Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: You're listening to faith in healthcare, the cmda matters podcast. Here's your host, Dr. Mike chubb.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Welcome, friends, to Faith in Healthcare. In this episode, we're sharing a special conversation and that I had the privilege of joining on our sister podcast, the Voice of Advocacy, which is hosted by Dr. Brick Lance. Our guest is Dr. Bill Lyle, who's an OB GYN who spent 30 years delivering babies in Florida before stepping away from his practice to go into full time pro life ministry through an organization that he calls Pro Life Doc. His story, friends, is remarkable. And what he's doing now, taking the science of life in the womb into secular universities and changing hearts and minds, is something that every Christian healthcare professional just needs to hear.
So let's dive in.
[00:01:17] Speaker C: Welcome to the Voice of Advocacy. And I have a wonderful guest today and I'm excited about this because he has been called to a special calling working within the church, but not just the church, but other organizations in education and medical schools with his Pro Life cause, if you will. So I want to welcome Dr. Bill Lyle, who is a board certified obstetrician gynecologist, and he's delivered thousands and thousands of babies. He got his bachelor's degree at Rutgers University, his D.O. and internship in New Jersey, and then he's been an obgyn physician in Florida and he's been a professor both at the University of Florida and Florida State. In fact, when he took over a clinic in 1999, all the abortions in Pensacola, Florida at this clinic stopped day one.
And that launched kind of his ministry called Pro Life Doc, which we'll talk about and you'll be able to access.
So he's served on a variety of councils. He's married to Leslie for over 33 years and has two children.
[00:02:26] Speaker D: Welcome Dr. Lyle, it's an honor to be with you. Thank you very much.
[00:02:29] Speaker C: And my other special guest is my boss and CEO of CMDA, Dr. Mike Chupp. I've had the privilege of being a co host with him on many of his podcasts, the Faith in Healthcare. And so Mike, it's a privilege to have you on this podcast, the Voice of Advocacy.
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Well, thank you, Brick. It is a privilege and I enjoy having you on Faith and Healthcare regularly when we have advocacy guests. And Dr. Lyle, great to meet you face to face and had a chance to see a video of you sharing in a chapel with a group of excited college university students at Cedarville University, where my daughter went for a semester and I'm told it was voted the number one chapel of the Year, and I can see why. So welcome to the Voice of Advocacy. And Rick's giving me the opportunity to ask a question. Love to ask. Our weekly podcast I host is called Faith in Healthcare. And so I want our listeners to know, how are your faith and healthcare connected? Tell us your faith story briefly. And then what's the connection between you going into obstetrics and gynecology and your faith?
[00:03:32] Speaker D: Well, I was raised in a Christian home and came to, you know, know Jesus as my savior when I was about 8 years old and was always interested in the sciences and was interested in going to medical school, mostly because I had lots of surgeries when I was a kid, plastic surgeries, appendectomy, tumors removed. And so I kind of developed an interest in a love and my interest. I mean, I got a little bit of add and I'd be on Adderall if I was a kid now, but I like excitement. And so I was originally going to medical school with the thoughts that I would go into either ER or trauma. And it was on a orthopedic rotation, actually, that it was late at night and I was on the rotation. I was reading Williams obstetrics, and one of the attendings looked at me. He goes, what are you doing reading Williams obstetrics on an orthopedic rotation? I said, I just enjoy reading. And he says, you're caught up with everything else. I said, yeah, caught up, ready to go. And he said, what are you going into? I said, I'd really like to do ER or trauma. He says, if you're on my orthopedic rotation and you're reading Williams Obstetrics, he said, you probably need to go into obstetrics if your interest is that strong.
So when I finished my internship at Our lady of Lord's Hospital in New Jersey, I applied for residencies and was blessed to be able to match at the University of Florida. And it was a wonderful four years there. And then I graduated my residency program in 1999. I've been in Florida ever since.
[00:05:01] Speaker C: Well, that's awesome, Bill. You and I have very similar faith, upbringing, and decision to go into medicine. But we flipped there. I did OBGYN as my first third year rotation because that's what I knew I did not want to do, and I knew I wanted to do orthopedics. But now, listen, you are unabashedly pro life, so tell us where this came about in your career, through your education, your career, where you really advocate what we call one of the most vulnerable populations in our culture. In Our society today, which is the unborn.
[00:05:30] Speaker D: Well, I was always pro life. I can even remember my parents going to a pregnancy resource center banquet in Cherry Hill, New Jersey when I was a child. And 30 years later I was actually blessed to be able to speak at that same banquet. But science really shows that these are patients within the inside. And we've all been striving to provide quality patient care. And whether that somebody was born in the United States, somebody who was not born in the United States, or somebody who was not born in the United States yet. So I never performed an abortion before. I would always opt out, which as a medical student or as a resident, you're able to opt out. But then when it came to, when I finished my residency, where am I going to practice? The practice that I knew was available was a practice in Pensacola, Florida that also happened to be the largest provider of abortions on the Florida panhandle. And they were performing abortions up to 24 weeks gestation, which was the law at that point. And they're only about two blocks away from our Catholic hospital. And, and we had babies that were surviving in our NICU at 23 weeks, yet they were performing abortions. So we took over the practice, we had him sign a two year non compete and you know, on day one, which was our original plan, we stopped all abortions. But it wasn't until I actually had a key to the practice on my own and I went to the practice to actually completely tour the practice. I had seen the first floor of the waiting room, exam rooms in my office, but I had never been upstairs. And that's where the surgical suite was.
It was a Sunday afternoon after church. And I will never forget walking up the stairs to the second floor and thinking how many thousands and thousands of moms with babies on the inside and walked up that same set of stairs, made a turn to the left, went around the corner and saw the abortion machine, the exam table, the stirrups, all the fuel packs and instruments all laid out for Monday's round of abortions. And this is on the same street as Pensacola Christian College. Thousand member churches to the right and to the left. And I'd never heard it discussed. There were never people protesting. We had, we were treating babies at our hospital in the womb. We were doing blood transfusion pubs procedures, actually giving life saving blood transfusions, the babies in the womb with ultrasound guidance. And we had done that transfusion the babies as early as 18 weeks gestation. So our NICU is amazing. We had babies delivered and surviving at 23 weeks gestation. We were diagnosing, treating and curing babies. So I just felt led the Lord to do a presentation at my church. Spoke with our pastor, we did a presentation. It was well received. And then the coconut telegraph started and we got another invitation then, another invitation. And then we actually started the ministry of pro life doc. And we were traveling all over the country, but it was about a year ago that we felt that we were saying no probably 80% of the time when we get an invitation, just because I had other obligations with my practice. So after delivering babies in Pensacola for 30 years, we discussed it with my board and on July 1st of this year, we went into full time ministry. I'm still keeping my medical license, board certification, and malpractice insurance. And we're involved in abortion pill reversal. But now we have the opportunity and the time to, to go in the new aspect of ministry, which is teaching our kids because, you know, train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he won't depart from it. So rather than, you know, trying to be overweight and then trying to lose the weight, we're really trying to stay in good shape and that's a healthier way. And we want to meet the kids at a young age, which is what our opposition does. And so a lot of kids will say, well, it's just a blob of tissue, it doesn't really matter. And that's what they've been taught since they've been a young child. And so we're gonna meet them where they are, whether it's social media or other platforms to teach them the truth, the truth of science. All science. All true science was created by God. So all true science will defend his preborn in the womb 100% of the time. We just wanna make them aware of what the true science is.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Wow. And speaking of true science, I mean, because it's true, it's on our side. And Brick is constantly saying, you know, all truth is God's truth and his word is truth. And my favorite pro life verse, Psalm 139, 17, you saw me before I was born. Just a powerful scripture. And my youngest daughter is in her 14th or 15th week of her first pregnancy and keeps sending us images of ultrasound. And she's like, this is amazing.
So we're seeing children before they're born. So ultrasound has made a huge difference. What other science and technology has come along?
Dr. Lance has been telling me you're involved with some incredible kinds of surgery. Surgery. And you've alluded what other things have come along to help benefit the preborn.
[00:10:41] Speaker D: Well, imaging is an absolutely amazing tool. I like scuba diving, and my wife and I have scuba dived in some of the most beautiful places on the planet. And it wasn't until Jacques Cousteau in the 1970s actually took scuba diving with the aqua lung underwater. Took cameras and took videos of the amazing fish and the corals, the hard corals, and, and showed this life under the sea. And at that time, I was growing up in New Jersey and they were dumping trash right off the Jersey shore. And all of a sudden we had syringes washing up on the beach of the Jersey shore. But it wasn't until we actually sent divers with cameras down under the water, not only to see the beauty, but to see the harm that was occurring in the underwater environment. So that's when we completely changed our policies as far as abusing what we really couldn't see, which was the bottom of the se, could see the surface, but we didn't see the beauty that was below the surface and the harm that was being done. So we've taken that same idea of showing the truth. And ultrasound is an amazing tool. I mean, just a few years ago, before I started training, there were docs who would say, boy, they were surprised when they delivered a baby, and then there was a second baby that would never happen today, but a lot of times they didn't know it back then. You deliver A, and all of a sudden there's B, grab it onto a foot. But now we have 2D ultrasound, 3D ultrasound, 4D ultrasound, we have MRI, which is an amazing tool to see baby's motion on the inside and looking at soft tissues. But now we're actually performing something called a fetoscopy, where we're actually taking a camera and we're placing it through the skin of the mom, through the wall of the uterus, putting that camera on the inside, not just seeing an image, but actually seeing that baby on the inside. Well, why are we doing that? Because we're starting to operate and treat and cure these babies in the womb. But it gives us an amazing tool to defend these patients that are inside of the womb. So we are doing all sorts of advanced procedures around the country. We're spending tens of millions of dollars, not for the mom, but specifically for the baby. In fact, at the Cleveland Clinic, where they're now doing open heart surgery on babies in the womb at 27 weeks and blood transfusions at 17 weeks, and then allowing the babies to Continue to grow and gestate. When you take the mom and the baby to the or, the OR that they use where they treat the mom and the baby is labeled the fetal or this is maternal fetal medicine, but they just label it the fetal or. So we can take these tools that God has given us and show the life within the womb and really allow the science, the medicine and let the babies defend themselves by saying, here I am, I am a patient and I have rights. Protect me.
[00:13:38] Speaker C: Hey Bill, I am really excited that you are following God's calling for your life and your faith in him. One is to now work full time for pro Life Doc. Amazing ministry and God has gifted you with as a multifaceted person. I mean, you have many skills and desires and ambitions and visions, which I love. So let's talk about this work with pro Life doc. And I want to talk about these one at a time because it really is multifaceted what you do to bring pro life education into our world. And so let's just start with education.
You go from grade school all the way through medical school.
So why again, touch bases on what prolife doc does as far as just education and why that's so important?
[00:14:21] Speaker D: Well, we're huge advocates of homeschool education.
We always would give our daughters three different options. You can go to public school, private school, or homeschool. And we give them that option every year. But we also told them whatever choice you make that year, that's the choice you're going to stick with for the rest of the year. So we got real involved in curriculums. Our daughters both graduated, you know, straight A's, you know, in homeschool. But then they made that transition to the University of Florida. And they both graduated with high honors, magna cum laude from the University of Florida. And we saw the benefits of homeschool education.
So we also showed there was a deficit in homeschool education regarding this particular issue of life. So we developed on our own, we developed a eight chapter, which is now a 10 chapter curriculum, just to educate, not indoctrinate, but to educate. And there's a big difference between the two. So our curriculum actually covers what happens at the moment of conception. Let's go over fetal development and what is life on the inside. We go over have a chapter on how we treat and diagnose and cure babies in the womb by doing everything from open heart surgery, brain surgery, spina bipedic corrective surgery, laser vascular surgery. We're correcting heart arrhythmias by giving a medicine called Adenosine right into the umbilical vein.
Give them that education, give them the facts. But then we also talk about the horror of abortion. We've seen the beauty of the baby in the womb, but let's discuss what it actually is. A lot of people don't really grasp how horrible abortion really is. It's like with World War II, nobody could even believe what the Holocaust was like. And I'm so glad that there were officers and generals who, when they saw the concentration camps, brought up their video teams and said, people won't believe this. We need to document what's been going on here. So we have a chapter on just how a first, second and third trimester abortion is performed. We use the equipment that was there in the office that we took over, the abortion machine, the instruments. No blood, no baby parts, but you understand the facts. And now with more than 70% of all the abortions being performed with the abortion pill, which is shipped to all 50 states, we go over the science of the mechanism of the abortion pill, how it will kill a baby in the womb up to 12 weeks gestation 98% of the time. But we also go over the science of the dangers to the moms of the abortion pill. But then we go over the miracle of abortion pill reversal. I just got an email today that our Network, abortion pill reversal.com just celebrated the 7,000 successful abortion pill reversal, where the mom had made a decision, regretted that decision, contacted one of our providers, we provided her with the antidote, which is progesterone. Just like we have thousands of lives that are saved each year by giving Narcan when somebody has made a mistake of overdosing on a narcotic. But these babies are 7,000 babies that would have died. So we go over abortion pill reversal, but we have a second chapter.
Chapter eight is actually all on why this is a biblical and a spiritual issue. We actually had Chapter 8 reviewed on Good Friday by Dr. Wayne Grudem, one of my favorite theologians in the country. And we went through every single verse because you can take a verse out of context and almost prove anything. And in his conclusion of Spending a Day Together, he says it's probably the most comprehensive pro life apologetics curriculum he'd ever seen. But then we recently developed chapters 9 and 10. We were invited to speak at the American association of Christian Counselors last year, and it was just such an overwhelming response that we developed chapters 9 and 10 specifically on the science, not just American science, but the European, the Asian, the South American science on the mental health Impact after abortion, where we look at true science, we see 33 to 34% of the people who've had an abortion are dealing with depression or anxiety. The suicide rate goes up six times after an abortion. But the mental health impact is not just on women, it is on men as well. And I don't know how you can be a counselor dealing with somebody who is dealing with the trauma of abortion, who has with the abortion pill. They have delivered that baby, usually in the commode. They've seen fingers and toes and eyes. And to go to a non Christian counselor who says, you didn't see what you thought you saw. No, I saw fingers, I saw toes and I saw eyes looking up at me. But with a Christian counselor, when people are dealing with guilt and trauma from an abortion, a Christian counselor says, yes, abortion is wrong. Abortion is a sin. It's an attack on the image of God. I don't know how you can be a counselor and not offer forgiveness because the blood of Jesus Christ and the message of the Gospel is powerful enough to cover any sin.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:19:33] Speaker D: The sin of abortion. And a lot of people have had multiple abortions. And you know, what did Paul say? Forget about what lies behind and press on towards what's ahead.
So there are millions of people, men and women, in our churches, who are hurting.
They need healing. Healing comes from true forgiveness. And true forgiveness only comes through the blood of Jesus Christ and the gospel message. So this is an issue that, yes, it's great having obstetricians that are standing up for life. It's great having politicians that are engaging and standing up for life. But this is a spiritual battle at its core. So a spiritual battle should be led by our pastors and our priests from their pulpits in our congregations and discussing the issue of abortion, because 18 to 24% of all the people in our congregations, men and women, have personally been involved with an abortion. There are so many topics we need to be discussing in our congregations. But from that pulpit, number one has got to be the gospel. But number two has to be abortion. Probably the greatest spiritual battle that this nation has ever faced.
[00:20:40] Speaker C: Well, hey, thanks for those comments, particularly on the educational material. And we'll make sure we'll post that in our notes that people can find out how to access the curriculum. That sounds fantastic, and I'm going to echo some of your sentiments. We had an APR just two weeks ago in the Pregnancy center where I'm medical director in Oregon. And it's such a joy when you get that second ultrasound and the Heart's still beating. What a wonderful aspect of technology that we can actually reverse this. So that's wonderful as well. And our nurse practitioner does have a certificate in mental health care and training, and we do screening for every patient that comes in for mental health problems. Yeah, it is widespread. But I love your idea about educating the young. That is absolutely so important. Let's talk about your videos that you have. I've seen some of them. They're beautiful. They're powerful. So tell me about the use of just videos in your ministry.
[00:21:31] Speaker D: Well, we used to actually show the videos of surgeries that we're performing in the womb on babies and in moms. But some people don't do. I think it's fascinating. Some people don't do well with blood and seeing an actual surgery. In fact, we've had two men pass out when we were using those videos. Never had a woman pass out, but we had two guys just pass out.
[00:21:53] Speaker C: By the way, the first surgery I ever saw. Sorry to interrupt you. Was a C section. And I did pass out.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: I was close. I was a pre med and I had a C section. I almost passed out, too. And I went on to become a surgeon, but.
[00:22:05] Speaker C: Go on.
[00:22:06] Speaker D: Yeah, well, so we developed animations. You know, we have a gifted animator. One of the first animations he did for us was an animation of open heart surgery where a baby was diagnosed with a cardiac teratoma, a tumor on the heart. And the tumor was growing so quickly that it was going to kill that baby in one to two weeks. So the doctors at the Cleveland Clinic gave the parents two options. They said, number one, we can deliver your baby at 27 weeks and then do open heart surgery. But we really think we have the technology and we have the team that we can give mom an epidural. We can do an incision, just like a mini C section. Then we'll bring out the right hand and the left hand of the baby. We'll start an iv. We'll have the pediatric anesthesiologist medicate the baby with small doses of fentanyl and a paralytic called Norcuron. Then we'll make an incision in the baby's chest, open the baby's chest, remove the tumor, put it all back together again, close the uterus, close the skin, and then we'll see you back in about 10 weeks. And so we did an animation of that amazing surgery. Just discussing the details with our animator was over six hours of conversation because he's not medically oriented and he doesn't know the difference between a hysterectomy and a hysterectomy. So it took six hours to go through every step and every detail and he was able to condense that down to a 70 second animation. So if you can take a six hour discussion and condense it down with 3D animation to a 70 second video, that is efficiency in education. And so many of our younger generation, whether it's TikTok or anything else, they're so used to the short form, they're used to 3D animations. And that's one of the amazing things of the Baby Oliver video.
Accurate, scientifically verifiable videos of fetal development on the inside of the womb. Again, these are meant not to indoctrinate, but to educate and show that truth within the inside of the womb. So kids are a burden for us, not only to teach them right from wrong, but also for the kids that are pro life and want to become more active, to give them the tools to equip them. Not to just say I'm pro life, but to be able to articulate why you are pro life. And that's called apologetics. And it doesn't mean I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I did it. No, Apologetics is being able to defend your beliefs and your feelings. So it is important to give them the science. It's important to give them the facts. And so that's why it's an honor to be able to teach these kids with 3D animations.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Before we continue with this week's episode, here's a special announcement for you.
The CMDA Learning center is continuing to grow and it's an incredible resource for Christian healthcare professionals.
You'll find content from recent national conventions, the Faith Prescription series, continuing education opportunities, and a wide range of courses designed to support both your professional work and your spiritual growth.
And here's the best part. As a CMDA member, you can earn continuing education credits at no cost.
To start exploring the full library, visit CMDA.org learn if CMDA has encouraged you or helped shape who you are as a Christian healthcare professional, we want to invite you to consider becoming a lifetime member.
Lifetime membership is a way to make a lasting investment in this ministry.
You will be part of bringing along the next generation of believers in health care while helping bring the hope and healing of Christ to the world.
It's about staying connected to something that truly endures and gives back.
To learn more, visit CMDA.org Lifetime
[00:26:06] Speaker D: let's
[00:26:07] Speaker A: jump right back into this week's episode,
[00:26:13] Speaker C: so let's go back. You have obviously very robust curriculum you talked about. You have these, what is it, nine or ten chapters, but you have the videos as well.
So where has this curriculum gone? You said in some home schools. Right. But where else?
[00:26:24] Speaker D: Home schools are using it. A lot of Christian schools are using it, Catholic schools are using it, Sunday schools are using it. I mean, every Sunday school, when you're going through your curriculum, you're always asking a teacher, well, what are we going to do next quarter? So we have the church members that are getting together and the video is easy. You can stream it live off of the Internet. Plus we have workbooks which go along with each of the chapters and they're even role playing exercises at the end of each chapter where you just learned a lot of things. Let's put this into play where on this topic we're going to have you play the role of the pro life person, you play the role of the pro abortion person and then defend your stance. And then we're going to switch. We have lessons and plans just on sharing the gospel message, where you can practice sharing the gospel message. And so we do that as well. Well, with adults. So pregnancy resource centers are using it, churches are using it, colleges are using it. When we speak at colleges, we often will provide them access to the curriculum. So for the students that want to know more and want to become better equipped, in fact, if you look at the Turning Point USA curriculum on abortion and how to defend life, most of the animations that they're using are animations that we had developed for our curriculum. So we work with students for life nationally. We work with live action tpusa, sidewalk advocates. We've been blessed with some tools and we want to share those tools so that people can engage in this spiritual battle.
[00:27:51] Speaker C: So let me ask you a personal question. So I know your book solid for 2026 as far as lecturing and stuff, and I know you enjoy lecturing. It's obvious that you do.
But tell us where you actually find the greatest challenge in lecturing or joined in lecturing, because you lecture both what I would call Christian audiences, as you said, but you also lecture on campuses that are not Christian. So what are some of the challenges? What are some of the joys when you give these lectures?
[00:28:16] Speaker D: Well, we spoke years ago at the University of Florida College of Medicine, and it was mostly on fetal surgery. And most of our curriculum, most of our opportunities to share have been at Christian universities. But then we got an invitation to speak in Kansas. We were going to be in Wichita Kansas, of course, that's the home of George Tiller, one of the most notorious third trimester abortionists. But we were speaking at a pregnancy resource center banquet that is a fundraiser. And we got a call a couple weeks before we were scheduled to speak actually from a professor at the University of Kansas who was a professor in the ob GYN department. And she called me on my cell and she said, hey, I see you're coming into the University of Kansas in Wichita. I know you're going to be speaking already at a pregnancy center. Is there any way you could fly in a day, early, early and give a lecture to the OB GYN residents and family practice residents? I said, absolutely, we'll come in a little early. So we met with about 40 of the OB GYN residents, all different levels and family practice residents. All of them were female. And we talked primarily about how we diagnose, treat and cure the babies in the womb. And we discussed abortion pill reversal, and we discussed about abortion itself. We didn't have a big thrust as far as scripture, as far as this being a spiritual battle. We focused on what they understood. They understood medicine, so let's use medicine to teach how we treat the preborn. And they had great Q and A afterwards. I got a call from that same professor two weeks after we spoke at Journal Club that night. And she said, you have no idea the impact that you've had on these ladies. She said, I'd say at least 95% of these ladies, even though they might not have planned on performing abortions at any gestational age, you know, when they graduated, they would have absolutely referred anybody at any gestational age for any reason or an abortion. But she says the topic of Morning Report for the past two weeks has been how can we be treating these babies in the womb as patients, but then also refer those same patients to be aborted in the womb? She said, it changed hearts, it changed minds, and it's really making them think so. That brought us to the point of we need to more actively take this messaging out to the public and secular universities. So we had the vision and we're now starting the Abortion is Not Health Care tour. Our first event will be at the University of West Florida on February 25th. We announced this on Friday, just on Friday alone. We had requests from the University of Georgia, the University of Tennessee, the University of Washington, and spoke can and University of West Florida Now. So we're going to take the truth, following the example of Charlie. Charlie would often be giving, doing his Q A. Prove me Wrong. And the people say, why are you bringing your religion into this? I don't believe in your religion. Charlie, reply. I haven't discussed religion or the Bible at all. I've just been talking science. So again, all true science will defend God's preborn. He's the author of True Science. It's just that a lot of people have not been exposed to the true science.
[00:31:39] Speaker C: People.
[00:31:40] Speaker D: It's amazing. College students will still think that a baby in the womb is just a blob of tissue. It's just innocuous blob and you can do whatever you want with it. Well, first, genetically, from that first moment of conception, that baby is unique. And people will say, my body, my choice. Well, that's a different body half the time. It's a different gender from that moment of conception. But genetically, it's totally unique. And we can even see now with technology, we can see the heart beating, you know, at just about 22 days. It starts beating at 22 days into gestation and it's going to beat until the day you die.
[00:32:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:32:19] Speaker D: So we can use science and then we can really take it another step and use medicine. Whose one thing to be able to see the fetus in the inside. It's one thing to see the fetal development, but it's another thing to diagnose problems, treat those problems. And now we have data, like with spina bifida. We've been doing this for over 26 years now. You remember the hand of Samuel Armas when it poked out through the womb of the mother and they were doing spina bifida corrective surgery. But now the data, the Science shows that 26 years later, when we take the initiative and we operate on these babies in the womb, and now we've been following them for decades, the babies who got operated in the womb, as opposed to babies who got operated after they delivered the babies in the womb, they can go upstairs faster, they can go downstairs faster, they have better control their bladders, better control their bowels. We have improved their quality of life for the rest of their lives by taking initiative and treating them as a patient inside of the womb. And every month there is something new and amazing where the technology and even nobody has done a robotic case. We use robots all the time now, especially in gyn and I know in orthopedics, we're using robots, a new tool for us to use. Nobody's done a robotic case, but give us a toy. We're going to find a way to use that toy and somebody is going to do a robotic surgery on a baby in the womb because it is less invasive. But these are patients. All patients have rights. Patients not born in the United States have rights. Patients not born in the United States yet also have rights.
[00:33:59] Speaker C: So my last question on the pro life doc ministry in itself, when we discuss what I call marvelous science and just the marvel of the growth in the womb, just that in itself can open the doors for sharing the gospel, just sharing God's creation, his design, and how we can study it and visualize it. But my last question is about public policy. And if you want to say politics, fine, but public policy. And of course, I was doing the Snoopy dance. You probably were too, a couple weeks ago when the second district court said that APR can be available and you can give information on it. What a great victory. But is your organization involved in policymaking and advocacy?
[00:34:37] Speaker D: Yeah, policy and government. That's how we govern ourselves. So we're the medical Advisor for the NaCl, which is the national association of Christian Lawmakers. We have state senators and state representatives from all 50 states. Now, we meet twice a year, but we also create model legislation. We have expert witness testimony. I testified up in Columbus, Ohio, back in November on the Baby Olivia act, which would require students to at least see the truth of the Baby Oliver act or the video produced by Live Action. So we gave expert witness testimony. We received five minutes of time, and we were able to convince more than half of the representatives the vote in favor of showing the truth of conception and fetal development on the inside the womb will be back up in Columbus, Ohio, in February, where it'll be heard by the Senate. So we are very active, and a lot of our representatives just aren't aware of how many tens of millions of dollars of state funds are going to provide quality health care, not just to the moms, but to the babies in the womb. So if we are spending millions and tens of millions of dollars to meet the needs of the babies inside the womb, then the state has a vested interest. So we get involved in politics, we get involved in churches, because this is really the greatest spiritual battle this nation has ever faced.
[00:36:06] Speaker C: Their ministry sounds almost as busy as cmda.
[00:36:08] Speaker B: Yeah, right up there.
Well, Bill, I just enjoyed hearing about all the things that you're doing and the different venues that you get invited into. And of course, we hear it. Incredible. Incredible. Spokesperson for the field of obstetrics and gynecology and so much in the know, but so many of those listening, you know, whether to this advocacy podcast or to some of our other Podcasts like Faith and Healthcare don't have an obgyn background and maybe don't feel as comfortable in talking about science and being able to answer questions. So my question is this. How would you advise our listeners if they're not necessarily an OBGYN, but physicians or PAs, nurse practitioners or even in non medical?
What have been the questions or the we talk about in sharing the gospel little pebbles that you put in other shoes and maybe those other shoes are being worn by a peer in the hospital, in a practice and you know that that individual doesn't have the same view about protecting the preborn that you do. What do you teach those in the universities and in your conferences? And when you share with people audience what are the most effective ways that you get people thinking about this truly is a human being that deserves to be respected and protected.
[00:37:22] Speaker D: One of the tools we'll use is asking questions. Questions lead to understanding where that person is coming from and how to address it. So these basic questions asking somebody, and we work this with the legislators all the time, are you a supporter of patients rights? Well, everybody says yes.
Are you supportive of patients rights if they weren't born in the United States? Well, now they get defensive. You better believe I am. Then you need to be a supporter of patients rights when that patient was not born in the United States yet. And that's a very important tool. The curriculum is a very important tool. Understanding the science and then practicing sharing this information with your friends and colleagues. For churches, we have actually up on our website prolife.com for sanctity of Human Life Sunday. If you look on the website and you look at Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, we have professionally developed and produced three different videos For Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. There is a three minute video, a seven minute video and an 11 minute video in both English, Spanish and French. And with AI really there's no limits on the languages.
So ask your pastor or priest, hey, what are we doing for Sanctity of Human Life Sunday? If he says we don't get involved in politics, they need to, you know, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego got involved in politics. Moses got involved in politics, Daniel, Jesus, John the Baptist, Paul, they all got involved in politics.
So this is a great spiritual battle. So if your church says we're not do that, you need to encourage your pastor. Even Paul, you know, wrote to the church of Ephesians, says, pray for me that I would have the courage to speak as I must. We need to encourage our pastors and encourage our priests and then make it easy. We spoke it UP. Pastors Conference, 120 different pastors. But before we gave a lecture, we asked them, how many of you in your four years of undergrad or two years of seminary even had one lecture on how to discuss the issue of abortion and the forgiveness that's available through the gospel. Out of 120 pastors, three Southern Baptist pastors had had even one lecture. So if you were to ask me to give a lecture on how to do hair or makeup, I'm clueless. I have no idea.
A lot of our pastors are clueless and they have not been given the tools on how to engage in this spiritual battle. So we have those resources for them as well. And call us, contact us, go to the website. We are busy, but we always love to be busier. We love taking this messaging anywhere, whether it's a pregnancy resource center or to a congregation, to a Christian college or a secular college. The truth will set us free. There's truth in scripture, there's truth in science, and we're here to help.
[00:40:06] Speaker C: That's excellent. And as you know, many of the centers around the country, the pregnancy centers have a safe place. That's what we have at our center for the post abortive women. And I find it unfortunate, there's many women sitting in the pews of church that have had an abortion and never told anybody and they just have not even sought forgiveness yet. And Christ can and does forgive and to help them walk those steps. So anyway, that's beautiful. Give us a little more detail on the Baby Olivia act actually is about. And are you optimistic it's going to be in other states?
[00:40:38] Speaker D: Oh, very optimistic. Right now. It's going through the process up in Ohio, it's going through Arkansas and there's other states that are working on this as well. Again, it's just science and it's just truth. When you look at the Baby Olivia videos, first was Baby Olivia, that was a three minute video. And then they spent a lot more money and put in a lot more time in their five minute video that's now called the Baby Oliver video. And you can see both of these live on YouTube and it's free to do that, but it's just showing that truth. But it's like when it comes to that truth, it's one thing to see the animation, but it's another thing to see the science and the references. So they will, in the bottom left corner they will say exactly at what gestational age they'll then reference what the source, they even will reference quotes from Planned Parenthood on some of these issues and points. So if you're going to make a decision regarding abortion, neither later in your life or how you are going to vote, you need to understand the facts. It's not a blob of tissue. Let's see the heart beating at 22 days gestation. Even when you think about the miracle of conception, one cell from the mom, one cell from the dad come together and that cell is unique from the mom, the dad, and the other 8 billion people on the planet. But then it doubles its DNA and it divides. It becomes 2, then 4, then 8, then 16. Seven days afterwards, it will usually implant in the lining of the uterus. Well, how does it get down in the l uterus? Because these special cells called syncytiotrophoblast will actually reproduce enzymes so that that early pregnancy can actually go down into the lining of the uterus. And those same syncytiotrophoblasts also release a hormone called hcg, human chorionic gonadotropin. This is the signal to the body that says, hey, we're pregnant. We're not going to have a menstrual cycle. And it tells the ovary up at the corpus luteum, keep the progesterone going and it coordinates the body. And it's amazing how the body will then support the pregnancy and the science will nurture that pregnancy. So seeing the facts, seeing the science and seeing the daily development, and then when you look at the endoderm, the ectoderm and the mesoderm, all of a sudden two cells will divide. They've got the same DNA between the two of them. But one will miraculously say, I'm going to start the entire brain and neurologic system and all the nerves. Then the cell that just divided from it will say, you do your thing. I'm going to start the entire skeletal system and they start to develop the nerves.
You can see what happens on day 18. And you know what's going to happen on day 19. But how these individual cells know what they're supposed to do tomorrow, we have no idea. It's called cell differentiation. It is a miracle. And it's not by happenstance or chance. This is actually created and designed by God Almighty. Because when you see that kind of amazing design that happens millions of times around the world every day, there had to be a designer, and that is almighty God. And we needed to defend that design. That person created in his image at that moment. Of conception.
[00:43:47] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:43:49] Speaker B: Back to Psalm 139. Thank you Jehovah for making me so wonderfully complex.
And David wrote that, but he really had no clue about how really complex.
But we know a little bit better still. What in the world turns on those cells? That's just amaz. Amazing.
You've got a tour. I've heard about a 2026 tour. I think you referred to it earlier. Abortion is not Healthcare. Tell our listeners about how they can find out more about that, like where do they go? How do they get in contact with you? Your website and learn more about where you're going to be. Is this a physical tour? Is this a virtual tour?
[00:44:26] Speaker D: This is a physical tour. You can actually go to our website prolifedoc.org and you can go to Abortion is Not Healthcare tour. We're getting calls from students for Life tpusa Live Action. And we want to go on campus not just to talk to the pro life students, but really change the hearts and minds of the opposition. Those who think that abortion is good and is health care. When we are operating on babies in the womb, we are correcting all these different things that we've been discussing. That is health care, killing a baby in the womb, whether it's with a surgeon or whether it is with the abortion pill, that is not health care. We all got into medicine because we wanted to bring high quality medicine to all of our patients. That includes the moms for sure, but it includes the babies as well because they are patients and we are all deserving of the highest quality health care. And bottom line, abortion is not health care. Somebody dies with every abortion.
[00:45:26] Speaker C: So Bill, this conversation has incentivized me. It's probability, pretty high probability, that even though Oregon is one of eight states that will allow abortion up to full term, which is just, it's all grotesque, but that's really grotesque. But they want to make it a constitutional amendment come November. And so this is going to give me the tools that I need to go advocate for these little lives in the womb. So I thank you very, very much for that. My last question for you then is you obviously enjoy your work, but when what brings you the great joy of the work that you and your team do?
[00:46:00] Speaker D: Changing hearts and minds, I mean, when we go. I think I enjoy speaking at secular universities more than any because it's amazing how many of the people will walk in and they are pro abortion, any gestational age, for any reason, because they've been lied to. They've been told it's just a blob of tissue. It has no value. When you actually see the life inside the women, you see how we are treating them as patients. It's amazing to see those hearts and mind change. But it's also amazing to see the forgiveness has failed for so many men and women that are hurting. Because now it used to be that when you had a surgical abortion, you maybe got put to sleep, you had some anesthesia, you woke up and the baby was gone. But now more than 70% of all the abortions are with the abortion pill. And these people are seeing the baby in the commode and they know that that baby is dead. That is obviously a baby. And it's because of a decision that I made. And they are hurting and they need healing. And we can bring them healing through the gospel. That's where I find my satisfaction. I mean, where do I get my great satisfaction? Sharing the truth, defending lives. The abortion pill reversal is redeeming. We are redeemed by the blood of Jesus. You know, we are bought with the blood of Jesus. And that redeem just means to buy back. We're actually spending about 109 every time we buy back the life of that baby. That baby was on a path where 98% of that time that baby was billing to die after the mom took the abortion pill. But then she had a change of heart, she had a change of mind. She looked for help through the Abortion Pill Reversal Network or through a pregnancy center. And we spent a hundred dollars, one hundred nine dollars. We bought back the life of that baby.
God loved us all so much that he didn't just come for some people. He sent his son. He lived a perfect life. He died on the cross and he conquered the grave. Three days later and he was resurrected. And he did that for all of us. And that gift of salvation is available for all. So, you know, like Charlie Kirk says, let's make heaven crowded. So if I can have audiences of hundreds and even thousands of people to see this information about how we treat the babies in the womb and defend their lives, but then also share the message of the gospel, there's no better calling, no better thrill. And I'm exactly where God wanted me to be.
[00:48:16] Speaker C: Well, speaking as the vice president of advocacy and bioethics here at cmda, we thank you. We thank you for the ministry and being faithful to the calling. And not only speaking for truth, which God designed, of course, but speaking the gospel message as well, because that is also so very important. Bill, thanks for being with us today.
[00:48:32] Speaker D: Pleasure and an honor call me anytime.
[00:48:44] Speaker B: You know, Dr. Lyle today reminded us in this conversation that the science of life in the womb is not in conflict with faith, it actually confirms it.
From in utero surgery to abortion pill reversal, it is clear how undeniable the evidence is for human life and dignity in the womb.
One thing that he said that really stuck with me was that true science, it will always defend the preborn.
It was also incredible to hear about his pro life doc ministry and the resources that he's creating for universities as well as trainees and even younger students in both homeschool and public school settings.
Through clear evidence based teaching, he's helping the next generation understand that abortion is not health care care and that all patients, including preborn ones, should be recognized as our patients.
He presents this in a way that is grounded in both science as well as scripture, which stands frankly in stark contrast to what is often taught in schools and medical training.
You can learn more about his pro life Doc ministry in our show Notes today.
If today's conversation equipped or it encouraged you, would you share it with a colleague? And be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss future episodes of Faith in Health Care to connect with a community of believers in healthcare which is navigating these same questions and ethical issues. You can visit us by going to CMDA.org today.
Next we this week, Mr. John Stonestreet, who's president of the Colson center, joins us for a conversation about what it looks like for a Christian healthcare professional to stand for truth and live out their calling in one of the most challenging cultural moments friends that we have ever faced.
We also talk about his new documentary Truth Rising, which has been produced in collaboration with Focus on the Family. You don't want to miss next week's episode.
I want to thank you for listening to Faith in Healthcare, where our promise to you as a listener, or better yet, as a subscriber to our podcast, whether a healthcare professional or a patient who loves Jesus Christ is We will do everything we can at CMDA to keep your faith and healthcare connected.
[00:51:16] Speaker A: Connected.
[00:51:17] Speaker B: We'll see you next time, Lord willing.
[00:51:25] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Faith and Healthcare, the CMDA Matters Podcast. If you would like to suggest a future guest or share a comment with us, please email cmdamattersmda.org and if you like the podcast, be sure to give us a five star rating and and share it on your favorite social media platform.
This podcast has been a production of Christian medical and dental associations.
The opinions expressed by guests on this podcast are not necessarily endorsed by Christian Medical and Dental Associations.
CMDA is a nonpartisan organization that does not endorse political parties or candidates for public office.
The views expressed on this PATH podcast reflect judgments regarding principles and values held by CMDA and its members and are not intended to imply endorsement of any political party or candidate.
