conception

New Study on Progesterone to Prevent Miscarriage Supports Use in Abortion Reversal

nancyvalko conception, Drugs, family planning, medical ethics, miscarriage, Planned Parenthood, pro-life

Recently, I was talking to a young woman relative who had a miscarriage with her first pregnancy, a successful birth with the second and is now taking progesterone as soon as she found out she was pregnant with her third on the advice of her Natural Family Planning instructor and doctor.

I was a bit perplexed about this until I read the May 28, 2019 National Catholic Register article “New Study Supports Catholic Research on Progesterone in Pregnancy” .

Based on a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine  titled  “A Randomized Trial of Progesterone in Women with Bleeding in Early Pregnancy”, it was found that those  women taking progesterone supplements during pregnancy had a 15% increase in live births.

This came as no surprise to Teresa Kenney, a women’s health nurse practitioner in Omaha at the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction where being Catholic is not required for services.

Research there has shown progesterone to be “a significant factor in pregnancies who are at risk for miscarriage or premature labor.” She also noted that progesterone is routinely used during the in-vitro fertilization (IVF) process, a process that the Institute does not offer because of moral and ethical concerns.

Dr. Hilgers who founded and directs the Pope Paul VI Institute has been studying progesterone and pregnancy for decades and found that pregnancies that were not normal-for example, those ending in miscarriage, premature labor or other complications-often had lower than normal progesterone levels in the mother’s blood.

Not every miscarriage can be prevented with progesterone in the estimated  10%-25%  of pregnancies that end in miscarriage. Fifty percent of miscarriages happen because the baby has a chromosomal problem and there are other medical problems that can lead to miscarriage.

Dr. Kathleen Raviele, an OB-GYN and former president of the Catholic Medical Association, said that if a woman has undergone a miscarriage – particularly very early in pregnancy – she recommends that her progesterone levels be tested following ovulation during a normal cycle. If numbers are low, she recommends supplementing progesterone.

That is why my relative is now taking progesterone for her expected baby.

According to Nurse Kenney and Dr. Raviele, they use careful timing and only bioidentical progesterone perfectly matching the progesterone made by the woman’s body herself-not the synthetic versions.

ABORTION REVERSAL

As I wrote in my 2018 blog “What You Need to Know About Medical Abortion and Abortion Reversal” , medical abortions can often be reversed by taking progesterone if the mother changes her mind after the first abortion pill to block progesterone is given but she hasn’t yet taken the second pill to expel the baby. There is now a website at www.abortionpillreversal.com for information on abortion reversal that includes a hotline phone number at 1-877-558-0333.

But according to Planned Parenthood :

 “…(only) a handful of states require doctors and nurses to tell their patients about (abortion reversal treatment) before they can provide abortion care. But these claims haven’t been proven in reliable medical studies — nor have they been tested for safety, effectiveness, or the likelihood of side effects — so experts like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reject these untested supposed treatments.” (Emphasis added)

Nurse Kenny replies that:

“It’s frustrating to me that these pro-abortion people are saying that this science is completely bogus, when we have studies like this [Birmingham study] that prove the absolute essential nature of progesterone to support and maintain pregnancy.”

CONCLUSION

I have long been a big supporter of Natural Family Planning and NaPro (Natural Procreative Technology) since I met Dr. Hilgers and visited the Pope Paul VI Institute decades ago.

I have told many women experiencing infertility or multiple miscarriages about these options. I believe it is essential for women to know all the options, risks and benefits when it comes to true reproductive health.

And thanks to this article, I am constantly learning more myself!

 

“Flash of light” Not Needed to Prove Conception

nancyvalko abortion, conception

 

In a May 23, 2016 National Catholic Register article ” Contrary to Reports, There is No Flash of Light at Conception”, writer Stacy Trasancos takes some people who wrote about the amazing research article and video to task  for exaggerations:

“At conception, there is no flash of light, no burst of fireworks, no sparks flying, no fiat lux, no scientific proof of ensoulment, no vindication of doctrine by this research. There is a misunderstanding.”

She is right that claims of ensoulment  or actual “fireworks” in the mother are wrong and inaccurate.

But while I understand Ms. Trasancos’ point about  the over excitement by some writers, the phenomenon itself actually is a pretty big deal.

I am a nurse, not a scientist, but I read the scientific article myself  before I wrote a recent blog on the research.

The researchers were not trying to make a theological or philosophical point but rather reporting a testing phenomenon:

“We monitored calcium and zinc dynamics in individual human eggs using selective fluorophores following activation with calcium-ionomycin, ionomycin, or hPLCζ cRNA microinjection. These egg activation methods, as expected, induced rises in intracellular calcium levels and also triggered the coordinated release of zinc into the extracellular space in a prominent “zinc spark.”

The truly relevant point is that there IS a moment of  “human egg activation”. Using fluorescence to show a chemical reaction accompanying that moment of activation enhances the reality of  when life begins-a fact that Justice Blackmun in the Roe v. Wade abortion decision said was unresolvable because so many people disagreed.

As I wrote about years ago,  the photos of the “sperm injection” mode of IVF  (in vitro fertilization) developed over 20 years ago and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD)  before implantation of the new life back into the mother should have been proof enough of when life begins, even for a Supreme Court justice.

No fluorescence or sparks necessary.

 

 

 

 

Sparks Fly at Conception-Literally

nancyvalko abortion, conception, law, medical ethics, prenatal testing

I remember the shock I felt when I first read these words in the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision:

“We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”

I could not believe that anyone could deny the obvious: life begins at conception.

Just 5 years later, the first child conceived through in vitro fertilization was born. While I recognize the several ethical problems with this procedure, I thought that at least this obviously proved that life begins at conception since the process was monitored from the beginning. Unfortunately, not to the pro-abortion movement that then pivoted to we don’t know when human personhood begins.

Ironically, presidential candidate Hilary Clinton recently revealed the hypocrisy of this pivot when she said “The unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights” on NBC’s Meet the Press TV show. (Emphasis added)

Flash of Light

But now researchers at Northwestern University have discovered a flash of light that occurs at the moment of conception!  To see the video of this phenomenon, go to the link at LifeNews.com.

Here is the science behind this:

“The bright flash occurs because when sperm enters and egg it triggers calcium to increase which releases zinc from the egg. As the zinc shoots out, it binds to small molecules which emit a fluorescence which can be picked up my camera microscopes.

Over the last six years this team has shown that zinc controls the decision to grow and change into a completely new genetic organism.

In the experiment, scientists use sperm enzyme rather than actual sperm to show what happens at the moment of conception.

“These fluorescence microscopy studies establish that the zinc spark occurs in human egg biology, and that can be observed outside of the cell,” said Professor Tom O’Halloran, a co-senior author.”

And

Dr. Teresa Woodruff, a professor at Northwestern said, “We discovered the zinc spark just five years ago in the mouse, and to see the zinc radiate out in a burst from each human egg was breathtaking. It was remarkable.”

An Ethical Downside

Regrettably, the scientists say that the intensity of the flash of light also appears to indicate the egg’s quality and the embryo’s future health. This could allow more in vitro fertilization embryo selection with the destruction of embryos thought to be of lesser “quality”.

Therefore, instead of celebrating this physical proof of conception, Dr. Eve Feinberg, who co-authored the study, said

 “Often we don’t know whether the egg or embryo is truly viable until we see if a pregnancy ensues… If we have the ability up front to see what is a good egg and what’s not, it will help us know which embryo to transfer, avoid a lot of heartache and achieve pregnancy much more quickly.”

However, real heartache comes with infertility, desperate medical procedures to obtain a baby by any means possible, and the termination of life both inside and outside the womb.

But in the meantime, we can still rejoice in the apparent discovery of a true “spark of the Divine”.