In several states, crisis pregnancy centers—forced-birther storefronts with a record of manipulating women with lies about their options, including abortion—receive government money to spread their propaganda. That’s not the case in California, which passed a law in 2015 requiring that the centers prominently post a notice about the availability of abortion and birth control to women who seek their assistance.
But that hasn’t stopped Dr. George Delgado of the CPC called Culture of Life Family Services in San Diego from spreading the word about a controversial procedure he claims can reverse two-step medication abortions when a woman changes her mind after the first step. Physicians interviewed by Nina Liss-Schultz at Mother Jones view the procedure with suspicion and concern.
Medication abortions require the use of two pills in sequence: mifepristone, which ends the pregnancy, followed by misoprostol, which expels the fetus. Women typically take the first pill in a doctor’s office and the second at home. That doesn’t apply in the 19 states and counting that require a woman to take both pills with a physician present, which means telemedicine for the procedure is outlawed. Even so, about one third of women who terminate their pregnancies early in gestation now choose a medication abortion.
Delgado says the procedure can be stopped and the abortion “reversed” if a woman decides after taking mifepristone that she’s changed her mind and wants to carry her pregnancy to term. Not taking the misoprostol and getting injections of the hormone progesterone can accomplish that, says Delgado, who began undertaking the technique with another doctor in 2007, developed a protocol for it in 2009, and claims some 300 women have ended their abortions as a result. He also co-founded the Abortion Pill Reversal group, which, despite its deeply anti-choice foundation, ironically argues that women should have a choice to end an abortion already underway.
Several states have sought to require that abortion providers tell women about the possibility their abortions can be reversed, but only three states have passed laws to that effect. One of those, Arizona’s, was nixed by the courts. The leading medical association of obstetricians and gynecologists had said of the Arizona law that “claims of medication abortion reversal are not supported by the body of scientific evidence.”
Delgado says his study proved otherwise, but critics point out this was not peer-reviewed. In fact, as one physician told Liss-Schultz, up to 46 percent of the time, a woman who takes mifepristone but not misoprostol will continue her pregnancy without any assistance from progesterone injections:
“Everyone I know who provides abortion would try to determine whether or not someone is feeling ambivalent—that’s a critical part of providing good care,” says Karen Meckstroth, and OB-GYN at an abortion clinic in San Francisco. “I don’t think it’s wrong to talk to people about reversal as a theoretical possibility. But it could cause real harm if it’s not true.” [...]
“It’s very experimental and it’s completely inappropriate to recommend it,” says Meckstroth. “For it to become law or a recommendation with no research is unfair to women.”
None of this is stopping state legislators across the country from trying to pass reversal bills. But so far this year, efforts have been defeated in Colorado, and stalled in committee in North Carolina, Indiana, and Georgia.
However, if there is one thing known for sure about forced birthers, they don’t surrender. So more of these measures can be expected as proved by the relentless efforts at everything from requiring closets at abortion clinics be a certain size to banning of at-home medication abortions. Every new restriction, every mandate allowing anti-choice pregnancy crisis centers and forcing pro-choice physicians to shower woman with disinformation, chips away at the right enshrined 44 years ago in Roe v. Wade.