Speaker 1: The Colorado Constitution. It was referred to the ballot. Was
Speaker 1: that referred to the ballot by the I think it
Speaker 1: was referred Was it signatures? How did this get We'll
Speaker 1: find out with our next guests, because joining me now
Speaker 1: the vice president of the American Association of Pro Life
Speaker 1: Obstetrician Gynecologists in Colorado and president of Democrats for Life
Speaker 1: of Colorado, Tom Perril, is with us doctor Tom Perril
Speaker 1: and Wendy Smooth. Wendy Smooth, See what did I have,
Speaker 1: Wendy Smith? I literally said, Wendy, your name's easy. I
Speaker 1: won't mess that up. Wendy Smith, who was a retired
Speaker 1: acute care nurse practitioner, there on to talk about why
Speaker 1: Amendment seventy nine is a bad idea, and I want
Speaker 1: to start with you, Tom. What would this amendment do
Speaker 1: compared to what we have in law right now?
Speaker 2: The amendment would make unrestricted abortion to constitutional right, and
Speaker 2: it would also facilitate taxpayer funding, which are two new things.
Speaker 2: It has several other unattended consequences, which includes eliminating prinal notification,
Speaker 2: which is one of the only laws on the books
Speaker 2: in Colorado pertaining to abortion, and so parents would not
Speaker 2: be notified in advance of their team daughter's abortion.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: It would preclude the legislators of Colorado's coming back and
Speaker 2: modifying the restrictions on abortion to address the late abortion
Speaker 2: issue which is occurring at ever increasing numbers here in
Speaker 2: Colorado on healthy women with healthy babies.
Speaker 1: When you say late term abortion, what do you mean
Speaker 1: and what does that mean? I want to be clear
Speaker 1: because I think most people that is such a bland
Speaker 1: euphemism for what actually happens there. So what is considered
Speaker 1: a late term abortion?
Speaker 2: We use the term late abortions because late term is
Speaker 2: sort of controversial, but late abortions typically are after the
Speaker 2: first semester. In particularly, I'm talking about post viability abortions
Speaker 2: after twenty one weeks, which is the absolute limit of
Speaker 2: fetal viability in the United States. Today, there are babies
Speaker 2: actually born at some centers like the University of Iowa
Speaker 2: at twenty one weeks. Currently, twenty two weeks is the
Speaker 2: standard for offering resussitive measures for a pre met but
Speaker 2: as early as twenty one weeks babies can survive. So
Speaker 2: when I'm talking about late abortions, I'm talking about after
Speaker 2: the point of fetal viability and the methodology used for
Speaker 2: those abortions is different than first trimester abortions, and it
Speaker 2: represents substantially more risk to the mother. You may know
Speaker 2: that D and E abortions are the standard in the
Speaker 2: second trimester up until about twenty four weeks and DN
Speaker 2: E abortions. You know, this is difficult to discuss, but
Speaker 2: it involves taking the fetus apart is membering it to
Speaker 2: extract it from the uterus. In the process, the fetus
Speaker 2: is killed, and usually that's done without the benefit of
Speaker 2: any anesthesia or by a fetus side prior to the dismemberment,
Speaker 2: which means that the fetus will feel that pain fairly
Speaker 2: acutely and later later in pregnancy. Go ahead, I was
Speaker 2: gonna say in the third timemester, more commonly, what happens
Speaker 2: is the the fetus is injected with poison, in this
Speaker 2: case the Jockson, which is a chemical drug that's used
Speaker 2: for heart failure patients and people with party rhythmias, but
Speaker 2: in a massive overdose it causes nausea, vomiting, wretching, abdominal pain, delirium,
Speaker 2: and we know that that happens in infants as well,
Speaker 2: So there's every reason to believe when when we inject
Speaker 2: the jockson of the fetus, it takes at least minutes
Speaker 2: up to twenty four hours to kill the fetus, and
Speaker 2: so it's a very tortuous death and people are unaware
Speaker 2: of that as well.
Speaker 1: And then do they deliver the dead baby? What is
Speaker 1: the process there?
Speaker 3: Not?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not trying to be too graphic, but
Speaker 1: I got to tell you, guys, I think one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that people are willing to accept late abortion
Speaker 1: is because they've sanitized what it actually is. Right, we
Speaker 1: don't talk about what it actually is that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: We've allowed it to become ending a pregnancy instead of
Speaker 1: ending life, which is what it's doing. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: if you're squeamish, you may want to turn away from
Speaker 1: the station for a moment, But I'd like to know
Speaker 1: do they deliver the baby hole at that point? How
Speaker 1: do they get a twenty six twenty eight week baby
Speaker 1: out of the mother after they after they kill it.
Speaker 2: It's a several day procedure and they use serial dilations
Speaker 2: of the cervix to just accommodate the size of the baby.
Speaker 2: And then typically on the third or fourth day, when
Speaker 2: it's in the you know, late later in the third trimester,
Speaker 2: they give a drive to make the uterus contract, and
Speaker 2: then they use instruments as well to extract the dead fetus.
Speaker 2: They kill the fetus on the first day, they extract
Speaker 2: it on the third or fourth day, and uh, when
Speaker 2: they extract it, sometimes the fetus comes out intact, and
Speaker 2: sometimes it's also this member, depending on the difficulty they
Speaker 2: have in extracting the fetus.
Speaker 1: So it seems to me and doctor Terrill and then
Speaker 1: I'll get to you in just a second, Wendy, I promise.
Speaker 1: I spoke to my own obg yn about what health
Speaker 1: situations would be existing where the termination of a pregnancy
Speaker 1: in late later months is necessary to save the life
Speaker 1: of the mother. When I was like, can't you just
Speaker 1: either deliver the baby alive? And she didn't have a
Speaker 1: good answer for me, and we had a long conversation,
Speaker 1: but she said, it's just a really tough thing to
Speaker 1: parse this out, So why not just deliver the baby
Speaker 1: at that point and allow someone else to take responsibility
Speaker 1: for it.
Speaker 2: You know, that's just the point after feal viability, there's
Speaker 2: absolutely no indication for an abortion as opposed to a delivery,
Speaker 2: because an abortion, as the just mentioned, takes several days.
Speaker 2: If you have a medical emergency, nobody has the time
Speaker 2: to wait several days to perform a late abortion. Delivery
Speaker 2: can be performed in a matter of minutes. And so
Speaker 2: if there really is a medical urgency or emergency, it's
Speaker 2: actually malpracticed to perform an abortion in that setting. So
Speaker 2: after viability, it's never necessary to do an abortion to
Speaker 2: save the life of the mother. In fact, I even
Speaker 2: called doctor Warren Herne and Boulder and asked him that
Speaker 2: same question. I said, is there any situation that you
Speaker 2: could think of where an abortion was necessary to save
Speaker 2: the life of mother after viability instead of a delivery?
Speaker 2: He said, I don't know. Called the University of Colorado,
Speaker 2: so it tells you here's the premiere abortion providertrue abortion proviator,
Speaker 2: and you can't think of a situation when that would
Speaker 2: be relevant. So the propaganda out there that this is
Speaker 2: necessary to save the health or life of mother is
Speaker 2: just not true.
Speaker 1: So you and I were talking off the air about
Speaker 1: the fact that a lot of people here in the
Speaker 1: state don't know that in Colorado you can get a
Speaker 1: completely optional You decide you don't want to have a baby,
Speaker 1: you can do that up until the day of birth.
Speaker 1: That is the law here in Colorado.
Speaker 2: Correct. It is correct.
Speaker 1: I find that ghoulish, and every time I bring it up,
Speaker 1: I have a texture of some sword who says that's
Speaker 1: not accurate. That never happens, and it does. It absolutely
Speaker 1: does happen. You said you had data.
Speaker 2: On that, Well, we know that in Colorado, based on
Speaker 2: the Colorada Palm Department of Public Health and Environment, there
Speaker 2: are between fortua and sixty eight and fortune and eighty
Speaker 2: six abortions after twenty weeks in Colorado over the last
Speaker 2: two years, and that represents between three point two and
Speaker 2: three point four percent of all abortions. Sounds like not
Speaker 2: a lot, but you know that's basically five hundred abortions
Speaker 2: after viability. And the striking thing is Doctorhearn from Boulder
Speaker 2: has published his own late abortion practice Experience, and he
Speaker 2: says that seventy percent of the babies that he awards
Speaker 2: laid in pregnancy are are healthy. In other words, these
Speaker 2: are healthy babies in healthy women that are being aborted
Speaker 2: for elective reasons. I mean not that they're trivial reasons.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you know, women don't even recognize that they're pregnant
Speaker 2: until the fifth or sixth month. Sometimes you know, a
Speaker 2: partner leaves them, or they lose their job. But all
Speaker 2: these things, you know, demand our compassion and our care.
Speaker 2: But I think we need to offer them more than
Speaker 2: a late abortion. We should be working diligently to provide
Speaker 2: them pregnancyvisistant support, you know, treat domestic violence and the
Speaker 2: other issues that arise that make a woman feel that
Speaker 2: that's the best option for her.
Speaker 1: Wendy, how did you get involved in this movement? You're
Speaker 1: a retired nurse practitioner did how did you jump in here?
Speaker 3: So several reasons. My specialty was hematology oncology, so understanding
Speaker 3: the science of the growth and development, and from the
Speaker 3: very first stem cell, I've always really been pro life.
Speaker 3: In addition, I have been involved in prison volunteering in
Speaker 3: prisons for over eighteen years and currently volunteer with three
Speaker 3: different anti trafficking organizations, and my focuses in minor sex trafficking,
Speaker 3: and so I've dealt with the issue from several different
Speaker 3: perspectives and I just am compelled to fend life and
Speaker 3: the health and safety of women and girls.
Speaker 1: Well, someone reached out to me after I said, I
Speaker 1: hate to say it, but I feel like, based on
Speaker 1: recent voting on anything, we can't even get a later
Speaker 1: term abortion ban passed in Colorado that failed at the
Speaker 1: ballot box. What confidence do you have that this amendment
Speaker 1: is going to fail? And if so, where's that coming from?
Speaker 1: Because I'd love to have confidence, but Colorado voters have
Speaker 1: shown me that they don't want any kind of limits
Speaker 1: on abortion at all.
Speaker 3: So I have confidence because I think that one of
Speaker 3: the reasons that people have, like with Proposition one point fifteen,
Speaker 3: people that we talked to, didn't know what they were
Speaker 3: voting for. They didn't realize that by refusing to limit
Speaker 3: it to twenty abortion to twenty two weeks that allowed
Speaker 3: for abortion. It opened the door for vote abortion all
Speaker 3: the way up to birth. I don't think most women
Speaker 3: know that it is not women's healthcare. In fact, there's
Speaker 3: no any efforts to promote health and safety guidelines. For example,
Speaker 3: the Women's Health Protection Act HB sixteen twelve thirty one.
Speaker 3: Any of that was turned down, that never got out
Speaker 3: of committee because it was perceived as a barrier. So
Speaker 3: there's no guidelines, there's no oversight, no safety regulations, no inspections.
Speaker 3: When do you do that?
Speaker 1: That's the thing that That's the thing that I thought was.
Speaker 3: They realized that that's the case in that So.
Speaker 1: What you're sorry, Yeah, no, I was going to say,
Speaker 1: so what you're saying, Just to be clear here, because
Speaker 1: we talked about this a little bit before, I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that they're not abortion clinics are not under the
Speaker 1: same medical inspection standards as a standard medical facility that
Speaker 1: has to adhere to certain levels of Clintley's. Now I'm
Speaker 1: not saying saying that they're all pits of despair, but
Speaker 1: they don't even get inspected, so you have to go
Speaker 1: on faith that they're following proper medical practices. Is that
Speaker 1: what you're saying.
Speaker 3: That's absolutely what I'm saying. The public is dark, and
Speaker 3: how do we collect data because they're not reporting all
Speaker 3: the data and if this amendment goes through, it'll be silent.
Speaker 3: I mean, we'll have no way of collecting data. Currently,
Speaker 3: a lot of it's voluntary in Colorado, but they don't
Speaker 3: enforce it.
Speaker 2: So the irony is that I was going to say,
Speaker 2: the irony is that you know, a second and third
Speaker 2: trimester abortion clinic which has takes care of very high
Speaker 2: risk situations. We know that second trimester abortions have a
Speaker 2: ten percent complication rate and one point seven percent life
Speaker 2: threatening complication rate, and yet which is much higher than
Speaker 2: most ambulatory surgical centers which are highly regulated, and birth
Speaker 2: centers for that matter, which will highly regulated. But second
Speaker 2: third timester worship clinics have no regulation despite the high risk.
Speaker 2: It's just amount of time before some tragedy occurs, in
Speaker 2: multiple tragedies, and we may or may not hear about
Speaker 2: it because the nature of reporting on this kind of
Speaker 2: thing is really suboptimal. We know from the experience in
Speaker 2: Philadelphia with Gosnell that even prominent hospitals like University of
Speaker 2: Color of Pennsylvania didn't report some of the women who
Speaker 2: are damaged and even one woman that died as a
Speaker 2: result of complications of abortion.
Speaker 1: The Kermit Gosnell story should have been a wake up
Speaker 1: call for so many people, but there's too many people
Speaker 1: that want to continue to support the sanitized version of
Speaker 1: abortion that they've been fed. Just ending a pregnancy, no
Speaker 1: big deals, just a choice, and that I think is
Speaker 1: what has to be changed before we can see real
Speaker 1: change at the ballot box. It's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk to you today on the air.
Speaker 1: It's why I want to have a graphic commerce sation
Speaker 1: about what this procedure actually is, because I think that
Speaker 1: when you start to realize the barbarism of it, it
Speaker 1: gets really hard to say no, you should have that
Speaker 1: choice at any moment during your pregnancy. And yet that's
Speaker 1: what we have in Colorado. And I guarantee if I
Speaker 1: look at the text line right now, there'll be a
Speaker 1: person who says, but how many abortions are happening at
Speaker 1: thirty eight weeks? Great, if we can all agree it's
Speaker 1: not happening, let's make it so it can't happen. If
Speaker 1: we all agree it's so distasteful that it never happens,
Speaker 1: let's take it off the table permanently. And they will
Speaker 1: not concede that point. It's very, very frustrating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, we know that it occurs well into
Speaker 2: the third trimester, well beyond thirty two weeks, and in
Speaker 2: doctor Hearn's published information he has even has one listen
Speaker 2: at thirty nine weeks. I'm not sure if that was
Speaker 2: a live baby or stillbirth, because sometimes he conflates the two,
Speaker 2: but in any case, there's no quest. Then it happens
Speaker 2: well into the third trimester, and again on healthy babies
Speaker 2: and healthy women.
Speaker 1: Doctor Tom Peril and Wendy Smith, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for your time today. We'll continue having this conversation.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I hope you guys are right, but I don't think
Speaker 1: you are. And I'm hoping that conversations like this at
Speaker 1: least give someone pause before they support it, you know,
Speaker 1: and and maybe some baby steps we'll be having a
Speaker 1: different conversation in the future.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much having us.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys, I appreciate it very much. We're all
Speaker 1: gonna have a chance to vote on this