And how 'bout we keep information factual?
In March I wrote about
a bill that Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed into law that requires abortion providers to tell patients about a reversal procedure that is unproven. Here's the skinny:
About half of abortions are medically induced rather than surgical. The medical variety ("abortion pill") is a two-step process: the patient takes one pill, mifepristone, to block hormonal activity that advances pregnancy; then a second pill, misoprostol, ejects the fetus.
Anti-abortion doctor George Delgado has been peddling a procedure that, he says, can halt and actually reverse the abortion process after the first pill has been taken, just in case the woman changes her mind. His procedure involves taking the hormone progesterone, which the first pill inhibits. The bill that passed in Arizona, SB 1318, requires doctors to tell women about the procedure, which many physicians, including the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, say is not only untested but "quack science."
There are a handful of other problems with the bill, not the least that it tries to confuse women and sow doubt. However, by the time most women decide to have an abortion, their mind is made up. They've talked to family, priests, friends, counselors and doctors. It's not a spur-of-the-moment or capricious decision. So the likelihood that a patient will decide not to go through with the process after taking the first pill is slim to none, says Dr. Kathleen Morrell, who has treated hundreds of patients without a single one changing her mind.
"The bill treats women like their thought processes aren't complete, as if women aren't thoughtful... We as providers already have evidence-based protocols and relationships with our patients."
Still, let's say a woman
does decide to stop after taking the first pill. She's going to be pregnant or not pregnant at that point, and there is simply no proof that ingesting progesterone will reverse the condition if the first pill, mifepristone, terminated the pregnancy. Advocates of the procedure claim a 60 percent success rate, but those are patients who were still pregnant after the first pill, and who would have given birth regardless of what they did after stopping halfway. In other words, the woman could have swallowed Gummy Bears and said that
they "reversed" the abortion.
When the Arizona bill was being debated, women's counselors, physicians and clinicians spoke against the untested and unproven procedure. On the other side, the "evidence" is skimpy and anecdotal — from one anti-abortion doctor. Still, that did not stop Arizona's batshit looney legislature from restricting women's rights even more. Nor did a lack of medical evidence give Gov. Ducey any second thoughts, since during the 2014 campaign he promised to support the hard-right Center for Arizona Policy, the organization behind dozens of anti-abortion (and anti-LGBT) measures in the state.
These goonballs know that no respected scientific study exists that corroborates Dr. Delgado's claims, but that's not their concern. They don't say the procedure will reverse an abortion, they only claim it might, and they simply want doctors to "disclose information," even if it's wrong and perhaps dangerous. But for what other medical procedure are physicians required to explain techniques that have not been approved, or even tested? Also, if these GOP lugnuts are so concerned about "a woman's right to know," why doesn't the bill require doctors to tell patients that the procedure is unproven? It doesn't. But it does require the Arizona Department of Health Services to list the controversial practice on its website.
Today doctors and women's clinics fought back:
Three Arizona doctors and Planned Parenthood Arizona have filed a federal lawsuit challenging a new state law that requires abortion providers to tell patients that it is possible to reverse a medication abortion. Opponents say the law forces doctors to lie to women.
According to physician
Julie Kwatra, who chairs the Arizona delegation of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the requirement unnecessarily inserts lawmakers into the doctor-patient relationship, and it violates ethical standards.
"Medicine should be practiced by the experts ... not by lawmakers," she said. "This is junk science. There is no credible evidence that abortion reversal is possible. And to base a standard of care recommendation on that is completely anti-ethical."
But, of course, when did Arizona's Republicans ever concern themselves with ethics? And why listen to doctors and scientists anyway, when right-wing elected officials, most of them crotchety old men, know so much more about women's bodies?