ReFOCUS with Jim Daly

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Dr. Catherine Wheeler: I'm looking at this child going, "Why would she have that child? That looks so hard." That's what we say in our brain. And then my friend says, "She's been the most wonderful thing we've ever had in our family. Our family would not be who we were if it wasn't for Martha." And so it sits with your soul when you're somebody who says, "That's not a good life, and we shouldn't have to do that."

Jim Daly: Wow. Think of it. Every human being, every human being made in the image of God. That's Dr. Catherine Wheeler, an OBGYN who at one time was performing abortions until God got a hold of her heart and she saw the stark reality of what abortion really is and what it does to women and babies.

She has a compelling story to tell on this episode of ReFocus with Jim Daly, a podcast production from Focus on the Family. Dr. Wheeler has had an interesting journey, raised in a Christian home, later buying into a feminist mindset, having two children of her own, and then her experiences as a doctor.

She'll share about that journey and the simple truth that led her to speak up for every human life and inform others with compassion about the harm abortion does. One of the reasons I invited her to ReFocus is so she could help you to have loving dialogue with others in your sphere of influence on this critical issue of human life. I thought it was a good time to present this conversation that I had with Dr. Wheeler just a short time ago.

She's a board-certified OBGYN physician who practiced for 24 years, and her life is now dedicated to promoting the dignity and health of both women and their unborn babies. She's a board member of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs and among other things, she also serves on the Focus on the Family Physician Resource Council. Let's listen in to that discussion with Dr. Catherine Wheeler on ReFocus with Jim Daly.

Dr. Wheeler, thanks for joining me on ReFocus. It's great to have you.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: Thank you so much for inviting me.

Jim Daly: You have a fascinating story that you've only recently begun to share, where you performed second-trimester abortions for a number of years, and then something changed. What happened? What was the "aha" that caught your attention?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: When you do abortions, you have to make yourself blind to what you're doing. And so you have to really believe you're helping the women. You have to believe it's the right thing to do. Everybody sees themselves as basically a good person, don't they? But I went into a room to do an abortion on what looked just like any other day to me.

It was a beautiful day in Utah. I remember sitting down to do this abortion, and nothing weird was happening, but just suddenly, it was like the blinders came off. I was aware of this dark, evil presence with me, and the thought came to me, "You're about to kill a human being."

Jim Daly: What was different that time than previous times? I mean, what was that illumination?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: There was absolutely nothing to explain it. I was not a Christian at the time. About 15 years later, when I became a Christian, it became very clear to me that what happened is God had taken the blinders off so that I could actually see the evil of what I was doing and actually see the human being for the first time, and have the terror of realizing you're about to kill a human being, which in the middle of it, when it now becomes my choice whether to complete that abortion or to leave the woman at risk because I had already started.

I made the choice of finishing so that she would survive and not be harmed. But I took the life of a human, which is absolutely terrifying in the middle of it. And it was something that I just shut off. Who's going to understand this experience? So I didn't talk to anybody about it. I just shut it off.

Jim Daly: It's quite a revelation to be right there and then come to this conclusion, which was 180 degrees from what your professional practice was, right? You were already doing second-trimester abortions.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: Right. And it wasn't the primary part of my practice, but it was the part that I thought was the compassionate thing to do in these hard circumstances.

Jim Daly: We're going to definitely get into more of that story, but I do want to talk about your family. Being raised, I believe your parents were Christians, right?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: Very much so. My dad is a pastor.

Jim Daly: Right. Okay. So you think about that, it says, "Train up a child in the way he or she should go, and when they are old, they will not depart from me." It's kind of interesting that even though you didn't see yourself as a Christian, you were exposed, obviously, growing up in a Christian home. Where did that go? And did you have that moment where you just kind of rejected your parents' faith and it didn't connect for you at that time? Describe that.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: I'll say my parents built a foundation to return to. So when I was older, I did come back. I was between 50 and 51.

Jim Daly: That's amazing. That should encourage parents who have struggled with kids that have walked away from the faith.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: I would hope so, because there's a seed that's planted. And you have an experience of what it is to be a Christian. My parents were 100 percent all in for Jesus. And I will say, what I didn't understand was a loving relationship. I understood the religious side of it.

The rules. As a pastor's family, you were an extension of your father's ministry. And so I got that you're supposed to look a certain way, you're supposed to behave a certain way, people are watching. But I didn't get the relationship part. And I did stand up and receive Jesus and walk forward at one point, in probably seventh grade-ish, and got baptized. So the seeds were there, but I hadn't really given over my life.

Jim Daly: Did you lose it going to school? Like, you go off to college and then, of course, med school? Through that process were you going, "Okay, I just don't necessarily believe all that"?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: It wasn't even that. It was a choice of something else. I actually would go to church on the weekends with my family in early college. I was in Fort Collins; my parents had moved to Denver. And so I would go home on the weekends. But as happens for a lot of young people, this is where we get caught. It was the boyfriend.

In my second year, I met this really lovely person, and I contacted somebody who I knew—like, I knew I wasn't supposed to be sexually involved with him. I knew that was a step away from faith and it was turning my back on God. I understood that. So I talked to somebody who I knew wasn't a Christian, who would say, "It's no big deal. Just go to Planned Parenthood and get on birth control," which is what I did. It was that decision that's not God's path, and it took me off of God's path onto what became a very dark one.

Jim Daly: For a number of years, right?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: For a very long time, to 50.

Jim Daly: Those influences through the '70s, obviously, that's about when you were in high school and college?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: Yes.

Jim Daly: The whole feminist movement—did you lean into that as well when it came to women's reproductive rights?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: I think the deepest thing about feminism is it reaches out to something that's broken and empty. I definitely grew up in a time where women weren't seen as capable of doing a lot of things, or you couldn't do a lot of things because you were a woman. And here comes feminism that says, "Actually, you can do all kinds of things. In fact, you can do anything you want."

That's appealing when you find yourself—I didn't see the beauty of what it was to be a woman, to be a mother. I didn't get that beautiful image. I saw it as something that was hard. And you don't really realize what you're picking up from the world. And the world's narrative is, "Religion's holding you back, being a mother holds you back. What's most important to you about you is what you can do."

And so I ate that up. I was really good in school. I loved school. I loved learning. And so that's where I committed myself because, as a woman, you could do that. It got me out of what I saw as a box. I didn't want to ever be married. I didn't ever want to have children. What ended that was a surprise pregnancy where somebody encouraged me.

Feminism says your world's over when you get pregnant as a surprise. But a very dear friend, in my tears when I couldn't even tell her what was quote "wrong," she said, "Oh, you're pregnant? That's wonderful. You're going to be a great mom." And if women could hear that because instantly it was like, "Oh, wait a minute, this is actually a miracle." And even as a non-Christian, I saw being pregnant and having my child as the biggest miracle. It was the beginning of me saying, "They've been lying to me."

Jim Daly: It just turned your head a couple of degrees, right? It just kind of got your attention, you might say.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: It was everything. And it let you feel the love, the natural love that a woman has from the moment you realize you're pregnant. If somebody's not telling you it's bad, you actually see the miracle. And you learn love. Love is laying down your life for somebody. I would give my life for this child. I am so in love with this child.

Jim Daly: Was the father eventually your husband?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: Well, he was my husband at the time. So I was married and I had this child. But it was an abusive relationship. So to me, I was in medical school. I could see that going down the road I was going to be single at some point. And I could see all of that. But my parents stepped in. My father retired. They moved down to Louisiana. I was in school in Louisiana. And they actually took care of me and eventually my two sons, my older two kids.

Jim Daly: And that got you through med school.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: That got me through med school.

Jim Daly: They definitely demonstrated God's grace, at least in that way.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: Incredible. I mean, that's what we're called to. All women can be mothers.

Jim Daly: This is a little similar but different from somebody I've had on before, Chloe Cole, who's a detransitionist. And her testimony, in the similarity to yours, is when she got the double mastectomy, wanting not to be a female—that's what was driving her. "Everything female in my body I got to get rid of." So that was her direction. And then she saw a mother breastfeeding.

And that's what got her attention. She said she just teared up and said, "I can never do that. I've taken my ability to be that mom." That's what got her attention and changed her trajectory to where she became a detransitionist, trying to go back to being a woman at like 18 after all those operations and hormone treatments at 14, 15. That's a whole different subject, but a similar wake-up, right? Like a spiritual eye-opener.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: It's actually quite similar because the world's message to women has been it's not good to be who you are. So it's the same thing: change who you are. And what we need is the beautiful image of what it is. One of my first questions as a Christian to my pastor was, "Tell me about Jesus and women." And that has been one of the most healing things to me as a woman.

I don't have to reject who I am. When I look at the Bible and I see Jesus' love for women in a society that told women they were nothing—but Jesus' love for women? Man, that is healing.

Jim Daly: That's really good. Let me go back just to clarify for the listener. You're pregnant, you have two children over a relatively short period of time, it sounds like. Your husband and you eventually divorce. But in that context, you're still performing abortions, correct? At that point, or did you stop?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: I was not at that point. So I was in medical school. I didn't actually get exposed to abortion. It was nowhere on my radar. It was residency.

Jim Daly: So later. So you had this revelation of life, the beauty of life. You'd become pregnant twice. You had your children. But you still then later, after having your medical license, you did perform abortions until that day that it caught your attention, like, "What am I doing?"

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: Right. I was exposed to it during residency at the University of Utah, which is a genetic center and a high-risk OB center. And so that's the first time it ever really crossed in front of me, deep in training. This is what we do to help people who have difficult pregnancies.

Jim Daly: The center there, the medical facility—you had a situation where an anesthesiologist, I believe a Mormon, came in and you were going to perform an abortion. He didn't realize that. Is that how that story went? He refused to perform the anesthesiology.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: Yeah. He thought that I was doing a second-trimester D&E, so actually dismembering the baby and removing it on a baby that had already passed away. And so he showed up and realized it was actually an abortion, an induced abortion.

Jim Daly: Of a live baby.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: Of a live baby. And he said, "I will not participate in this," which was a shock to me because what you hear is people who are not for abortion are not for women; they hate women. And I looked at him and I'm like, "Gosh, he's one of the nicest, most compassionate, caring people I know. I know he doesn't hate women."

And so it did—you find things that confront your false beliefs, but sometimes it takes some thinking them through. So my decision at that point—now we're searching for an anesthesiologist willing to do this. But I'm now in private practice, pretty early in my practice, and I'm thinking, "I don't want to bring uncomfortable things into this setting. This is not how I want to be in this facility if it's going to bring conflict." So it wasn't that I recognized wrong; it was more of trying to avoid conflict in my workplace that I decided I'm not going to do this anymore.

Jim Daly: And that was the time. It was after that event that you decided no more abortion.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: At that point I said, "I won't do this anymore. I'll refer everybody." But then a teenage girl comes in, 16, with a surprise pregnancy, with her mother. And her mother was different than my mother. Her mother said, "You can't do this. You can't get your career"—she was brilliant; she wanted to be a doctor like me. And they were absolutely devastated; her life's over.

Jim Daly: So we got to get rid of this "problem."

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: And they're Mormon. And so now you've got some of that religious aspect where people can't know about this. This has to be hidden from people as opposed to "we all fall; how can I help you to get up?" And I tried to refer her: "I don't do them anymore." They were so devastated: "But we know you." It's that relationship. And so I finally relented and said, "Okay, all right, I'll do it."

Jim Daly: One of the things is the peer pressure that this creates. We're seeing some of that in the broader culture now, the way we follow the herd, so to speak, and we fall into line. In this context, the professional side, being in the medical field, there is a kind of a constant drumbeat about the good this is doing.

I remember Dr. Dobson talking about how he was wooed in that direction when he was at USC School of Medicine. He, in fact, told a story about taking a woman to an abortion clinic before Focus—this is way before when he was at USC. And his dad talked to him and said, "What? What are you doing?" And that was his transition to being more fully pro-life. But he talked about that—everyone in the clinic thought this was the right thing to do.

Speak to that factor of peer pressure, not just the medical field, although that's what you've experienced, but just as Christians now, how do we have a backbone to say, "Wait a minute, this isn't right," kind of like that anesthesiologist.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: Most people are so taken in by the ideas of the culture without actually thinking about what abortion is. We see pregnancy in difficult circumstances and we feel bad for the person. "How can I get you out of this situation?" And so they see only the mother. So what actually happens in abortion is a total black box.

There's this incredible pressure on the medical system. You have to see it as a hierarchy, kind of like being in the military. And here you are; your entire future depends on the people who are training you. They're training you what it is to be a doctor, what we normally do. Therefore, they've tried to make this incredibly normal. "This is just a part of medicine. It's essential healthcare, and it's expected of you."

At my time, I could opt in or out. It was up to me. But because I loved women, and that's what women do when they love each other—which is crazy, isn't it?—then I stepped into that role because I felt so bad for the women.

Jim Daly: I was just going to say, there are people that I've talked to, biologists—rational people in the medical community are saying, "Yeah, it is life. And we are choosing to terminate that life." It's a very honest statement. Did you find that kind of honesty, or are you finding it a little more so now that people are saying, "Okay, it is life, but this is an inconvenience; it's not good for this 17-year-old, 15-year-old to have this child now, or this child is medically handicapped somehow, physically handicapped. So therefore, it's compassionate to terminate this pregnancy." Speak to the brutal honesty of that position and how they manage those female reproductive rights.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: There's absolutely nothing rational about it. So we can't make it rational. It makes absolute no sense. The only way that abortion can proceed is if you don't see the human being. And so there's so much work to keep people from seeing the human being.

When I look back at training, it was so clear to us we had two patients. We had two patients; our job was to do the best we could to save and maximize the health of both patients. We're talking about different things. We're talking about saving life versus "when can I take a life?" That's the distinction that has to be made.

The only way to say it's okay to take the life of a human being is to devalue the human being. And so the way that's done, at least for me in medicine, was all of a sudden we quit talking about the baby.

Jim Daly: Called it a fetus.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: You call it a fetus. You're not allowed to say "baby" according to the American College of OBGYN.

Jim Daly: That's odd, isn't it?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: It's like you can't call it a baby. And so now you'll see even women in the just talking and saying, "My fetus." Really? Like that's happened in two years. But they keep changing the terminology because you're not allowed to think of the human being.

For me, I can picture the baby. I can see the baby trying to get away from my instruments. That's etched in my brain now that I've let myself see the baby. To keep that in front of you—I think that's the difference. People have got to see the baby and the fact that a real-life human being that will never be seen again has been removed. Their entire line has been removed from the earth.

Jim Daly: How did patients who had troubled pregnancies—there were difficulties, chromosomal difficulty, what have you—did that change your perspective on decisions they were making?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: Those were the circumstances where we offered it. And the medical professionals are now trained to—like my friend went into it and said, "That's awesome." We're trained now in medicine to kind of hold back and not say it's awesome because maybe they don't want it to be or maybe they don't feel it's awesome.

Jim Daly: The "awesome" being "you're pregnant; this is a good thing even if the baby's not 100 percent physically."

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: Right. And that's where people like Beverly Jacobson, who—people who've had babies who've had special needs. God would put them in front of my life even as an OBGYN before I knew Him. Like I had a friend from college who had a baby who had something called mosaic Trisomy 18, Edwards syndrome.

Mosaic means some of the cell lines had that abnormal extra chromosome and some didn't. She actually was 16. My friend called me, I hadn't talked to her since college, and they were—there was some kind of event happening in Salt Lake City. "Can we come and visit you?"

I'm looking at this child going, "Why would she have that child? That looks so hard." That's what we say in our brain. And then my friend says, "She's been the most wonderful thing we've ever had in our family. Our family would not be who we were if it wasn't for Martha." It's those kind of checks, the people who hold up the good, true, and beautiful in what God has given them. It sits with your soul when you're somebody who says, "That's not a good life, and we shouldn't have to do that."

Jim Daly: Definitely casting judgment. Where, you know, maybe you shouldn't be.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: But it wakes up your mind. I had a lot of patients—I only remember one person with a surprise abnormality in a baby, and it was at the beginning and it was a shock. But every other patient that I had an abnormal baby with has said to me, "This is the best thing that's happened for our family. We prize intellect; God prizes love." And to a person, they all talked about their child's love.

Jim Daly: You've spent considerable time talking to post-abortive women, your patients back when you were performing abortions. From those conversations, what do you want others to know about how women and babies are impacted by abortion?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: For the women, I think that's some of the most heartbreaking things that I would hear when people would come in pregnant. They'd tell me they'd had abortions. I would hear things like, "How can I choose this one and not that one? I took the life of my baby; how can I be a mother now?"

In our job as an OB who didn't know God, it's like, "You did the best you could. A lot of people do this." But what do you do with that pain without Jesus healing it? It's there. They became lovely mothers, but underneath, there's this thorn. "I'm actually not a good mother because I did this."

Jim Daly: One of the things that over the last couple of years, it has shocked me as a marketing person—that was my undergrad and my MBA was marketing and finance—but the power in which the abortion industry has separated that natural instinct for a mother and her child. It would seem to me ten years ago, I would have said that's a bond that could never be broken. Now you see TikTok videos of people, women, celebrating their abortion.

But it feels so contrived at the same time. It's back to your point of the blindness of it. It doesn't feel real. It feels like it's scripted. "This is what we need to say in order to protect other women to be able to access abortion. So celebrate your abortion and do it now and put it on TikTok and all the other platforms." Did you have that same kind of observation in terms of what is happening socially in the culture when it comes to this issue?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: The more I see that, the more my heart breaks over it because it's so unnatural. But when you have a world that says women cannot participate unless they are childless or unless they take the life of their child—that says in our society, "You have to be like the guys." That's the only way. "We're not going to help you. This is what you have to do." There is this longing in women, and the world says, "Actually, that's not good. That's not good. You can't be that. For you to be good, you have to be something that you do for us. It has to be something you contribute." And just the women are so broken and longing for it.

Jim Daly: There was a woman at your church who I think was looking for an abortion, came to talk to you. How did that change your perspective, that conversation, or what did you recommend to her?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: I think what you're thinking of is when I first became a Christian, the day of my baptism. After the baptism, I ran into the woman at my church who I'd never seen there before, who I did my last abortion on.

Jim Daly: Oh, my. This is just after you're baptized, and you catch eyes.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: The day of my baptism! All of a sudden, she's there, and she's married, she has kids, she had not become a doctor. And I think I'm helping her to create her story. And there she is. God had not dealt with me with abortion yet. And so I didn't stand there guilty about it. It was just, "Oh, that's interesting." But it was God planting a seed of the direction that we were going to go. I pray for her best also.

Jim Daly: You mentioned your rocky marriage. You fought to save that marriage for years, but once it ended, how did some caring believers contribute to your healing and spiritual growth in that moment? Unfortunately, many in the audience are hearing this and they've been through it. They've been through a divorce. It's prevalent in the Christian community just like the world.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: It is. That was to me, it was a moment of grace. It was what brought me to my knees, brought me before God at the end of—like I couldn't save anything. I could just see my whole life collapsing, and it was at that moment I remembered my mom's faith and called out to God and just literally said, "I don't know what to do. God help me." And immediately, it was that complete surrender of a heart that there's nothing more that I could do.

I can tell you from that moment looking back, as dark as it felt, a peace came over me. It was like my voice got returned to me and strength. I was just so hungry for God, and I knew a loving God for the first time. In that time, God started bringing people who were strong Christians. The first thing was a Celebrate Recovery for people with hurts, habits, and hang-ups.

This was my second marriage. So it wasn't even my first one. Women are so longing for love, and so we often get into bad relationships, longing for love in an unhealthy way. But this Celebrate Recovery class, there was a Christian counselor who led it, and it was a group—a small group of women.

We stayed together for six months, once a week. I learned about—I was surrounded by people who were loved by Jesus and loved Him back. I got introduced to prayer, to community, to church, and started to having to face my past, both the things done to me and the things that I'd done, which is how God started bringing up my abortion history. It was phenomenal that He makes sure that we know we're loved and back in relationship, safe, and then He'll start working on some of the really dark things that we've done.

Jim Daly: Over the years, you obviously at 51, after making a more complete decision for Christ, you're now serving on a number of boards and other things that are engaged. Here at Focus on the Family, you're on the Physician Resource Council with dozens of doctors who help us with bioethical input, content development. Doing this broadcast today came about because of your engagement with the PRC here at Focus. In that respect, share about some of the conversations that you've had. I think there was a foster camp volunteer that caught your attention. What was that discussion all about?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: I never know where God's going to bring people for conversation. So I encourage people just to stay open for what's happening around them. I had gone up on a hike on the back of Pikes Peak, and part of the way up, started talking to this woman in her 80s.

Jim Daly: That's impressive, a woman in her 80s was hiking Pikes Peak. Way to go!

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: She was impressive. We literally talked for hours on the way up, and we walked all the way down together. We're almost to the parking lot and she says, "Hey, wait, you're an OBGYN. What do you think about"—and again, I can't remember if it was Dobbs or if it was about the Heartbeat Bill. I just stopped and I said, "Well, you know, I'm actually glad it happened." She said, "Really?"

She started sharing about how she worked in foster camps and her heart was for these broken kids, and her belief was it would be better for them not to be born than to have to suffer that way. I just was stunned. And so I said, "Well, do you know, I'm actually also—I was a second-trimester abortionist. Do you know how they're done?"

I think that's the bottom line is people have no idea. She said, "No." I said, "Is it okay if I share that with you?" And so I told her exactly how they're done and what it's like for the baby. She just sat with it for a while. I don't remember what else we talked about, but then she interestingly said, "I'd like to keep up with you," although we haven't. It was interesting that she received what I said. Our job in conversation is to introduce a new idea that's true.

I don't know that people—most people after one conversation are probably not going to go, "Oh, I get it." But they can't deny that somebody who sat in the seat and knew what actually happened—that was a new idea for her. I hope it's continuing to make her think about it, and hopefully she's changed her mind.

Jim Daly: It's interesting, and this is really the whole focus of ReFocus. This is why I love doing this podcast because its aim is to talk with people that are in that middle ground, that are believers, sometimes non-believers, but believers who are persuasive, but to do it in the spirit of Christ. That takes a certain gift.

You have to be able to not be in the fight to have the fight, to win the fight, etc. How do you do that balancing act with your—I mean, on the one hand, being an MD gives you great credential to be in that discussion. Most people are not MDs and we look to you for guidance. You've studied it; you know it. So that helps just being professional in that way. And then bringing the Christian component to it, to say, "This is how I see it."

How do you approach that dialogue with that individual, like that woman? What's going through your head when you're engaging her? Just help us, teach us how you go about persuasion.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: I'd say it's a journey. It takes a commitment, and my commitment is to try to learn to do it. I wouldn't say that I'm good at it. I became a Colson Fellow due to a friend strongly encouraging me because I didn't know how to have those conversations, and I could see the brokenness.

One of the things that we did was going through Greg Koukl's book, Tactics. I know he's been on the program. A lot of it is just knowing that—and I can remember how deceived you are and how much you really do care, but you've picked up without even thinking about the narrative. You've just picked it up.

So having compassion and really caring what people think and why, and then introducing a new idea. I always just—when I recognize, "Oh, God's opened this door," it's a quick, "Okay, God, I have no idea what's coming next. Please give me the words. Don't let me say anything that would be a barrier, but show me what You want to say."

Just that openness to the conversation and then just caring about them and truly wanting to know what it is they believe and why. And hoping to see where that door is where you can introduce a thought that will help them, that will conflict with what they believe in a loving way so they're willing to consider it.

Telling people doesn't help. But entering into their experience and sharing your experience will show them actually maybe what I believe isn't true and help them to get to the point where they can say actually what I believed was a lie.

Jim Daly: That conversation needs to be thoughtful, obviously. I remember I went on the broadcast at Focus on the Family and said, "If you're in the abortion industry and you want to make it safe, legal, and rare, I can't agree with you that it's safe because a human being is dying. So that's a non-starter. But if you want to make it rare, I want to talk to you. So call me."

I got two phone calls from two women who were in the industry. One was with Planned Parenthood at a state regional level. It was a very interesting dialogue. She was passionate about what we deliver for women and independence and freedom from the burden of a baby.

Very much almost—I wouldn't have said this to her in this context, but in a medical context, it sounds like this is some kind of disease you got to get rid of. It's a physical anomaly, this thing growing in you, and they dehumanize it. It sounds like something you simply cut out, like a cancer or something, and then you can get on with your life. I mean, that is what it sounds like.

But to her credit, I was saying, "Well, how much do you make on an abortion?" She said $600, $700. I said, "The typical clinic, what would they bring in every year?" She said two to three million, something like that. I said, "What if we could work to do adoption placement in these clinics? Just maybe some of them. Just pick a couple, and I think I could find donors that will help support that if we can keep that money separate."

To her credit, she said, "That might be something that could be done, but top brass at Planned Parenthood would never go for it." Because if you think about it, it's checkmate when it comes to the moral issue there. Much better to place a baby for adoption than to terminate that baby's life, and they would then be admitting we're taking a baby's life, right?

But I've continued to pursue that. I have plenty of Christian friends tell me that's a bit dangerous. But it feels like that's where Jesus would show up. "What must I do to save that baby's life?" Think about it, pray about it, because that would be a great thing to turn these abortion clinics into adoption clinics.

The women would do better. There's about a million abortions a year, and there's about a million couples wanting to adopt infants. We just need to make the connection. It would be wonderful to see more of that.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: Unfortunately, adoption's gotten such a bad rap because they bring up the kids who haven't done well as opposed to—we've got to hold up the good, true, and beautiful, the many people who are adopted who are given a chance at life. It's quality of life as opposed to the beauty and dignity of individuals.

To give a child that opportunity. But the idea with women is "I'm giving up my child. I'm not a good mother." As opposed to actually modern adoption, you can be involved in that child's life and you can participate, but you know they're in a safe place because you get to choose the parents. You're giving your child life; that's actually a beautiful gift and you're a hero.

Jim Daly: Going back to your comment about the people in the abortion industry that will say, "This impoverished woman or this woman with a difficult marriage or this woman that just divorced, to bring a child into the world like that is immoral or inhumane."

I was a kid that my mom and dad divorced when I was five. My mom remarried at eight—horrible stepdad. She then died at nine when I was nine years old. The stepdad walked out of the family. I ended up in foster care. I was that kid! We were poor! Who has the right to convince my mother she shouldn't have had me?

The Lord looks after those people. I think what's an irony, many of those kids grow up to be CEOs because they learn human behavior, your back's up against a wall, you end up developing a skill set that actually is quite marketable in terms of how to make decisions and doing the right thing and all those things. I just get a little offended at people determining whether I have the worth or the value to be alive. I would like to go head-to-head with any of those people, because I was that kid.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: What a beautiful story! To say "wantedness"—you have value if you're wanted is what it comes down to. I have actually a nephew that when I was a resident, I took care of his mom who at 19 had breast cancer, a very aggressive form. The dad didn't want to be involved; she was unmarried.

I'm taking care of her as an intern, and she decided to not do some of the very aggressive drugs to give her baby a chance to survive. She knew she wouldn't survive; she knew that no matter what they did, her lifespan would be short. She said, "I'll wait until 32 weeks and then I'll get the more aggressive. I want my baby to have a chance to survive."

What a mom's heart! She's looking for adopted families. I guided her to attorney and then it just hit me—I had a brother who had a child who had cancer, who couldn't have children. So I went to my staff, "Is it okay if I ask her if he can go through an attorney?" She agreed, and so she was looking at multiple families and she chose my brother and his wife, Jennifer. So that's my nephew.

Jim Daly: Wow.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: You look at wantedness—she said, "I will give my life for this child. I want this child to have every chance." Now, that's a mother's heart. And you're right, that's what society's taken away. "Your children are a problem. Your body's a problem." That's not true.

Jim Daly: We're doing a documentary with Katie Faust, who has a ministry called Them Before Us. Probably the most powerful thing I've heard Katie say—and she's a powerful woman—she was raised by two moms; they were a lesbian couple. Katie's mother and father divorced, and she said, "I love my mom. I love her partner. That was great. But their decision deprived me of a dad."

That's an interesting thing. She goes on to say, "It used to be that adults sacrificed for their children." Very much like the story of the mom who gave her life for her child. But today we expect children to sacrifice for adults. Think of that statement! Whether it's in adoption, however you want to redefine the family in the LGBTQ lexicon, this is kind of a selfish thing to do that does not help that child.

We as adults just look the other way. Somehow they'll make it. We do far too little as a culture to look out for the children in the culture. That's a shame for us. You had a story about a man in Seattle, I think the Seattle airport, this little conversation. I love giving the listeners examples of engaging people. What happened in that conversation?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: I had actually done a cruise, and this is last summer, went on a joint hike. I hiked at the stops and I remembered that there had been actually a group of Asian doctors there with their kids. There were these teenage kids and there were these two young 20-year-old kids.

I hadn't actually interacted with them, but I'm at—it was two summers ago when the IT system in the airports went out and the planes went out. It was total chaos. Hours behind and you couldn't get through security. So I just sat against a wall. Millions of people is what it looked like; it was wall-to-wall people.

All of a sudden there is this guy in front of me says, "Hey, wait, you were on my hike the other day." I said, "Okay, God, where are we going?" He says, "Can I sit here?" We start talking, and he loved asking questions. He was just asking questions and wondering about things. He suddenly said, "What's the most controversial thing you believe?"

I went, "There's the door." What a good question! I said, "I believe all abortions should be illegal." He just went, "Why?" I said, "Actually, I'm an OBGYN doctor. I actually am also an ex-abortionist." He's like, "Oh, weird."

He just keeps asking me questions. It was like he was asking me every single one of the justifications: "But what about this situation? What about that one? What about this one?" At the end, he said, "Wow. I thought I had you with that one. I don't even know where to go from here, but that's given me something to think about."

It turns out he wanted to go into medicine, and we sat there for probably an hour and a half just having a conversation. That was valuable time. It was incredible. It was like a test, but it was also hearing his thoughts and being able to answer compassionately and in a way that's rational, not condemning.

Jim Daly: Right at the end, let's end with a positive. How would you like to encourage pro-life people, Christians particularly, in staying in the fight? Sometimes it gets withering. The media's reporting it as a 40/60 issue—60 percent of the country now supporting abortion.

We have an administration that is very supportive of restriction on abortion, and blue states are getting more abortion-minded and red states are getting less abortion-minded. I think one of the amazing statistics right now, it's something like over 100,000 babies are alive today because of those restrictions in those predominantly red states where it's become more difficult. That is awesome that these kids are alive and hopefully thriving and doing well and people got over their fears—mothers got over their fears.

Even in that context, when I look at it, "death states," if we can call them that—if they're going to support euthanasia, abortion up to the point of the birth canal—I think that spiritual dripping of evil is going to do a number on those cultures in California, unfortunately here in Colorado. Where you have life, I would think you're going to find God's blessing in those stories over time. What would be your message to encourage the pro-life community?

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: I always try to just keep the mom and the baby in front of my mind. I see Jesus, Matthew 18, Matthew 19—it's Jesus and the children. His love for children and that He doesn't want a single one of those to perish. Whatever we do to the least of them, we're actually doing to Jesus. We're doing abortion to Jesus, and His heart's weeping over it.

I sit with God about that in the darkest places like Colorado. I'm actually thankful to be here because in the darkest places when you hold up the beauty of motherhood, of family, of children, it looks very different than our culture, doesn't it? It's a pure light when you do that with love.

I would also say we just never give up. Jesus said keep praying and never give up. You do what's in front of you because it matters. You do it unto God in love. It's having an impact in ways that we're just never going to know. There's going to be a "suddenly" moment. God's at work underneath, but it's always "suddenly this happened."

I just keep watching for God's hand and doing what's in front of me, whether it's educating somebody so they know the truth about abortion, not letting lies stand, writing op-eds, going up and testifying. It could be somebody in your church, somebody like my friend who was devastated weeping about being pregnant, and she's like, "Wow, how can I help? This is awesome. I'm here. I won't leave you."

That's the function of the church. Or whether it's somebody broken from abortion that I can enter in and not leave her and lead her to Jesus. Working at your local pregnancy center. There are so many ways when God puts somebody in a broken relationship or a single mom or a frightened pregnant mom who doesn't know how she's going to get through it. She's in front of you or he's in front of you because God has something for them and you're that vessel. So we never give up and we say thank you for this mission and watch for those people and do the good and the right and the beautiful.

Jim Daly: Dr. Wheeler, thank you so much for being with us on ReFocus.

Dr. Catherine Wheeler: Thank you so much for this opportunity and what you do.

Jim Daly: Words of wisdom from someone who knows this subject so well, Dr. Catherine Wheeler. I appreciate her heart for the women, the men, and the babies impacted by abortion. There are difficult circumstances for sure, but as Catherine said, just know that Jesus cares for the least of these, including the pre-born baby.

One big way you can help today is by donating to the Option Ultrasound program here at Focus on the Family, which has saved well over a half a million babies! Yes, I've got a big smile on my face. By placing these ultrasound machines in pregnancy resource centers and providing training and expanding hours of availability to women in these clinics, you are directly impacting the saving of a baby's life.

$60 will save a baby's life. So please donate by clicking the link provided. Let Focus on the Family help you and be a resource for you on all things pro-life. We have a wealth of helpful information on this issue of abortion, and if you want to volunteer, we can also connect you with a network of pregnancy resource centers to do that. Finally, if you need to speak with a counselor, we have caring Christian counselors and you can contact us to set up an appointment. All the links are available in the show notes.

Now let's turn to the inbox segment. Here's a voicemail from Cara.

Guest (Female): Hey Jim, how would you speak to a woman who says she's pro-choice? That sounds like a good and positive thing, right?

Jim Daly: Cara, first I think we have to understand that much of the culture and media have crafted the lexicon to influence people according to a secular worldview—their point of view. Pro-choice sounds great on the surface, but it's not really pro-choice. It's pro-death.

As you've heard today, it takes a baby's life and greatly harms the mother. The helpless baby has no choice in the matter. Also, Abby Johnson, a former director at a Planned Parenthood clinic, says this: "Your choice will be taken away whenever you walk into an abortion facility."

She said they're all about making a profit—I'd like to say closing the deal. They want to sell you an abortion, not offer you choices that takes money out of their pocket. The stories of women with tragic and horrifying in-clinic experiences continue to grow. But you probably aren't hearing about those.

Many abortions are now chemically induced with a two-pill regimen. But many women have regret after starting the process and taking that first pill leading to the abortion. The abortion industry doesn't want you to know that there is an abortion reversal medication that's available, and she needs to take that within about 48 hours of that first pill being taken.

So far, 7,000 babies in the US have been saved doing this. Lots of women have been helped through that choice, and that's something we all need to be informed about so that when we're in those conversations with women who are thinking about abortion or believe in pro-choice, that's a great thing to talk about with them.

Thanks for the question, Cara. I'll send you a copy of my book, ReFocus: Living a Life that Reflects God's Heart. If you have a question or a comment for me, please send me a voicemail by clicking on the link in the show notes or send your comments and thoughts in the contact form.

Thanks for listening to ReFocus with Jim Daly. Share today's episode with someone you know, and then like, listen, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Next time on ReFocus, former US gymnast and founder and CEO of XX-XY Athletics, Jennifer Sey, shares about how her experiences shaped her commitment to protect women's sports.

Guest (Female): Just that girls deserve their own sports and spaces. 80 percent of Americans agree. It's now the rule from the US Olympic Committee. It's now the rule from the NCAA. And yet it's still considered a controversial thing to say. How is that possible?

Jim Daly: That's coming up on Monday, February 9th, on the next ReFocus with Jim Daly.

Guest (Female): Sprinkle some love into your marriage this month with the Loving Well podcast from Focus on the Family. I'm Erin Smalley and I host the podcast with my husband, Dr. Greg Smalley, and our good friend John Fuller. We chat about how to put Christ at the center of your relationship, deepen your love, and have a marriage that truly thrives. Listen today at focusonthefamily.com/lovingwell or wherever you get your podcasts.