Watch as CPCI’s Director of Client Services, Pam Stenzel, shares about the dangers of chemical abortion and what our non profit medical clinic is doing to protect women from these harmful drugs.
Pam Stenzel: My name is Pam Stenzel and I’m the Client Services Director for Community Pregnancy Clinics here in Florida. I’ve spent my entire life, adult life, working with women in crisis. I have a degree in both Clinical Psychology and in Marriage and Family Therapy and began working with women in crisis pregnancies many years ago, really, because I felt God calling me to reach out to these women especially and make a difference in their life and help them with the decisions they were making, probably mostly for personal reasons. 58 years ago, a young 15 year old girl became pregnant, had a lot of difficult choices to make, maybe more so than some teen girls. She was raped, but this young girl chose to give her child life and then to place that child with an adoptive family. And that child was me. My biological father is a rapist. I don’t even know my ethnicity, but I believe that I am still a human being and that I still have value and that my life isn’t worth less than anyone else’s simply because of the way I was conceived. And I don’t believe that I deserve the death penalty for the crime of my biological father. I’ve not met my birth mom. Someday I hope to, and if I get that chance, I’m going to wrap my arms around her and tell her I love her because she loved me, loved me enough to give me my life. And then she loved me enough to give me the next most special gift I was ever given and that’s my family.
I have spent my life working with women in crisis pregnancies because I firmly believe that what my mother needed in that horrible moment of trauma was not to have me ripped violently from her womb, not to replace violence with more violence. What she needed was someone to love her. She needed someone to come alongside her and say, “We’re going to be here for you. We’re going to walk this with you and we’re going to help you make the very best choice for you and for your baby.” So I am so grateful that that someone was there for my own birth mother and helped her through that moment of trauma. And it has been an absolute honor and privilege for me to walk alongside women in crisis. Our culture tells women that the answer to an unplanned pregnancy, even the answer to a pregnancy as a result of the violence of rape, is to take the life of the child, to get an abortion, to get it done quickly. The abortion industry for decades has relied on fear and immediacy and telling women, “You need to get this abortion. You need to do it right now and don’t think about it. Don’t think about your choices. Don’t ponder the decision in front of you. But just make that decision right now.” And never do women hear that if they choose abortion, how much regret and pain that they will have. Listen, I have been working with women for many years, and I have never had a mother who chose life for her child, whether she chose to parent or whether she chose an adoption plan. I’ve never had a woman come back and say, I really regret that I didn’t kill my child. Ever. But we have plenty of women who come back in a lot of pain, sometimes in months, sometimes years after having an abortion, saying, “I regret that I made that decision and I did it out of fear and I did it because I didn’t understand my choices and I didn’t know that there was help and hope out there.”
Community Pregnancy Clinics, our pregnancy clinics, exist to make sure that women know that there is help for them and that there are people who will lovingly walk alongside them and help them. Whatever decision that they make, whether they choose to parent or whether they choose an adoption plan, that we will be there for them through this time and help them in the decisions they’re making. One of the tragedies that we’ve been dealing with, and certainly we’ve seen it exponentially since the overturning of the Dobbs decision, the overturning of Roe v. Wade here in the United States is that the abortion industry is desperately trying to find ways to expand access to women through abortion. They do not care one iota about safety. They don’t care if women are hurt. If women end up hemorrhaging, women’s very lives are put at stake. None of that matters to them. All that matters is that women have expanded access to abortion, not just surgical abortion, but chemical abortion. And even prior to this June, there was a giant push by the abortion industry and COVID, the whole pandemic just kind of amplified it and really gave them an excuse to try some things that the industry had not done before when it comes to chemical abortion.
And right now, as we as we contemplate how we reach women, how we make sure that they know that there’s help available to them, the biggest thing we’re fighting is this expansion of chemical abortion in the United States. Chemical abortion, RU-486, the abortion pill, some of the industry is now calling it the missed period pill is not plan B. That’s a separate issue. That’s to be taken within 24 to 72 hours after unprotected sex. And it sometimes works. Many times it doesn’t. It’s a simple overdose of birth control pills. The abortion pill is very, very different. This is a very dangerous two drugs, one given initially and another given 72 hours, 24 to 72 hours after it is not plan B. So we want to make sure everybody understands that it’s supposed to be given to women who have had their pregnancy confirmed and have had an ultrasound, and it should only be given between fifth and ten weeks of gestation.
So the key here is that women need to have an ultrasound. And what COVID did is they completely bypassed this FDA requirement. And and they decided, you know what, women can’t come into a clinic to have an ultrasound and have their pregnancy confirmed because of COVID. And so we’re going to find ways that that we can give these women these dangerous abortion drugs without ever having confirmed their pregnancy and confirmed the gestation, and that baby is where they’re supposed to be. So let me quick give you the three things that a woman the reason woman must have an ultrasound prior to taking these dangerous abortion drugs. One, we need to know that she is, in fact, pregnant and the pregnancy is a viable. That means that there is a heartbeat. The baby is alive. Close to 20% of all pregnancies will end in natural miscarriage and absolutely no need to take these dangerous drugs at all. We need to know that baby is actually alive. If you’ve not done an ultrasound, there’s no way that you can confirm that in fact, this is a living baby. The second thing we need to know is that baby is where baby is supposed to be in the uterus and not outside of the uterus in the fallopian tubes. That would be an ectopic pregnancy. Taking this abortion drug would not take care of that ectopic pregnancy. The ectopic pregnancy would still grow. And this is very dangerous. This could mean hemorrhaging and even death for the woman. So it’s a very important that it is diagnosed that she, in fact, does not have an ectopic pregnancy. Only way to do that is through an ultrasound. And then the other thing we need to know is exactly the gestational age. And I’ve worked with young women for decades, as I’ve said. And the reality is you ask a woman, “when was the first day of her last period or her last menstrual cycle?” And she has zero clue. A lot of times she’ll say, I think it was this date and then she’ll back up and then, well, maybe it wasn’t that day. And they can be off by weeks, sometimes months. And so if we have not done an ultrasound, we don’t know that she’s five weeks or eight weeks or ten or twelve or even beyond that. And if we’re just limiting or just giving her these drugs without an exam, without a physician, without a sonographer doing that ultrasound, this can be very, very dangerous. And so it’s so important that women hear that they need to have that ultrasound for those reasons before they would ever even consider taking these very dangerous drugs.
How do these drugs work? She either up until recently, she would have to go into a clinic, into see a physician who performs abortions, she would be given the first drug, which basically blocks the progesterone. And by blocking that, natural progesterone does not allow the placenta to grow and basically starves that baby to death. Baby will eventually die. And she’s told 72 hours later to take the second drug, which actually causes her to go into labor, her uterus to contract, and then she now delivers her now dead baby. And and women are are doing this alone without telling anyone. It’s horribly painful. Their their babies are ending up in the bottom of their showers. They’re ending up in obviously in toilets, in their bed, sheets on their pads. And and this is a hugely painful process. And and sometimes the abortion industry and people will want to make women think, oh, it’s just no big deal. It’s just take these little drugs and then you’re just going to have a normal maybe a little stronger menstruation, maybe a little cramping. But the reality is it’s devastating. And many women, young women, have ended up in the ER and then they’re too ashamed because they’re hemorrhaging more than they and they’re they’re afraid, are losing all kinds of blood, but they’re not telling the doctors in the emergency room that they took these dangerous drugs. They they they’re not being honest about what’s going on with their bodies and they’re at severe risk. We’ve had clients in our own clinics who have come in and end up hemorrhaging and us needing to get them to an ER and they don’t want to go and they’re refusing to go and losing all kinds of blood because of these horribly dangerous drugs.
So this is devastating and, and the industry is trying to call it “do it yourself abortion.” In other words, what they’re doing, even though it may not be true when a woman chooses abortion and she goes and has a surgical abortion and an abortionist actually performs that abortion, yes, she’s still said yes to it. She still paid for it. She still willingly made that decision. However, she did not perform the abortion. Now, with these horribly dangerous chemical drugs, it is do it yourself. She is actually performing the abortion by the action that she’s taken. And it’s been devastating to women and and so painful and so much shame and so much hurt. I brought with me just a little model to just explain. We had a woman come into a clinic just absolutely devastated. She had gone through with the chemical abortion. She was in her dorm room and she saw her little baby in the shower, was mortified, didn’t know what to do, put that little baby in a Tupperware. And literally and this is a model of a baby that’s about 11 weeks. So this is probably just a little bit bigger. Well, it should be. You know, women are supposed to be having these chemical abortions prior no later than ten weeks. This baby is is a little bit larger. But this is what is happening to women. They’re coming in. They’re seeing these babies. They’re putting them in Tupperware. Mortified. What do I do with with this baby? Clearly, they’re seeing little, little feet and arms and the baby’s head. And and it has been an absolute devastation. So if it can’t get any more evil, the abortion industry is now pushing to Telemed to get these dangerous abortion drugs to women via the mail, but by a woman doing a little Internet search saying she wants the abortion pill and a little Telemed with with not even a physician necessarily, but but a nurse or someone on the other end of a Telemed appointment and now shipping these dangerous drugs to these women in their dorms and their apartments and their homes, it’s unbelievably devastating. And we’ve just learned that the the industry is now trying to get Walgreens and CVS, local pharmacies, to carry this dangerous abortion drug, and we just cannot tell you how devastated we are about that. We are going to see so much damage and hurt physically, emotionally to women because of this access that they’re trying to promote with chemical abortion. So so how do we respond? How do we reach out to women? You know, we’ve we’ve worked really hard at trying to reach her before the abortion industry reaches her. We’ve placed ourselves with mobile clinics and actually standalone clinics right next to that abortion clinic so that we can have that last moment to reach out to a woman prior to her going in and taking these drugs.
We also have there’s also a service called Abortion Pill Reversal by wonderful physicians. Dr. Delgado, and in our clinics, too, we have the ability with our physicians who oversee our medical directors to offer Abortion Pill Reversal. What does that mean? That means if this woman takes that first pill, regrets it, if she will call the hotline, reach out to someone, and do it quickly, we can get progesterone, which is what that first pill blocked. We can get progesterone put back in great doses into her system. And if we can get it to her quickly, as quickly as possible, after having taken that first dose, that that there’s about a 60% chance that we can save the life of that child. And in our own clinics, both in Sarasota and Gainesville, we have had women that have reached out, have regretted taking that first pill, and we’ve been able to get them the medical help they need and get them progesterone, and they’ve been able to subsequently save the life of that child. I’ve held one little infant or child in my arms that was saved through Abortion Pill Reversal. So it’s so important that women know that if they regret taking that first drug, that it may not be too late and that they may be able to save the life of their child.
Well, traditionally, we’ve been out on the sidewalks. We’ve been where the abortionists are going. But now, with Telemed and Telehealth and this insidious move of the abortion industry to try and reach into communities and to states that have restricted abortion, have passed laws that would make abortion more difficult, they’re trying to to to infiltrate these these communities by mailing these dangerous drugs to to young women. And so we’ve got to be on the front line. We’ve got to be out there making sure women know. I’ve been involved in a project called Reach Her first. We are dedicated at Community Pregnancy Clinics to make sure that we are in the space that these women are in so that when they’re Googling or they’re on their device or on their phone and they’re going, I want I don’t know, I might want an abortion pill, I want the abortion pill, I’m not sure I’m pregnant, that we can immediately respond right there. 24-7 to her inquiry by having nurses on chat lines and be able to to Telehealth with this young girl immediately and ask her the questions we need to ask her. “Do you know you’re pregnant?” “Have you had an ultrasound?” These are some steps that you need to take before you would ever go to Walgreens or CVS or have these dangerous drugs sent to your own home or apartment or dorm room. And so in order to be where she is and to be in that space, we’ve got to constantly be saying, “how can we reach out to her?” “How can we intervene?” “How can we give her the information that she needs to know that she’s got support and love?” All of our services are free, our pregnancy testing, our ultrasounds, STI testing, everything that we do is 100% free to her and we want to make sure that she sees us first.
One of the things I’ve told women when they’re calling in crisis and and they’re like, “I want the pill” or “I just want an abortion.” And we start to say, “Hey, wait a minute, there’s some steps before you make a decision like that and you have some time. So first you need to have that ultrasound. You need to know you don’t have a sexually transmitted infection that’s very dangerous to you and your future fertility to undergo an abortion, a surgical abortion, especially with an active STI infection. So let’s talk to you. Can can we come in and do these things and and get you that ultrasound that you need? And then let’s talk about all your options. Let’s talk about what’s available to you. Let’s talk about what help might be available to you.” And so many women have said to us, “You know, I thought I was all alone, I was all afraid, and I just didn’t know that I had any other choice.” We’re there to to make sure she knows that she has another choice and that she has support and that she can reach out to someone and get a chance to see her baby and hear that heartbeat. This is an amazing thing. We know with years of using ultrasound that women who can see and hear the heartbeat of that little baby at six weeks and and sometimes as young as five weeks, but six weeks and seven weeks, they are far less likely to choose abortion because all of a sudden it’s real. This is their baby. And I would much rather that young woman have an opportunity to hear that heartbeat and see that baby alive and not have to see that baby in her shower floor or in her bedsheets or in her toilet. It’s so much better to know that she was able to to see her child and have a chance at giving that child life.
The other thing she needs to know is that, you know what? When you call that abortion clinic, when you get online on that telehealth appointment, when you when you try to obtain these dangerous abortion drugs, you’re paying for that. Someone on the other side of that line is making money. When we get the chance to talk to her and reach out to her, we’re saying, “we make no money off the decision. We have no vested interest in the decision you make. We’re here for you to make sure you know all of your options and you know all of the risks of a procedure or a pill you’re about to try to take, and that you know that there’s help and hope for you.” This is the way we reach these women. Here’s the other thing with with this generation, and I’m a grandma and I’m old, so I fully understand that this is not my generation. And I’ve been doing this so long. I mean, back in the day, we were all worried about making sure our pregnancy clinic was named Alpha or something with an A so that we would be at the top of the listing at the Yellow Pages. So so times have certainly changed. I just totally aged myself, I realize. But time has certainly changed and technology changes. And, you know, sometimes I feel sometimes like chatting or texting or getting on a Facetime with someone is not a real relationship. But what we forget is that this generation, to them, that is very real. That is how they’re used to communicating. And we realize that in order to reach women and to impact women positively, to make a choice for life. And and and to to impact them, that we need to have relationship, and we need to build the relationship with her the way she’s used to having that relationship built. And most of the time today for these this generation of young women, it is going to be through technology and through being able to reach out to her in that way.
And so the more we can be on the front lines of saying, how can I reach her first and how can I reach her in a way that that is most effective with her and how she’s used to communicating is going to be very powerful. So this is what we have to do as a movement. This is what we have to be doing as counselors, as as nurses and physicians and people who care about life. We love them both. We love that baby, but we love that mom and we love the entire generation. And when we can come in and reach that mom and love her and she chooses life for her child, we are literally impacting generations. And that’s what God’s called us to do. So I always take with me this quote by Saint Mother Teresa. She said, “This God didn’t call us to be successful. He called us to be faithful.” And so our commitment, my personal commitment, Community Pregnancy Clinics, our commitment is to be faithful to that calling of God until He comes back. And and so every morning we get up and say, “You know what? I’m going to communicate life and love and hope to women today and tomorrow morning we’re going to get up and do it again.” And that’s what that just drives us every day to reach out with love and hope to women in crisis.
