

So, to hear from the media and politicians that there is some national Trump-inspired abortion ban sweeping the Country is negligent and egregious misinformation.  

The irony is abortion and the affirmation of Roe vs. Wade was never about the empowerment of women.    The Judges that passed Roe vs. Wade were ALL men, and the agenda behind it all has always been power, money, population control, and eugenics.   We were sold a lie a long time ago – a sexual revolution lie that said women have the right to be free to have sex without any fear of consequences.   Pornography, movies, TV, magazines – all promoting this idea of sexual freedom.   Women can do whatever they like because they can take a birth control pill, and if that fails, abortion is the answer.    Children went from being viewed as "gifts and blessings" from God to "unwanted, inconvenient, and impractical." 

Regardless of where you land on this topic, I pray that you will be able to see past the lies and misconceptions.  

I have great compassion for women who find themselves in this difficult position.   We need to love them, come alongside them to care for and support them- and most importantly, give them the truth- the truth about the development of their child, the truth about the dangers of abortion and abortion drugs, the truth about the lasting ramifications of abortion that carry emotional, mental, and physical toll.   

And for a Christ follower, it’s a heart motive-   Are we doing what is honorable and right in the Lord’s sight?”    Are we supporting practices that are aligned with what God has to say on the matter or what this selfish, self-serving world has to say?  

It is unarguable that Scripture tells us that God says children are:

Made in the image of God, the unborn are human and not disposable cells, and children are blessings to be cherished.  

Further, God HATES abortion and gives explicit commands not to harm the innocent: 

• Genesis 9:6

• Exodus 23:7

• Proverbs 6:16-19

• Deuteronomy 12:31

• Ezekiel 16:20-21

• 1 John 3:15

 Ladies-  We've got to do better and stop being fooled into believing that this pro-choice agenda is good. It's not… it's tied to an industry that is pure evil!   Misinformation and deception leaving women like Amber Thurman caught between a rock and a hard place unable to make truly educated decisions about her body and about her innocent unborn child!   May we have eyes that are wide open and voices that are outspoken.   Thousands of lives depend on it- both women and their unborn.   May God have mercy on this Country and I pray He brings some healing and peace to this family who lost two precious lives!

 References:

 Article- “Are Women Really Dying from Prolife Laws” https://washingtonstand.com/news/are-women-really-dying-from-prolife-laws

 Harris Remarks as published on the White House website: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/09/20/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-at-a-campaign-event-atlanta-ga-2/

 Article- “The Racist History of Abortion and Midwifery Bans” https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/the-racist-history-of-abortion-and-midwifery-bans

 ABC News Article- “A state-by-state breakdown of abortion laws 2 years after Roe was overturned.”  https://abcnews.go.com/US/state-state-breakdown-abortion-laws-2-years-after/story?id=111312220